The cywydd (; plural ) is one of the most important metrical forms in traditional
Welsh poetry
Welsh poetry refers to poetry of the Welsh people or nation. This includes poetry written in Welsh, poetry written in English by Welsh or Wales based poets, poetry written in Wales in other languages or poetry by Welsh poets around the world.
...
(
cerdd dafod
''Cerdd dafod'' (literally ''tongue craft'') is the Welsh tradition of creating verse or poetry to a strict metre in the Welsh language.
History
The history of ''cerdd dafod'' can be traced to 6th century Welsh poets such as Aneirin and Taliesi ...
).
There are a variety of forms of the cywydd, but the word on its own is generally used to refer to the ("long-lined couplet") as it is by far the most common type.
The first recorded examples of the cywydd date from the early 14th century, when it is believed to have been developed. This was the favourite metre of the
Poets of the Nobility, the poets working from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries, and it is still used today.
The cywydd consists of a series of seven-syllable lines in rhyming couplets, with all lines written in
cynghanedd
In Welsh-language poetry, ''cynghanedd'' (, literally "harmony") is the basic concept of sound-arrangement within one line, using stress, alliteration and rhyme. The various forms of ''cynghanedd'' show up in the definitions of all formal Welsh ...
. One of the lines must finish with a stressed syllable, while the other must finish with an unstressed syllable. The rhyme may vary from couplet to couplet, or may remain the same. There is no rule about how many couplets there must be in a cywydd.
The and the related , and the all occur in the list of the twenty four
traditional Welsh poetic meters adopted in the later
Middle Ages
In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire ...
.
See also
*
Englyn
(; plural ) is a traditional Welsh and Cornish short poem form. It uses quantitative metres, involving the counting of syllables, and rigid patterns of rhyme and half rhyme. Each line contains a repeating pattern of consonants and accent kn ...
References
*
Meic Stephens, 1986, ''The Oxford Companion to the Literature of Wales'', Oxford University Press.
Welsh poetry
Medieval Welsh literature
Welsh-language literature
Western medieval lyric forms
Poetic rhythm
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