A Popular Tail-rhyme Romance
Sir Isumbras is a relatively short Middle English romance, less than eight hundred lines in length, in twelve-line tail-rhyme stanzas. This is the form of romance parodied by Geoffrey Chaucer in his Canterbury Tale of Sir Thopas. Tail-rhyme verse, however, was very popular in late-medieval English for recording tales of adventure and romance, and used in many Middle English romances, such as Emaré, Sir Amadace, Sir Gawain and the Carle of Carlisle, Ipomadon and Sir Gowther. A typical verse begins with a group of three lines, such as this one describing the scene as Sir Isumbras arrives at his burnt-out manor, during his long slide into penuary and loss:
- ”A doleful syghte thenne ganne he se,
- His wife and his chylderen thre
- Owte of the fyre were fled.”
These lines are then expanded into a single stanza by stacking four similar triplets together, to rhyme aabccbddbeeb.
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