Tuesday, November 8, 2011

I Gymryd Anadl

Hello, all, and welcome to the calm eye of the hurricane!  Diolch yn fawr for putting up with my scatterbrained scheduling, too.  This week, I thought I'd give you a little breather in the form of our third building block, the Toddaid, a member of the awdl category.

A toddaid is a couplet of uneven length, often written in quatrain form.  It has an interlaced rhyme like our other formats, but this time the rhyme is found in the middle of both lines!  If the toddaid is extended into four lines, there is also an end rhyme formed by lines two and four.  Line one is ten syllables and line two contains only nine.  Here is one way to write it out:
xxxxA--xxx
xxxA--xxx
And in quatrain form:
xxxxA--xxx
xxxA--xxB
xxxxC--xxx
xxxC--xxB 
Thankfully, it looks a little easier written out this way.  This format is often written in conjunction with other meters, but can stand alone as well!  Once again, I found myself poking through the archives at Radical Druid, and found this example within a longer poem, "O Bard, Come Sing":
For we must not hide from the coming day,
locked away, far from the living earth;
The whole of humanity must be joined,
and each value the coin of rebirth.
He's made the decision to use the interlacing rhyme at the end of lines one and three, joining the stanza into a true quatrain.  This is a really (comparatively) flexible format to work with!

This week I'm going to leave this short and sweet, since I botched the scheduling.  I hope you enjoy the little break from the very strict format, because we'll head back into them next time.  I'm looking forward to reading your versions of the toddaid, whether in one couplet or several!

If you've been drawn into the thorny world of Welsh formats because of these challenges, well, you may have an inkling of where we are headed.  Rest assured that I am right behind you!


11 comments:

Kay L. Davies said...

Right behind us? But we want you out front, leading us.

Kay, Alberta, Canada
An Unfittie’s Guide to Adventurous Travel

Mary Ann Potter said...

I enjoyed this!!! These Welsh forms have given some of my word lists and idea files a place to play! 8-)

Doctor FTSE said...

An interesting form and a stimulating prompt. Thank you.

Kerry O'Connor said...

Bearing in mind that it is approaching noon on the day of a 38C heatwave, so I may be brain-befuddled, but I'm confused about the syllable count:

xxxxA--xxx
xxxA--xxB
xxxxC--xxx
xxxC--xxB

Does x stand for one syllable, because then I'm counting 8 and 7 here, unless the dashes are also syllables.... ?

Peter Goulding said...

More bloody football from me I'm afraid...

Marian said...

i'm confused, though i do get that this is a flexible form so maybe my confusion is unnecessary... the example, Grace, has the rhyme at the end of lines 1/3 and middle of lines 2/4? are we supposed to rhyme in the middle of rhymes 1/3? i think the example seems easier, and very similar to the last form we did. am i overthinking? QUITE POSSIBLY.

Marian said...

Kerry, I read the dashes to mean that you can put the rhyme in any of those spaces in your lines. right?

Kerry O'Connor said...

I'm too hot to think... tried to come up with one line to kick this off but all I came up with was a rasping gasp. It's been upwards of 105F here today!

Kerry O'Connor said...

Marian, Pete seems to have whipped another of these forms under his belt with ease. Check out his end and internal rhymes.

Grace O'Malley said...

Sorry, all- I appear to have written in haste and will now repent at leisure.

The dashes represent the places the internal rhyme can go, correct!

The odd thing about the example I posted is that he moved the interlacing rhyme to the end. I attempted to point that out, but maybe not strongly enough.

I'll be posting some more examples on my own site later in the day. Let me know if you have any other questions!!

Marian said...

okay, it's saturday and i'm only now responding to Grace's prompt from tuesday. AT LEAST I AM RESPONDING is all i can say! ack.