Here's another of my Animated Stills. I took this image of a waterfall and noticed a reflection, in the water's lower center, something that reminded me of the Fairy, Tinkerbell. Nearby, and just above, is a pointed rock that shows two eyes and a nose, which made me think of a gnome. From that, this story ensued.

This poem is a Droighneach.
Droighneach (dra'iy-nach) Gaelic, is sometimes referred to as "the thorny" because of the degree of difficulty in writing this Gaelic Verse Form that employs cross rhyme and requires 3 syllable end words. It is a traditional Irish quatrain stanza of 9-to-13-syllable lines alternately rimed (abab), always on 3-syllable words, with at least two cross-rimes linking the pair of lines in each half and involving those lines' end-words, plus alliteration in every line, usually between the end-word and the preceding stressed (always the case for a quatrain) last line. Being Irish, it also requires the dunedh, meaning it should end where it began (opening word or phrase or line repeated at the end).

So again, the elements of the Droighneach are:

-a loose stanzaic form usually written with any number of octaves but it could be quatrains.
-syllabic with each line with 9 to 13 syllables.
-terminated, written with 3 syllable end words.
-rhymed, with alternating end rhyme abab cdcd etc.
-composed with cross rhyme. There are at least two cross-rhymes in each couplet
-and alliteration in each line;
-usually the final word of the line alliterates with the preceding stressed word, this is always true of the last line.
-written with the defining features of most Celtic poems, cywddydd (harmony of sound) and dunadh (beginning and ending the poem with the same word, phrase or line.)
(x x d) b x x x (x x a)
x x x x a x x x (x x b)
x x x x x b (x x a)
x x x x a x x (x x b)
x x x x x d x x (x x c)
x x x c x x x x x x (x x d)
x x d x x x x x x (x x c)
x x x x c x (d x d)

Pretty complex, huh! I wrote this first attempt with 13 syllables. I also added a closing couplet as an envoi. Let me know if I succeeded or failed.

This photograph was taken by the author himself on August 12, 2017.

You need to login or register to write reviews. It's quick! We only ask four questions to new members.