[Bards] Poetic Exercise #5

[Gerald Norris]

Tall as mountains, short as mouses
Under porch and over houses,
Without the light I can't be found,
But one lit candle brings me around.
Ever changing, rarely still,
Speak now my name if you will.

That was fun!  Are we giving the answers later?  Or are the answers so
obvious that no one needs the answers given?

G.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: bards-bounces at ansteorra.org [mailto:bards-bounces at ansteorra.org]On
> Behalf Of Ulf Gunnarsson
> Sent: Friday, October 03, 2003 2:22 AM
> To: Ansteorran Bardic list
> Subject: [Bards] Poetic Exercise #5
>
>
> We have played with the iambic foot.  Now it is time to let the other
> shoe drop and play with the trochaic foot.  The trochaic foot is the
> opposite of the iambic.  It is a pair of syllables, the first being
> stressed and the second being unstressed.  For example:
>
> "Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,..."
>
> Do you hear the beats in that?
>
> As with most of these, double unstressed syllables usually count as one
> because they run together when spoken, such as "-ony" in a later line
> from the same poem: "Then this ebony bird beguiling..."
>
> This form is common in Norse and Old English verse, but started to
> disappear in favor of iambic about the time we started getting all those
> French words mixed into the language.  As the example above illustrates,
> it was never entirely eradicated, and certainly makes a good marching or
> rowing beat in poetry.  Of course, Vikings in the SCA favor it, though
> the Greeks us it once in a while too.
>
> Another thing once common was the riddle.  Riddle games were as
> respected as chess tournaments, and riddles were often set in verse.
>
> So... Write a riddle using nothing but trochaic feet.  You can end the
> riddle with a non-metrical question, frequently of the formula "What am
> I?".  It does *not* have to be a hard riddle.
>
> If you *really* cannot come up with a riddle, then try some trochaic
> verses decrying riddling games.  But try the riddles first, as it can be
> fun to make one.
>
> My contribution is:
>
> In the South I can lift a vessel.
> In the North I can break a vessel.
> Many arms and many fingers
> But no hands between them.
> What am I?
>
> Ulf
>
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