englyn

plural englynion · plural englyns

1. communicationsA short Welsh or Cornish poem of a variable structure, with each line using quantitative metre and cynghanedd (a repeating pattern of consonants and accent), and different lines being arranged in standardized patterns of rhyme and half rhyme.

   The englyn as we know it in Canu Llywarch Hen and Elegy on Cynddylan is characterized by three lines with end rhyme.

   1993, Sarah Lynn Higley, Between Languages: The Uncooperative Text in Early Welsh and Old English Nature Poetry, University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, →ISBN

   2 more examples

   The concluding Englyn has written below it, in a very bad and quite different hand, "Dauid (or Daniel?) Davies," but whether this name is that of the supposed author of the Englynion, or that of one of the owners of the MS., we cannot say.

   1892, F[rancis] T[urner] Palgrave, “Henry Vaughan of Scethrog, 1622–1695: Some Notes on His Life and Characteristics as a Poet of Welsh Descent”, in Egerton Phillimore, editor, Y Cymmrodor: The Magazine of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion, volume XI, London: Printed for the Society [Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion] by Gilbert & Rivington, Limited, St. John's House, Clerkenwell, London, E.C., page 222

   The metrical system of the canine original, which recalls the intricate alliterative and isosyllabic rules of the Welsh englyn, is infinitely more complicated but we believe our readers will agree that the spirit has been well caught.

   1922 February 2, James Joyce, Ulysses: A Novel, Paris: Shakespeare and Company; Sylvia Beach, OCLC 560090630; republished London: Published for the Egoist Press, London by John Rodker, Paris, October 1922, OCLC 2297483, page 299