A tail-rhyme stanza might take many forms, but
most typically it consists of a rhyming pair of long
lines followed by a shorter line (the “tail”). The
three-line pattern is repeated, with the third lines
rhyming, to form a six-line stanza sometimes
known as a “romance six.” This stanza might
rhyme aabaab or aabccb, with the b-rhyme lines
having three stressed syllables and the other lines
having four. A stanza might also contain 12 lines,
basically combining the romance sixes into a
longer stanza rhyming aabaabccbddb, or aabccbddbeeb.
The term “tail-rhyme” itself is an English
translation of the Latin rythmus caudatus (in
French it was called rime couée).
Tail-rhyme stanzas were common in a large
group of MIDDLE ENGLISH metrical ROMANCES
from the 14th and 15th centuries. While some
English romances were written in ALLITERATIVE
VERSE, and others in rhymed octosyllabic (eightsyllable)
couplets, many are tail-rhyme romances.
A number of these seem to have been composed
or circulated by wandering MINSTRELS, and so may
have been intended for an audience of the middle
class or the lower gentry, rather than the more
courtly audience of a more sophisticated poet like
CHAUCER or GOWER. Some of the better-known
tail-rhyme romances are SIR ISUMBRAS, BEVIS OF
HAMPTON, HORN CHILDE, and GUY OF WARWICK
from the early 14th century, the last two found in
the famous Auchinleck manuscript, which may
once have been in the possession of Chaucer. Late
14th-century tail-rhyme romances include The
EARL OF TOULOUSE, LIBEAUS DESCONUS, SIR LAUNFAL,
and IPOMADON—the longest of the romances
at 8,890 lines. Tail-rhyme romances from the 15th
century include The TURKE AND SIR GAWAIN and
The WEDDYNG OF SYR GAWEN, both from the
northern part of England. Most of these are in
12-line stanzas.
The best known tail-rhyme romance in Middle
English is Chaucer’s parody of the genre, The
TALE OF SIR THOPAS, an unfinished romance in
six-line stanzas, some rhyming aabaab and others
rhyming aabccb. Chaucer found much to burlesque
in the genre, and made particularly effective
use of the romance of Guy of Warwick, but
he seems to have been familiar with all of the romances
from the Auchinleck manuscript and several
others as well.
At least a few dozen tail-rhyme romances have
survived from Middle English, and it has been
suggested that there was actually a school of minstrels
in 14th-century East Anglia producing tailrhyme
romances. In any case, the popularity of
these kinds of romances waned after the 15th
century, although most modern poets have still
made use of varieties of the tail-rhyme stanza,
as, for example, Shelley does in his poem “To
Night.”
Bibliography
Benson, Larry D., ed. The Riverside Chaucer. 3rd ed.
Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1987.
Trounce, A. McI. “The English Tail-Rhyme Romances,”
Medium Aevum 1 (1932), 87–108,
168–82; 2 (1933), 34–57; 3 (1934), 30–50.