roundelay

plural roundelays · alternative rondelay

1. entertainmentA poem or song having a line or phrase repeated at regular intervals.

   It fell upon a holly eve, Hey ho, hollidaye! When holly fathers wont to shrieve, Now gynneth this roundelay.

   1579, Immeritô [pseudonym; Edmund Spenser], The Shepheardes Calender: […], London: […] Hugh Singleton, […], →OCLC

   4 more examples

   When merry milkmaids click the latch And rarely smells the new-mown hay, And the cock hath sung beneath the thatch Twice or thrice his roundelay, Twice or thrice his roundelay; Alone and warming his five wits, The white owl in the belfry sits.

   1830, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Poems, Chiefly Lyrical, Song - The Owl

   "Ay, fool," said Tristram, "but 'tis eating dry To dance without a catch, a roundelay To dance to." Then he twangled on his harp, And while he twangled little Dagonet stood Quiet as any water-sodden log Stay'd in the wandering warble of a brook;[…]

   1859, Alfred Tennyson, “(please specify the page)”, in Idylls of the King, London: Edward Moxon & Co., […], →OCLC

   For then the little birds do sing their sweetest song, all joining in one joyous medley, whereof one may scarce tell one note from another, so multitudinous is that pretty roundelay;[…]

   1903, Howard Pyle, “Chapter First”, in The Story of King Arthur and His Knights, Part II, page 61

   "Instead of being a rollicking bull-necked quarterstaff player with an eye for a wench and a good but untutored voice for roaring a roundelay, he's nothing but a weasel-faced herring-gutted wowser deliberately stuck in a cell to mislead travellers."

   1936, Norman Lindsay, The Flyaway Highway, Sydney: Angus and Robertson, page 42

2. A dance in a circle.
3. Anything having a round form; a roundel.