More evidence for the ways in which 'a' was used to end a line of verse
comes from George Gascoigne, not in ballad metre but in the rhyme-royal
stanzas of the first poem in his sequence 'Dan Bartholmew of Bathe' (1573):
But since I must a name to hir assigne,
Let call hir now Ferenda Natura,
And if thereat she seeme for to repine,
No force at all, for hereof am I sure a
That since hir pranks were for the most unpure a,
I can appoint hir well no better name,
Than this, wherein dame Nature beares the blame.
(from A Hundreth Sundrie Flowres, ed. by George Pigman (2000), p.331).
It's far from being Gascoigne's best staza: he adds an 'a' to get a rhyme,
leaving him with two 11 syllable lines to rhyme with the metrically dubious
second line.
In a section of 'Dan Bartholmew' only added in the second, 1575 edition,
the effect is used again:
That selfe same name which in his will he wrote,
(You knowe my minde) when he was out of tune a,
When he subscribde (which may not bee forgote)
Howe that his name was Fato Non Fortuna.
And as I gesse bicause his love was Una,
That played hir pranckes according to hir kinde,
He wrote these wordes hir best excuse to finde. (p.396)
(I would like to think that some ironic comic effect is intended here...)
This kind of use of 'a' might not be exactly what Webbe has in mind in the
Discourse; instead, it's used here to get round the difficulty of finding
English rhyme-words for Latin words ending with an unstressed 'a'.
Michael Hetherington
On Sep 15 2011, Robert Cummings wrote:
>Webbe may refer simply to an expletive gasp that fills out some ballad
>lines: see for example* A new balade or songe, of the Lambes feast*,
>perhaps by William Samuel , perhaps William Seres: 'the Grace from God the
>Father hye/ Which is of Myghtes most a / The Mercy eake from Christ our
>Lorde / And Peace from the holy Gost a / etc. I don't know how common this
>is.
>
>On 15 September 2011 19:44, David Wilson-Okamura <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> In A Discourse of Englishe Poetrie (1586), William Webbe dismisses
>> "the vncountable rabble of ryming Ballet makers and compylers of
>> sencelesse sonets" whose only claim to the name of poet is a "iust
>> number of sillables, eyght in one line, sixe in an other, and there
>> withall an A to make a iercke in the end" (ECE 1:246-47). Several
>> years ago, I convinced myself that "an A" was the a-rhyme in a stanza.
>> Now I am not so sure. Can anyone confirm, debunk, or replace this
>> hypothesis?
>>
>> -- Dr. David Wilson-Okamura http://virgil.org [log in to unmask] English
>> Department Virgil reception, discussion, documents, &c East Carolina
>> University Sparsa et neglecta coegi. -- Claude Fauchet
>>
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