Medieval Debate Poetry

By THLaird Colyne Stewart, for the Trillium War School AS 51 (2016)

General Background Information on Debate Poetry

Various scholars have differing opinions on just what qualifies as a “true” debate poem, but for the purposes of this class a debate poem is any poem wherein two or more different points of view expound on a topic (two or three being the most common). The points of view in debate poetry are expressed by speakers which can be almost anything, including people, inanimate objects, personifications (of emotions, seasons, etc.), or religious figures. Popular pairings were the body and the soul, as well as various avians (the nightingale was used a lot). Medieval people tended to think in binary (as many people still do today), with everything having a polar opposite. This way of thinking fits the debate model very well. If there was a third voice it was often a judge who had been invoked to choose a winner of the debate.

Debate poetry has its roots in the Greek and Roman eclogue. Eclogues were short passages of any genre, including longer poetic works. Ancient writers such as Theocritus (3^rd century BCE), Virgil, Ovid, Nemesianus, Calpurnius Siculus all wrote eclogues that would have been available to medieval readers.

Debate poems first appeared in Medieval European literature in the 8^th and 9^th centuries during the Carolingian Renassaince but reached the height of their popularity from the 12^th to the 16^th.

Debate poems were written in Latin to begin with. However, in the 13^th century they began to appear in several vernacular languages including English, French, Italian and German.

The subject of love in these debates was very popular from the 12^th to 15^th centuries. Other topics will be discussed below.

Writing a Shakespearean Sonnet

By THLaird Colyne Stewart

An early 16^th century form, introduced and developed by other poets, but made most famous by Shakespeare. It consists of fourteen lines structured as three quatrains and a couplet. The third quatrain usually introduces an unexpected thematic twist (volta). In the sonnets written by Shakespeare the volta usually comes in the couplet and usually summarizes the theme of the poem or introduces a new look at the theme. The meter is almost always iambic pentameter. The usual rhyme scheme is abab, cdcd, efef, gg.

For my sonnet I decided to write about my belt-sister, HE Mahault of Swynford. Specifically, I wanted to talk about the wide and diverse service she has rendered to her kingdom over the years. Therefore, I decided to compare the kingdom to a grand hall, and talk about how her service had helped build it.

The pillars of the grandest house are built,

By deeds both great and small the bricks are laid,

And with hard work the walls and floors are gilt,

With blood and sweat the mighty mansion’s made.

In the second quatrain I compared her to the Roman goddess of abundance and prosperity and make mention of the hardships she has had to overcome.

The mason is Abundantia on earth,

Her toils in both hall and field are great,

Long laboured maiden held in deepest worth,

Who does not fear the fight with fickle fate.

My volta came in the third quatrain, where I switch perspective and talk about her willingness to express her heart, even if that opinion may be unpopular, and her propensity to champion the accomplishments of others. I again invoked a Roman goddess, this time one of forgiveness.

Clementia forgive her forthright voice,

Which rises in defense of those struck mute,

To honest live, herself to be, her choice,

Who can then dare to bold denounce her route?

For my closing couplet I went with a dedication.

So do I grace her gifting words I penned,

To sister, mentor, and my closest friend.

As a title I settled on Crossing for two reasons. The first is that her byname Swynford means “swine ford” (which is a crossing). It also refers to the people who have denounced her route over the years.

The final poem read as follows:

Crossings

Also for Mahault

By THLaird Colyne Stewart, February AS 49 (2015)

The pillars of the grandest house are built,

By deeds both great and small the bricks are laid,

And with hard work the walls and floors are gilt,

With blood and sweat the mighty mansion’s made.

The mason is Abundantia on earth,

Her toils in both hall and field are great,

Long laboured maiden held in deepest worth,

Who does not fear the fight with fickle fate.

Clementia forgive her forthright voice,

Which rises in defense of those struck mute,

To honest live, herself to be, her choice,

Who can then dare to bold denounce her route?

So do I grace her gifting words I penned,

To sister, mentor, and my closest friend.

Missive to a Young Bard: Sonnets

By Master Hector of the Black Height, 2003

Edited by THLaird Colyne Stewart, January AS 49 (2015)

This article is based on an email that Master Hector sent to me when I first began to wade into the bardic arts. At the time I was particularly struggling with a sonnet.

When you talk about wrestling with sonnets and when I read your work, I see two specific and disparate areas on which you need to focus.

The first is rhythm. You are trying to write in iambic pentameter but you seem to have problems sticking to the rhythm.

Let’s talk about the basics.

An iamb is a two-syllable block of rhythm within a line, with the heavier beat on the second syllable:

ba-DUM.

This is, among other things, the rhythm of your heartbeat and we’ll touch on that later.

The line you’re using is a ten syllable line, so there are five iambs of two syllables each in the line; thus the line is called iambic pentameter (as opposed to trochaic pentameter, which would be five trochees to the line, but I digress). Iambic pentameter: ba-DUM ba-DUM ba-DUM ba-DUM ba-DUM. Above all else it’s regular. If it’s not, it isn’t really iambic pentameter.

When we look at the rhythm of the line, let’s also remember to look at what’s NOT written. The line reads

ba-DUM ba-DUM ba-DUM ba-DUM ba-DUM

but when you cobble it together with other lines, it really doesn’t read

ba-DUM ba-DUM ba-DUM ba-DUM ba-DUM
ba-DUM ba-DUM ba-DUM ba-DUM ba-DUM

It doesn’t read that way. Honestly it doesn’t.

It actually reads

ba-DUM ba-DUM ba-DUM ba-DUM ba-DUM (pause)
ba-DUM ba-DUM ba-DUM ba-DUM ba-DUM (pause)

and so on. The pause is for breath usually. It’s the natural hesitation that says to the listener (remember, poetry is an aural art), “Attention please, the line is ending right about… here.”

Even when we enjamb a line and run the sentence into the next line (poetry being this wonderful, complex amalgam of the mechanics of language -- sentences, clauses, even phrases  -- and the building blocks of poetry -- the beat, the line, the stanza) there needs to be sensitivity to the fact that the poetic line is over, even if the sentence grinds on. The reader needs to know when a line ends, even when the line enjambs with the next, so the reader and/or listener can savour the line as a whole, complete thing unto itself, as well as the line’s part in the sentence (and the last word’s part in the rhyme scheme). That is why reading poetry aloud is itself an art, one we can and should discuss at another time.

Let’s look at a specimen line of iambic pentameter, plucked at random from amongst the creakings of the windmills of my mind:

With all my worldly goods I thee endow

That’s ten syllables. The natural rhythm of these words fits the iambic pentameter line like a glove.

with ALL my WORLDly GOODS i THEE enDOW.

As the Bard Himself would have said, the words flow trippingly from the tongue. That’s what’s supposed to happen. There is no fight with the rhythm, you can go with the flow.

Here’s another line:

The windmills of my mind, how loud they creak!

Same rhythm scheme:

the WINDmills OF my MIND, how LOUD they CREAK

There is a theory that iambic pentameter is in fact the natural metre of the English language (complete with the pause of approximately one rhythmic beat at the end of the line, so you can breathe), which is why it has become so popular within the vernacular English poetry and prose communities over the past four centuries or more, at least until Ezra Pound decided it was tyrannical. Then again Pound was a pretty unrepentant fascist so what did he know about tyranny and the lack thereof? But I digress.

Remember I commented that an iamb is the rhythm of your heartbeat? Some theories include this as one of the instinctive criteria that draws us as people to iambic verse. This is what being alive sounds like, in a primal sense. It just plain fits us, the same way we count in base 10 because of our fingers.

Don’t worry about the whys and wherefores, just acknowledge that iambs are iambs and iambic pentameter is a fundamental rhythm scheme in English verse. The trick is to fit the words to the rhythm scheme you’ve selected for use, and in this case that’s your challenge.

Do you read your verse aloud as you write? That’s the only reliable way to tell if the words fit the rhyme scheme. Declaim your verse aloud and then you’ll see (did you notice “Declaim your verse aloud and then you’ll see” itself is a line of iambic pentameter?) if it flows trippingly from the tongue. If it flows evenly and smoothly from your lips, you’re where you want to be. If something feels forced, if the words come out awkwardly or to make the line work you have to place undue emPHAsis on the wrong sylLABle, then you have to re-work the words (different word sequence, perhaps different word selection entirely. I can write iambic pentameter with little or no conscious thought; a side effect of this seems to be that in day-to-day use I split infinitives like a butcher) to restore the regularity of your rhythm. Anything looks good on paper and the silent voice between your ears doesn’t necessarily give you a fair depiction of the actual sound of the words. Sound and its production are mechanical processes; you must speak each line, each iamb, aloud to see if it really works.

A solid grasp of this rhythm scheme should come with practice and lots of declaiming, probably in the acoustically perfect little poet’s room in your home. Just don’t flush while reading, it overloads the acoustics.

Please note you can break these and other rhythmic rules when writing; I have done so from time to time, deliberately (or at least consciously). Breaking the rules can force the reader to focus on a specific word or syllable, it can force the reader to slow down the reading and pay more attention, sort of an aural speed bump. However, those are exceptions; first you need to learn the rules before we go breaking them -- and while the ghost of Ezra Pound calms down just a little.

Now let’s get to your second disparate problem; the use of the sonnet form itself.

If you read the rather fulsome praise for the form in the Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, you’ll discover that some (I confess I am among them) consider the Shakespearian sonnet (hereafter referred to as the sonnet, for sheer laziness; we’ll touch upon alternate versions later) to be the ultimate accomplishment of short poetic structure in English. It has it all, in just 14 lines. The trick is to use the form to its full extent.

Form fits function and ultimately the sonnet is a dialectic structure. It is designed to shape logical analysis of a problem, to provide a venue for dynamic argument and resolution and then to guide the writer through to a conclusion, and if you do it right it’ll make some art in the process. As a form the sonnet consists of two main blocks of text, the octet (first eight lines) and the sestet (last six lines). As a general rule, the octet splits into two four-line quatrains, defined by the rhyme scheme. The sestet splits into a third quatrain and a final couplet. Thus the fabulous sonnet rhyme scheme,

ABAB CDCD EFEF GG

that probably was beaten into you at some stage of your high school education.

If you want to look at the sonnet as a poetic syllogism, the octet sets forth the thesis. The third quatrain that opens the sestet sets for the antithesis and then you sum up in the last couplet, the synthesis.

Let’s consider a concrete example of a sonnet that uses this form to achieve its dialectic aim, the poem I sent Viscount Gemini de Grendelus to celebrate his knighting.

When dark descends and all look to the dawn
For hope, for light, for warmth drawn from the sun,
All know the dismal dark first must be gone:
And thus the race with darkness must be run.
Why run that course, when daylight that we crave
Must follow, sure as age shall follow youth?
Why challenge darkness? What need we to brave
When sun must shine, when brightness must bring truth?
There always shall be darkness, it is true,
And in such shadow beasts seek out their prey.
If we are better than those beasts we rue
We’ll fight to make the dark as safe as day.
Of stars that pierce such darkness, none deny
The brightness in the night named Gemini.

Okay, let’s get the tombstone data out of the way. Indeed, it’s a sonnet;

1) 14 lines

2) standard sonnet rhyme scheme of
- ABAB (dawn/sun/gone/run)
- CDCD (crave/youth/brave/truth)
- EFEF (true/prey/rue/day)
- GG (deny/Gemini)

3) iambic pentameter lines.

That’s great, we’ve defined the corpse; any life in its bones? Let’s break it down and see.

First the octet:

When dark descends and all look to the dawn
For hope, for light, for warmth drawn from the sun,
All know the dismal dark first must be gone:
And thus the race with darkness must be run.
Why run that course, when daylight that we crave
Must follow, sure as age shall follow youth?
Why challenge darkness? What need we to brave
When sun must shine, when brightness must bring truth?

You can look at the octet as a single thematic block and it works fine that way. Indeed, in this octet the narrative flows from the beginning to the middle and thence to an ending of sorts, the big rhetorical question. This narrative block in turn breaks down nicely, consistent with and emphasized by the rhyme scheme, into two quatrains.

When dark descends and all look to the dawn
For hope, for light, for warmth drawn from the sun,
All know the dismal dark first must be gone:
And thus the race with darkness must be run.

Why run that course, when daylight that we crave
Must follow, sure as age shall follow youth?
Why challenge darkness? What need we to brave
When sun must shine, when brightness must bring truth?

Let us look closely at the first quatrain and what it actually says.

When dark descends and all look to the dawn
For hope, for light, for warmth drawn from the sun,
All know the dismal dark first must be gone:
And thus the race with darkness must be run.

The first quatrain sets forth the whole premise of the poem; the race with darkness. Light good, dark… not good; philosophy by Gronk in his cave. The archetype is at the heart of this; dark is dismal and undesirable, but it’s inevitable. It is to be endured. In this poem, darkness is the rain on life’s parade.

Now that we’ve set forth that premise we can see the dialectic unfold. The second quatrain sets forth the fundamental issue at hand; “why fight the problem?”

Why run that course, when daylight that we crave
Must follow, sure as age shall follow youth?
Why challenge darkness? What need we to brave
When sun must shine, when brightness must bring truth?

This is the voice of cowardly reason, the appeaser submitting to the inevitable, though when you look past greeting-card truisms the logic is horribly, cynically faulty. The logic here is flawed in terms of ethics. The unduly optimistic faith that age must follow youth is reflected in the assuredness that brightness must bring truth. This is philosophy by Pollyanna, standing on a street-corner waiting for a mugger to give her a seminar in realpolitik.

Okay; the octet has set forth the fundamental issue being addressed (quatrain 1) and has posed a possible, pathetic solution (quatrain 2); do nothing, go with the flow, assume like Annie that tomorrow is only a day away and Daddy Warbucks will take care of things in general. This is a weak but sadly credible premise; it assumes that we are passengers in life, that we do not make our own destinies or our own choices. Leave it to someone or something else (in this case the movements of the heavens), it’ll all work out okay. This is the voice of appeasement making its segue to ethical surrender. It also describes the easy path. We all know this is the path many (most?) people take, every day. It’s the path that calls to us. It may not be spiffy, it seems to say, but who cares? The sun will come up and it’ll all be okay. Does it really matter if there are beasts out there when we know they will slink off at dawn? This reaction is insidious; it also is terribly human.

And then, like the next movement of a symphony shifting to a major key, the poem shifts gears as it enters the sestet and we get the response, starting with the third quatrain.

There always shall be darkness, it is true,
And in such shadow beasts seek out their prey.
If we are better than those beasts we rue
We’ll fight to make the dark as safe as day.

The first line of the quatrain acknowledges the thesis of the octet and the second line transcends it. In the second line the true nature of darkness is revealed, a means to the ends of malevolence. Darkness is not just the absence of light, it is the medium in which beasts lurk and flourish (or, far more perplexing ethically, are allowed to flourish by people like the narrator of that second quatrain). Then comes the challenge to the appeaser which one hopes is rhetorical; “If we are better than those beasts”; if we are no better than the beasts then we have surrendered. Doesn’t the second quatrain sum up as existential and ethical surrender, the abrogation of personal responsibility? The third quatrain looks the second quatrain in the face and, in the final couplet of the quatrain, spits in its eye.

Yes, light will come; yes, light is good. That doesn’t mean we have to sit still and accept the darkness and its fellow-travelers. If we accept the darkness passively, the third quatrain says, we are no better than beasts; surrender may seem human but it actually makes you less than human, it renders you bestial. That’s a pretty strong ethical and philosophical response to the fundamental thesis set forth in the octet. Are we men or beasts?

And then we come to the couplet. The GG rhyme serves as punctuation for the poem, the period at the end of the sentence. After the longer flow of quatrains we suddenly have this wonderful, thumping rhyming couplet followed by silence, which hammers home those last words in the mind and memory of the reader or listener. I’m short! I rhyme! Nothing follows me! Look at me! Read me! This is the good stuff!

And in this case, indeed it is the good stuff.

Of stars that pierce such darkness, none deny
The brightness in the night named Gemini.

The poem tells you that there is someone named Gemini, someone who pierces the darkness that so intimidates the octet and that the third couplet holds in such contempt. In Gemini there is one who does not appease, does not submit, does not go quietly into that good night (I hope Dylan Thomas would have liked this poem). Note that the light doesn’t filter through, it doesn’t just happen. The light pierces the darkness. It’s active, it’s aggressive. It is a conscious act of defiance.

Gemini is neither sun nor moon, he is not shattering the darkness; that would be facile and life isn’t facile. Rather he is playing his part, one pin-point among many -- and yet too few; it’s still dark, isn’t it? -- in the darkness, struggling to deny those beasts the freedom they need to flourish. He is but a pin-point; even so, among those many pin-points, this is a special one. That’s blatantly obvious to the observer; “none deny” -- not even the beaten voice of the second quatrain, perhaps? -- there’s something, someone, special here.

If the third quatrain, in defying the second quatrain, asks us if we are men or beasts, I think the couplet makes one thing clear; Gemini is the antithesis of the beasts. This is what it is to be a Knight (and yes, the pun is both deliberate and fortuitous but hey, bloom where you’re planted), this is what it is to be a man, this is what it is to blaze forth in the darkness. You may not win but, dammit, you’ll know you tried and afterwards the darkness will have nightmares about facing you.

The last couplet hammers home the message of defiance and hope. That last word rings in your ears like a bugle call to battle; the beasts do not merely approach, they are here, and right now, right here in the darkness, this star is ablaze. The challenge is implicit; Gemini is one special person but he is a person like we are, neither sun or moon, just another pin-prick. If he can transcend that and be so brilliant, what’s your excuse and mine?

That’s what a sonnet’s form lets you do; frame the question, pose a possible solution, then shoot that first solution down in flames and from the ashes of those flames hold up for final consideration a jewel, a nugget of image or wisdom or hope. Debate, discovery, dynamics, dialectic; all that in 14 lines, 140 syllables.

Damn, I love sonnets!

And to go back to the first issue, let’s look at the role of rhythm in the creation of the sonnet; beyond mere mechanics, beyond punching a categorical ticket, it contributes to the end product by highlighting certain words. Take the third line of the sonnet above:

All know the dismal dark first must be gone.

Let’s break down the rhythm of that particular line:

all KNOW the DISmal DARK first MUST be GONE

So far so good?

I could have written that line two ways:

All know the dismal dark **first must*** be gone

or

All know the dismal dark ***must first*** be gone

Both versions work within the framework of the poem, neither fights the rhythm scheme. Let’s look at the variable, the placement of those two words within the iamb.

The poem could read “first MUST” or “must FIRST”. Which is stronger? I think placing the emphasis on “must” is stronger. It hammers home that there’s a necessity here. The dark MUST leave. Either permutation would work technically, but the emphasis provided by the rhythm renders the one I chose a stronger version. It is a little thing that makes it a better poem.

This last analysis is fine-tuning to the point of navel gazing, gentle friend. However I hope it emphasizes to you the synergy that is at the heart of poetry. Poetry is the amalgam of grammar and rhythm, of prosody and musicality. It’s all the pieces working together to make the names ring, the messages shine. It’s art, dammit! This is the good stuff!

The Spenserian form doesn’t thunder out such a thumping ending. For Spenser, as for Shakespeare, the octet was the same pair of quatrains. Rather than its last sestet being that wonderful, punctuated EFEFGG, it’s a far more gentle and balanced EFGEFG. You don’t get that last KABOOM couplet. Instead, the form begs you to make a balanced argument, two halves set against each other. It’s a more subtle ending. And we could cloud the issue further with Petrarch’s variant, too.

However, one thing at a time, gentle friend. Start with the ultimate machine, the Shakespearian model. We can look at alternate choices later.

ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. Ten syllables per line, each line five iambs, “ba-DUM ba-DUM ba-DUM ba-DUM ba-DUM” and that instinctive pause at the end of each line.

Use the form, explore challenge and response. Give the reader the question, the answer and then that percussive, brilliant last couplet to sum up, to make the point, to make sure the reader and listener don’t miss what matters. It’s got dynamic tension, conflict and resolution, yin and yang. It is how people think, aspire and define. It’s all there for you.

emgd

Writing a Fatras

By THLaird Colyne Stewart

Based on his post to the EaldorBards elist on Sunday, October 2002

At Bards and Cooks in October of 2002, Master Hector of the Black Height held a class on the ‘Bardic toolbox’. As part of that class we tried to write a fatras, which he had found the definition of in his Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics. Basically,
it is an 11 line poem, preceded by a couplet whose lines frame the rest of the poem. So, we have a couplet, then the first line of the couplet is repeated, followed by 9 more lines, and then the last line of the couplet is repeated. The book says that the couplet is a summation of the whole poem, and that the fatras was a nonsense form. However, no history was given (we assumed it was French because of sources sited) and no example of a fatras was given. The definition also did not say what the feet would be (stressed and unstressed syllables). Many of us left that event with a burning desire to know more of
the fatras, so THL Þhorfinna gráfeldr and I did some web searching and this is what we found out:

The fatras and fatrasie (a similar type of poem with a different structure) appears to indeed be a French form, as almost all webpages that mention it are French themselves.

According to one source there are only four surviving fatras poems, which could explain why its so dern hard to find any information on them.

According to a page at Columbia University (which is now defunct):

• fatras are not found in Machaut's works [1]
• only four examples are known to exist
• they were satirical, almost surrealistic poems
• they have a 2-line refrain & 11-line stanza; the first line of the stanza is the same as the first line of refrain; and the last line of the stanza is the same as the last line of the refrain. (The refrain is the opening couplet.)

In Encyclopædia Universalis (a French encyclopedia) there was an entry for fatras that included some examples of both fatras and fatrasie.. The original text of that entry has included at the end of this article as an appendix, along with a loose translation courtesy of Google

We were wondering whether the lines of a fatras should rhyme, and the examples in the encyclopedia did have a rhyming scheme. Including the opening couplet, the rhyming scheme was: “ab aabaabbabab”. This is illustrated in the following fatras by Jean Molinet [2]:

Fourbissez votre ferraille
Aiguisez vos grands couteaux
Fourbissez votre ferraille
Quotinaille, quetinailles,
Quoquardaille, friandeaux,
Garsonaille, ribaudaille,
Laronnaille, brigandaille,
Crapaudaille, leisardeaux,
Cavestrailie, goulardeaux,
Viilenaille, bonhommaille,
Fallourdaille, paillardeaux,
Truandaille et Lopinaille
Aiguisez vos grands couteaux.

Whether this rhyme scheme was used in all fatras seems unclear. Consider what the website Poetry Magnum Opus has to say of the fatras:

• The fatras is a poem in 11 lines.
• It is composed in a way that the 1st and last lines form a distich, a poem in 2 lines, that holds the entire theme of the larger poem. This is known as the fatras simple.
• It is unmetered.
• It is unrhymed.
• It is written with clever wordplay and disconnected nonsense which set the tone. The fatras possible allows for some coherent text, the fatras impossible make no sense at all.
• A fatras double is when 2 eleven line stanzas are formed, with the lines of the distich reversed in the 2nd stanza. The last line is a restatement of line one of the poem

While PMO says fatras did not have a rhyme scheme, the example quoted from Encyclopædia Universalis clearly has one.

So, it would seem that there is not a codified set of rules for writing a fatras, and it is unknown whether there ever was. When writing your own, you can therefore decide how you want to go about it. In the following fatras that I wrote, I wrote 13 lines using the “ab aabaabbabab” rhyming scheme like Molinet used.

The devil made me do it.
The heat will keep me drier.
The devil made me do it.
Dry hay ablaze is now lit,
My house of straw on fire,
My tongue in vexation bit.
Voice of angels from the pit
Assail me in the pyre,
Call me fool in a myre
As I in this wallow sit.
The voice it is a liar.

The torch sputters in my mit,
The heat will keep me drier.

Bibliography

Fatras, Columbia of University, http://www.columbia.edu/~jv287/coribant/resources/notes/notes4.html.

Fatras, Library of Congress, http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh2012004133.html.

Fatras, Poetry Magnum Opus, http://www.poetrymagnumopus.com/index.php?/topic/679-fatras/.

Fatrasie et fatras, Adaptation d' après, Encyclopædia Universalis
1999, http://worldserver2.oleane.com/fatrazie/fatras_et_fatrasie.htm.

A Poet’s Glossary, Edward Hirsch, Houghton Mifflin Publishing, New York, 2014, p. 229. http://books.google.ca/books?id=1flJAQAAQBAJ&pg=PA229&lpg=PA229&dq=fatras+poem&source=bl&ots=sHpvVx63Rw&sig=9cGP5DvAukTf1AcGUrqO0oVdjIE&hl=en&sa=X&ei=OTafU_2BOIq58gHY9IHwDw&ved=0CDAQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=fatras%20poem&f=false.

The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, 4^th ed., Stephen Cushman, ed., et al, Princeton University Press, New Jersey, 2012, p. 479. http://books.google.ca/books?id=uKiC6IeFR2UC&pg=PA479&lpg=PA479&dq=fatras+poem&source=bl&ots=avN2Deefvo&sig=MY8GcF3y5KUzVp4BvxP6s6FGqYk&hl=en&sa=X&ei=OTafU_2BOIq58gHY9IHwDw&ved=0CDMQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=fatras%20poem&f=false

Appendix

FATRASIE ET FATRAS Adaptation d' après Encyclopædia Universalis
1999Apparemment dérivé de fatras , le mot fatrasie  est pourtant attesté
dans l’usage vers 1250, soit plusieurs décennies avant lui. D’étymologie
obscure (on a voulu les faire remonter au latin farsura , «remplissage»), l’
un et l’autre appartiennent en ancien français au vocabulaire littéraire
(peut-être humoristique) et désignent deux variétés formelles d’un même type
de poésie. À première vue, celle-ci se réduit à des jeux incohérents de
non-sens; elle donne souvent au lecteur moderne une impression de platitude:
impression erronée, due à l’éloignement culturel. Fatrasie et fatras, genres
techniquement complexes, semblent avoir été pratiqués, à titre de
divertissement, dans des cercles de lettrés coutumiers de toute espèce d’
expérimentation joyeuse sur le langage. À l’époque, vers 1200, on pousse le
plus loin possible la recherche de l’artifice; certains s’amusent à fausser
les agencements syntaxiques; d’autres, à produire des décalages de
signification, des distorsions de vocabulaire; beaucoup accordent la
préférence aux «figures de mots» sur celles de pensée, à l’antithèse sur la
métaphore; on tend à généraliser l’emploi du saugrenu. Au sein des
traditions littéraires constituées, on voit ainsi s’instaurer, au milieu du
XIIIe siècle, des techniques nouvelles dont le propre est d’engendrer un
écart entre le déroulement verbal de la poésie et celui de l’idée. Elles
systématisent les effets d’accumulation et de contraste, brodent sur la
trame du discours des éléments qui y suscitent des discontinuités
imprévisibles, des accélérations soudaines, faisant éclater la texture
morpho-sémantique, tranchant le fil du sens ou promouvant un sens autre,
issu d’un vide apparent. Ces diverses techniques ou «jongleries» convergent
en fait: poussées à leur terme extrême, elles engendrent la fatrasie.
Celle-ci semble avoir été particulière à la Picardie de la seconde moitié du
siècle: l’inventeur en aurait été, selon certains, le juriste Philippe de
Beaumanoir, auteur de la célèbre Manékine et des Fatrasies de Philippe de
Rémi. Vers 1300, elle produisit le fatras, dont la vogue dura jusqu’au XVIe
siècle.Formellement très rigide, la fatrasie est constituée par une strophe
de six pentasyllabes suivis de cinq heptasyllabes sur deux rimes,
généralement selon le schéma [aabaabbabab]. Le fatras enchâsse, en vue d’un
effet supplémentaire de contraste, ces onze vers, réduits à l’isométrie,
entre les deux vers d’un distique emprunté à quelque poème connu,
généralement à thème amoureux. Passé 1430, seul le schéma formel se
maintint, et souvent le fatras cessa de jouer du non-sens. Fatrasie et
fatras utilisent les mêmes procédés de rupture sémantique, presque toujours
cumulés en séries parfois étourdissantes. Le but du discours fatrasique est
de briser, au sein de la phrase, les compatibilités normalement exigibles
entre verbe et nom, verbe et verbe, nom et nom ou adjectif: soit que l’on
pose entre les termes syntaxiquement unis un lien de contradiction (ex. un
muet me dit ), soit que l’on conjoigne des catégories sémiques que l’usage
courant disjoint (ex. la maison s’approcha ). Toutes les propositions du
discours sont ainsi affectées. L’effet produit est accusé par la
distribution du vocabulaire: forte prédominance numérique des noms sur les
verbes et les adjectifs, d’où un caractère général «substantif», qui donne
une impression de collection d’objets d’autant plus forte que ce vocabulaire
est entièrement concret; le choix des mots s’opère dans un très petit nombre
de champs sémantiques, toujours les mêmes: noms géographiques et toponymes;
noms de bêtes sauvages, terribles ou répugnantes; noms de parties du corps;
termes de cuisine; obscénités; scatologie; les verbes évoquent en majorité
le déplacement, créent par addition une impression de grouillement, de
mouvement perpétuel. D’où une suggestion globale de chute, de glissement
vers le bas, la trivialité, le digestif et son instrumentation, le dégoût.
Cet enchaînement verbal procède, d’une autre manière, de la rime; le poème a
souvent l’apparence de bouts-rimés absurdes. Sur ce point, la fatrasie
présente une très lointaine analogie avec l’écriture automatique moderne
mais une grande proximité avec les  Edward Lear, Lewis Carroll, Woody Allen,
Streamer, Dubillard, Ionesco  et nombre de pataphysiciens, oulipiens ou
assimilés.

FATRASIES (Anonyme de la deuxième  moitié du Xlllème siècle, souvent
attribuées à Jehan Bodel. L'ensemble est connu sous le nom de Fatrasies
d'Arras)

Le son d'un cornet
Mangeait au vinaigre
Le coeur d'un tonnerre
Quand un béquet mort
Prit au trébuchet
Le cours d'une étoile
En l'air il y eut un grain de seigle
Quand l'aboiement d'un brochet
Et le tronçon d'une toile
Ont trouvé foutu un petIls lui ont coupé l'oreille.
Un ours emplumé
Fit semer un blé
De Douvres à Oissent.
Un oignon peléS'était apprêté
A chanter devant

FATRAS (Guillaume Flamant, chanoine de Langres)

O poison pire que mortel,
Me ferez-vous crever le cœur ?
O poison pire que mortel,
Qui me tient en telle tutelle
Que n'ai ni force ni vigueur;
Envieuse et fausse querelle,
Plus pute que n'est maquerelle,
Trop me plains de votre rigueur.
Où est Satan, mon gouverneur,
Qui ne vient pas quand je l'appelle
?O folle, infernale fureur;
Diables pleins de toute cautelle,
Me ferez-vous crever le cœur ?

FATRAS (Jean Molinet (1435-1507). Rhétoriqueur d’une verve admirable, aussi
à l’aise dans des poèmes déclamatoires que dans les fatrasies et les jeux du
vocabulaire.

I
Fourbissez votre ferraille
Aiguisez vos grands couteaux
Fourbissez votre ferraille
Quotinaille, quetinailles,
Quoquardaille, friandeaux,
Garsonaille, ribaudaille,
Laronnaille, brigandaille,
Crapaudaille, leisardeaux,
Cavestrailie, goulardeaux,
Viilenaille, bonhommaille,
Fallourdaille, paillardeaux,
Truandaille et Lopinaille
Aiguisez vos grands couteaux.

II
Ma très douce nourriture,
Quel déplaisir me fais-tu !
Ma très douce nourriture
!Tu avais en ma clôture
Femme pleine de vertus
Et précieuse vêture ;
Mais tu as changé pâture
Et puis tu es revenu,
Et je t’ai entretenu
Comme on fait, à l’aventure,
Un pèlerin mal vêtu ;
Mon seul fils, ma géniture,
Quel déplaisir me fais-tu !
Que déplaisir me fais-tu,
Ma très douce nourriture !
Quel déplaisir me fais-tu !
Tu n’ajoutes un fétu
A ma grand déconfiture ;
Dix et sept ans inconnu,
Comme étranger pauvre et nu,
As été en notre cure,
Voyant le pleur, soin et cure
Que pour toi ai soutenu,
Mais de ma douleur obscure,
Ne t’es guère souvenu,
Ma très douce nourriture.

FATRAS (Watriquet Brassennel de Couvin, ménestrel du Comte Gui de Blois. Ses
écrits se situent entre 1320 et 1330.) Ses trente fatras sont les plus
anciens que nous connaissions.)

I
Doucement me réconforte
Celle qui mon cœur a pris.
Doucement me réconforte
Une chatte à moitié morte
Qui chante tous les jeudis
Une alléluia si forte
Que les clençhes de nos portes
Dirent que leur est lundi,
S’en fut un loup si hardi
Qu’il alla, malgré sa sorte,
Tuer Dieu en paradis,
Et dit : « Copain, je t’apporte
Celle qui mon cœur a pris. »

FATRASIES (Pascal Kaeser, qui a composé les fatrasies qui suivent et qui
selon la règle vont par onze, avec" l'ambition de jeter un pont par-dessus
les siècles.") Une grande réussite comme ce jeune chercheur suisse en est
coutumier.

I
Un lérot marin
Jouait du surin
Pour tailler un lemme,
Un rohart d'airainS
ignait au burin
L'armet d'une gemme ;
Si ne fût un vieil oedème
Qui dirimait le purin
Et s'entait à un poème,
Le rachis d'un mandarin
Les eût engeignés à Brême.

II
Un saumon fumeur
Siffle une tumeur
Sur le quai des brumes,
La torse rumeur
Dit qu'un las rimeur
Provigne des rhumes;
Il faut strapasser la grume
Pour qu'un parfait parfumeur
Passe sa jeunesse anthume
Sous le nez d'un embaumeur
Qui empaille des enclumes.

III
Un précis ivrogne
Dénombrait ses rognes
Sur un gant d'Espagne,
Un roi de Pologne
Découpait des pognes
Dans le gras du bagne;
Si ne fût jus de Champagne,
Qui eût bu un vin de trognes
?Ou calamistré des fagnes
Pour assécher la Dordogne
Et assiéger la Mortagne ?

IV
Un icosaèdre
Couvre un hexaèdre
De ses leucocytes,
Un dodécaèdre
Ouvre un tétraèdre
A ses phagocytes;
Si l'icône a ses trachytes,
Si l'otage a ses exèdres,
Par contre les troglodytes
N'ont jamais pu peler Phèdre
Ni son beau-fils Hippolyte.

V
L'éléphant prodigue
Est au fond bon zigue
Bien qu'il extravague,
L'acide Rodrigue
Parfois se fatigue
Quand il prend la dague;
Sapristi ! Non mais sans blague !
Le poète nous navigue
De Brisbane à Copenhague,
Il obscurcit ses intrigues,
Les raccourcit et zigzague.

VI
Une immense sphère
Margaritifère
A séduit Magritte,
Un vieux mammifère
Quant à lui préfère
Des perles proscrites;
Tous les fils de Démocrite
Rongent ses os mellifères,
N'en déplaise aux hypocrites
Broutant les choux mortifères
D'une table qui s'effrite.

VII
Par Quetzalcoatl,
Cihuatcoatl,
Et Tlazoltéotl,
Mictanchihuatl,
Chicomécoatl,
Et même Yaotl,
Qui a bottelé Xolotl ?
L'odieux Teccuciztécatl
A brettelé Tzintéotl
Tandis qu'Omécihuatl
Schtroumpfait un peu de peyotl.

VIII
La boisson de choix :
Un sirop d'anchois
A l'eau de Vichy,
Le parfum de choix :
De l'ail de Cauchois
Signé par Cauchy;
Ne fais pas tant de chichis,
Car c'est à moi qu'il échoit
De pondre un oeuf enrichi
Qui dans un lavabo choit
Et s'écrie : "Mamamouchi !"

IX
Le grincheux Priam
Offrit un sélam
A Mathusalem,
Au port d'Amsterdam
Le madapolam
Couvre le totem;
Quand un crémeux mokkadem
Rencontre un vibrant imam,
Qui tente le grand chelem ?
Peut-être un roi de Potsdam
Ou un gars de Béthléem.

X
Veni, vidi, zut !
Lulle à Lilliput
Se magna l'arçon -
Hocus, pocus, chut !
La biblique Ruth
Aime les garçons;
Son mari dort sans soupçon
Dans les vers de l'occiput
D'un poète à Besançon
Qui ne songe au préciput
Ni à la contrefaçon.

XI
Un chat quadrilingue
Dans une carlingue
Déclenche un esclandre
Et une meringue
Pointe sa seringue
Vers l'homme au scaphandre;
"Sandwich à la salamandre !"
Réclame un steward cradingue,
"Ou mélasse et palissandre !"
Ajoute-t-il d'un ton dingue,
Avec sa voix de calandre.

Translated (not very well) by Google:

FATRASIE AND FATRAS Adaptation according to Encyclopædia Universalis 1999
Apparently derived from will fatras the word fatrasy is however attested in
l?usage about 1250, that is to say several decades before him. D? obscure
etymology (one wanted to make them go up with Latin will farsura "filling"),
l?un and l?autre belong as former French to the literary vocabulary (perhaps
humorous) and indicate two formal varieties d?un even standard of poetry. At
first sight, this one is reduced to incoherent plays of nonsense ; it often
gives to the modern reader an impression of flatness: erroneous impression,
due to l?éloignement cultural. Will Fatrasy and fatras , technically complex
kinds, seem to be practised, by way of entertainment , in circles of usual
well-read men of any species D? merry experimentation on the language. With
l?époque, about 1200, one pushes further possible research from L? artifice
; some s?amusent to distort the syntactic fittings; d?autres, to produce
shifts of significance , distortions of vocabulary ; does many grant the
preference to the " figures of words " on those of thought, to L? antithesis
on the metaphor ; one tends to generalize l?emploi of the absurd one .
Within the literary traditions made up, one sees s?instaurer thus, in the
medium of the XIII E century, of the new techniques whose characteristic is
d?engendrer a difference between the verbal course of poetry and that of
l?idée. They systematize the effects D? accumulation and of contrast ,
embroider on the screen of the speech of the elements which cause there
unforeseeable discontinuities , sudden accelerations , making burst texture
morpho-semantics, slicing the wire of the direction or promoting a different
direction, resulting d?un apparent vacuum. These various techniques or "
jugglings " converge in fact: led to their latest date, they generate the
fatrasy . This one seems to have been particular in Picardy of second half
of the century: l?inventor would have been, according to certain, the lawyer
Philippe de Beaumanoir, author of famous Manékine and Fatrasies of Philippe
of Remi . About 1300, it produced will fatras it , whose vogue lasted
jusqu?au XVI E century. Formally very rigid, the fatrasy is consisted a
stanza of six pentasyllables followed of five heptasyllabes out of two
rhymes, generally according to the diagram [ aabaabbabab ]. Will fatras
enchases, for additional d?un effect of contrast, these eleven worms,
reduced to l?isometry, between the two worms d?un distich borrowed from some
known poem, generally with topic in love. Past 1430, only the formal diagram
was maintained, and often will fatras it ceased playing of the nonsense.
Fatrasy and will fatras use the same processes of semantic rupture, almost
always cumulated in series sometimes dazing. The goal of the speech fatrasic
is to break, within the sentence, normally exigible compatibilities between
verb and noun, verb and verb, noun and noun or adjective: maybe that l?on
poses between the syntactically plain terms a bond of contradiction (e.g. a
dumb man says to me that is to say that l?on conjoigne of the semic
categories that l?usage current disjoins (e.g. the house s?approcha All the
proposals of the speech are thus affected. Produced L?effet is shown by the
distribution of the vocabulary: strong numerical prevalence of the names on
the verbs and the adjectives, d?où a general character "substantive", which
gives an impression of collection d?objets d?autant stronger than this
vocabulary is entirely concrete; the choice of the words s?opère in a very
small number of semantic fields, always the same ones: geographical names
and toponyms; names of wild beasts, terrible or feeling reluctant; names of
parts of the body; terms of kitchen; obscenities; scatology; the verbs evoke
in majority displacement, create by addition an impression of grouillement ,
perpetual motion . D?où a total suggestion of fall, of slip to the bottom,
commonplace, the digestive one and its instrumentation, dislike. This verbal
sequence proceeds, d?une another manner, of the rhyme; the poem often has
l?apparence of absurd ends-rimés. On this point, the fatrasy has a very
remote analogy with modern automatic l?écriture but a great proximity with
Edward Lear, the Lewis Carroll, Woody Allen, Streamer, Dubillard, Ionesco
and a number of pataphysicians, oulipiens or comparable.

FATRASIES ( Anonymous of second half of Xlllème century, often allotted to
Jehan Bodel. The unit is known under the name of Fatrasies of Arras)

The sound of a horn
Ate with the vinegar
The heart of a thunder
When a dead spoiler
Took with the precision balance
The course of a star
In the air there was a rye grain
When the barking of a pike
And the section of a fabric
Found foutu a fart
They cut the ear to him.
A emplumé bear
The FIT to sow a corn
From Dover With Oissent.
A peeled onion
Was glossy
To sing in front

FATRAS ( Guillaume Flamingo , canon of Langres)

O poison worse than mortal,
Will you make me burst the c?ur?
O poison worse than mortal,
Who holds me in such supervision
That have neither force nor strength;
Envieuse and distorts quarrel,
More whore that is not a brothel-keeper,
Too much me lime pits of your rigour.
Where is Satan, my governor,
Who doesn't come when I call it?
O insane, infernal fury;
Devils full with very cautelle,
Will you make me burst the c?ur?

FATRAS (Jean Molinet (1435-1507). Admirable Rhetoriqueur d?une liveliness,
as with l?aise in poems déclamatoires as in the fatrasies and the plays of
the vocabulary.

I
Furbish your scrap
Sharpen your large knives
Furbish your scrap
Quotinaille, quetinailles,
Quoquardaille, friandeaux,
Garsonaille, ribaudaille,
Laronnaille, brigandaille,
Crapaudaille, leisardeaux,
Cavestrailie, goulardeaux,
Viilenaille, bonhommaille,
Fallourdaille, paillardeaux,
Truandaille and Lopinaille
Sharpen your large knives.

II
My very soft food,
What a displeasure you make me!
My very soft food!
You had in my fence
Woman full with virtues
And invaluable vêture;
But you changed grazing ground
And then you returned,
And I t?ai maintained
Like one makes, with l?aventure,
A pilgrim badly vêtu;
My only son, my géniture,
What a displeasure you make me!
That displeasure you make me,
My very soft food!
What a displeasure you make me!
You n?ajoutes a straw
With my large failure;
Ten and seven years unknown,
Like poor and naked foreigner,
Were in our cure,
Seeing the tear, care and cure
That for you supported,
But of my obscure pain,
T?es hardly remembered,
My very soft food.

FATRAS ( Watriquet Brassennel de Couv in , ménestrel of Count GUI of Blois.
Its writings range between 1320 and 1330.) Its thirty will fatras are oldest
that we know.)

I
Gently comforts me
That which my c?ur took.
Gently comforts me
A she-cat with dead half
Who sings every Thursday
An alleluia so strong
That clençhes of our doors
Said that their is Monday,
S?en was a so bold wolf
Qu?il went, in spite of its kind,
To kill God in paradise,
And known as: "Buddy, I t?apporte
That which my c?ur took "

FATRASIES ( Pascal Kaeser , which composed the fatrasies which follow and
which according to the rule go by eleven, with "the ambition to throw a
bridge over the centuries.") A great success as this young Swiss researcher
in is usual.

I
A marine lérot
Played of the surin
To cut a lemma,
A bronze rohart
Signed with the graver
The armet of a gem;
If were not an old oedema
Who nullified liquid manure
And entait itself with a poem,
The rachis of Mandarin
Had engeignés in Bremen.

II
A salmon smoker
Whistle a tumour
On the quay of the fogs,
The chest rumour
Known as that a mow rhymester
Provine colds;
Strapasser is needed the bark
So that a perfect perfumer
Pass its youth anthume
Under the nose of an embalmer
Who empaille of the anvils.

III
A precis addicted to drink
Counted its bad tempers
On a glove of Spain,
A king of Poland
Cut out pognes
In the fat of the bagne;
If were not Champagne juice,
Who had drunk a wine of bloated faces?
Or curled fagnes
To drain the Dordogne
And to besiege Mortagne?

IV
An icosahedron
Cover a hexahedron
Of its leucocytes,
A dodecahedron
Open a tetrahedron
With its phagocytes;
If the icon has its trachytes,
If the hostage has his exèdres,
On the other hand troglodytes
Never could peel Phèdre
Nor his/her Hippolyte son-in-law.

V
The prodigal elephant
At the bottom good guy is
Although it extravague,
The Rodrigue acid
Sometimes tires itself
When it takes the scraping-knife;
Sapristi! Not but without joke!
The poet sails us
De Brisbane In Copenhagen,
It darkens its intrigues,
Shortens and zigzags.

VI
An immense sphere
Margaritifère
A Allures Magritte,
An old mammal
As for him prefers
Proscribed pearls;
All wire of Démocrite
Its bones mellifères corrode,
With due respect to the hypocrites
Grazing the cabbages mortifères
Of a table which is exhausted.

VII
By Quetzalcoatl,
Cihuatcoatl,
And Tlazoltéotl,
Mictanchihuatl,
Chicomécoatl,
And Even Yaotl,
Who bundled Xolotl?
Odious Teccuciztécatl
With brettelé Tzintéotl
While Omécihuatl
Schtroumpfait a little peyotl.

VIII
The drink of choice:
An anchovy syrup
With Vichy water,
The perfume of choice:
Garlic of Cauchois
Signed by Cauchy;
Do not do so many fuss,
Because it is with me that it falls
To lay an enriched egg
Who in a wash-hand basin choit
And exclaims: "Mamamouchi!"

IX
Grumpy Priam
A sélam offered
In Mathusalem,
With the wearing of Amsterdam
The madapolam
Cover the totem;
When a crémeux mokkadem
Meet vibrating a imam,
Qui tente le grand chelem
?Peut-être un roi de Potsdam
Ou un gars de Béthléem.

X
Veni, vidi, zut !
Lulle à Lilliput
Se magna l'arçon
-Hocus, pocus, chut !
La biblique
RuthAime les garçons;
Son mari dort sans soupçon
Dans les vers de l'occiput
D'un poète à Besançon
Qui ne songe au préciput
Ni à la contrefaçon.

XI
Un chat quadrilingue
Dans une carlingue
Déclenche un esclandre
Et une meringue
Pointe sa seringue
Vers l'homme au scaphandre;
"Sandwich à la salamandre !"
Réclame un steward cradingue,
"Ou mélasse et palissandre !"
Ajoute-t-il d'un ton dingue,
Avec sa voix de calandre.

---

[1] Likely Guillaume de Machaut, who was a medieval French poet (c. 1300 to 1377).

[2] A French poet, composer and chronicler (1435 to Aug 23, 1507).

A Game of Words

A Game of Words

Skaldic Poetry: Dróttkvætt

By Pelayo of House Marchmount

Do you like word games? Does a good pun tickle your fancy? Perhaps crossword puzzles, Scrabble, word search, anagrams, secret codes, or word ladders? If any of these appeal, this article describes a challenging word game that you might like.

Here’s how to play: pick a theme for a poem, perhaps praise for someone you admire. Now write 8 lines of poetry to express that theme, following a strict set of interrelated rules. This can turn into hours of entertainment as you wrestle with rhyme, alliteration, word choice, syllables, and stress (lots of it).

Some background: medieval Scandinavian poets were called skalds. They were often hired by kings and other notables to record their deeds through praise poetry. Skaldic praise poetry primarily used a poetic form called dróttkvætt, which means “lordly verse”; examples of this are found as early as 900 and as late as around 1400. Many of the Old Norse sagas were written using this form. At the end of this article are links to a few resources in case you become obsessed.

In this article, I’ll describe the basic structure of dróttkvætt — hopefully enough for you to try writing your own — and then present my first attempt, which I recited for THL Hans Thorvaldsson in the recent Crown Tourney. These poems were meant to be read aloud, so make sure you do that to hear how it sounds!

Some definitions:

Poems in the dróttkvætt form have 8-line verses called stanzas. Each stanza contains two 4-line half stanzas. There should be a syntactic break at the end of the first half stanza, such as the end of a sentence.

Alliteration is when two words begin with the same sound: hat and hard, stress and straight. All vowels are considered to alliterate with each other: eager and owl. Alliteration is sometimes called front-rhyme, but in this article I will refer to it as alliteration.

Rhyme is when two words end in the same sound: about and flout, wield and congealed. This is sometimes called end-rhyme, but in this article I will use rhyme and full rhyme.

Partial rhyme or half rhyme is when two words end in the same consonant sound: boils and feels.  In this article, I will use partial rhyme.

A trochee is a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed one: both hatred and fighter are trochaic, but consist is not.

A kenning is a metaphorical phrase in the spirit of a good pun. Some common examples: swan road means the sea, sky jewel means the sun, and feed the eagle means kill enemies. Dróttkvætt and other forms of skaldic verse almost always contain kennings, and being able to come up with good kennings can save your skaldic bacon. (Ken you see the similarities with puns?)

I find these websites helpful when working on my poetic puzzles:

• http://www.rhymer.com (for both alliteration and rhyme)

• http://thesaurus.com (for finding words that have roughly the same meaning)

• http://www.wordhippo.com (for finding similar and rhyming words, as well as translating)

• http://onelook.com/reverse-dictionary.shtml (for finding words that match a definition)

And now to the structure of dróttkvætt. We’ll use the preferences of their Majesties Siegfried and Ragni as a theme. They can be found here:

            http://www.brandboern.com/preferences.html

The theme I’ll pick is the good taste of their Majesties. I might speak of beer, cider, period dance, and games of chance, with perhaps a mention of Evander tasting ketchup as contrast. Gluten-free food and drink are also possibilities. I don’t necessarily expect to fit all those in, but I’ll make an effort. This dróttkvætt won’t be a brilliant piece of art, but it should be enough to convey the rules.

My plan is to make the first half-stanza about their drink preferences and the second one about their entertainment preferences.

In a dróttkvætt stanza, each line of poetry has 6 syllables, three stressed and three unstressed. Each line ends with a trochee, but the stresses on the other syllables can be arranged in any order. Here are two related lines; the three stressed syllables in each line are in bold font:

            Siegfried liked his lager

            His Lady eyed cider

In dróttkvætt, the lines are paired. The first line in each pair must contain both alliteration and partial rhyme. Two of the stressed syllables must alliterate. Further, one of those two alliterative syllables must be in the trochee at the end of the line. In the example above, likes and lagers contain the alliteration, and the partial rhyme happens in Siegfried and lager. The partial rhyme can appear on any two of the stressed syllables.

In the second line of a pair, the first stressed syllable must alliterate with the two alliterative syllables in the first line, and two of the stressed syllables must rhyme. (There doesn’t need to be alliteration within the second line.) In the example, notice that Lady (the first stressed syllable in the second line) alliterates with likes and lager, and eyed rhymes with cid(er). Unlike in some other poetry forms, only the stressed syllables matter.

We’ll finish the current thought (and thus the half stanza) with a ketchup discussion. In the first line, we need alliteration and partial rhyme, then the second line, we continue the alliteration and need a full rhyme:

Evander chose chance to

Chug some ketchup mugfuls

Those two lines took me over an hour to construct. I wandered into food and dance metaphors and other possible rhymes (for example, dance and chance) before coming back to my happy ketchup place. This is not usually a quick game, much like an expert-level Sudoku or the New York Times Sunday Crossword puzzle, this can take hours to finish. (And my lines aren’t even perfect: the s sound at the end of the chance doesn’t quite mesh with the plain n in Evander. Ah, well.)

The remaining topics are cheese, fruit, period dance, games of chance, and cards. After another hour of work, here’s what I came up with. (Brace yourselves, it’s terrible poetry. Wretched, even. But it mostly follows the rules. Surely you can do better?)

            Siegfried liked his lager;

            His Lady eyed cider.

Evander chose chance to

Chug some ketchup mugfuls.

Siegfried tells a tale to

Extol ace in the hole.

Walk hole in the wall to

Wow Ragni; take a bow.

Now that the drivel is out of the way, here is the poem I wrote for Hans, who I fought for in the recent crown tourney. See if you can pick up on the alliteration, rhyme, and partial rhyme. Unlike the balderdash above, it contains a few kennings; some of the kennings and other content are explained after the poem.

Here stands Norseman, Hans of

House of mine, a spousal

Oddity, kin-aided.

Yggdrasil, big world-tree.

Here stand I, a herald,

Happy freedman clapping,

Cheered by faith of cherished

Charming shield mate, arm-friend.

Muscled tree trunk, trusted

Trickster gift, with quickness

Brines my long-tooth, bringing

Braveness, calling ravens.

Sapling shepherd, shaper,

Chef, seamster, shy dreamer,

No, I leave you never

My knife is yours, life-friend.

Notes:

• Hans’ heraldry contains the world tree.

• Freedman: my persona was captured by Varangians (Hans and Baron Grom) and later freed.

• Trickster: Loki. Hans can be difficult, but he’s always trustworthy.

• Long-tooth: my sword. Also, I’m old.

• Ravens: thought and memory. Also, part of household member Elanna’s heraldry.

• Sapling shepherd: Hans watches the kids during the day.

• Shaper: woodworker.

Here are some good basic overviews of dróttkvætt:

https://notendur.hi.is/eybjorn/ugm/meter/meternew.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drottkvaett#Dr.C3.B3ttkv.C3.A6tt

Master Fridrikr Tomasson, mka Tom Delfs, has written a bunch of really cool articles about Old Norse-related stuff. He wrote an article on dróttkvætt that thoroughly examines the form:

            http://www.academia.edu/458624/Drottkvaett_or_That_Old_Norse_Poetry_Thing