The Form of the Irish
With the world’s eyes on Ireland and #repealthe8th lately, it seemed timely to explore an Irish poerty form for this month’s slam. Of course, when you’re working with a poetic form not originally intended for English, the syllable and rhyme rules can get a little… well, who remembers the Drottkvaett? Fortunately, an ae freislighe can be as short as four lines – or as long as you want. It’s got syllable counting, but no scansion. Let’s check it out.
Tell me how to write one?
An ae freislighe (it sounds a bit like “aye, freshly”) is an Irish syllabic stanza form. Each stanza has four lines, and each line has four unmetered syllables.
Where things get interesting is in the patterns of rhyme, consonance, and alliteration.
See, it’s not enough for the ae freislighe to use rhymes the way you are used to using rhymes, where the final syllable of the word makes the same sound. In an ae freislighe, one or more syllables need to match to make a rhyme. Then there’s the dunadh: the final syllable, word(s), or line of the entire poem (not each stanza) must contain the same syllable, word(s), or line as the beginning of the poem.
Diagrammed using one letter per syllable, it looks like this:
a x x x (b b b)
x x x x x (c c)
x x x x (b b b)
x x x x x (c c) (with a worked in here somewhere too, if and only if this is the last line of the entire poem)
You can have as many four-line stanzas (they’re called quatrains) as you want in your ae freislighe. Here’s an example that’s also Tolkien-inspired. I’ll put the rhymes in a different text style, with the triples in bold and the doubles in italic. And I’ll underline the dunadh.
The Barrow Downs lie in mist,
The wreathing wisps grasp the stones,
Call me now a pessimist
But this cold reminds of bones.
Long ago they fell beneath,
Dark the shades that crept within,
Heavy gold they shall bequeath,
Entrapping weight to stiffen.
Why did we stop, unthinking?
Now my plaintive cry resounds,
Answered only in clinking,
Far beneath the Barrow Downs.
You can see that many of the triple rhymes are near-rhymes; that’s fine, as long as you’re getting the right sounds in the right places. You can also see that the dunadh only shows up once, in three quatrains.
You can also see that the lines are completely unmetered. This will help you – don’t try to pick a meter and make it harder than it needs to be. In fact, you can make it easier by going to a source like rhymezone and picking out some three-syllable words that you like the sound of and which rhyme. Starting with words that evoke an emotion or image for yourself can be as good as a prompt. (poets who took Nate’s class, you know what I’m talking about!)
Good luck, and see you on the grids!
