(ay fresh-lee) is an Irish syllabic stanza form. Almost all the Irish and Welsh forms are complex systems of rhyme, alliteration, and consonance (see cynghenedd). For the practical purpose of versification in English, it should be understood that the systems are most difficult to reproduce accurately in our language. It would therefore be as well for the poet attempting these forms to pay attention only to the rhyme scheme and syllabification. Thus, ae freislighe, simplified, is a quatrain stanza of seven syllable lines. Lines one and three rhyme in triple rhymes; lines two and four rhyme in double rhymes. The poem (not the stanza) should end with the same first syllable, word, or line with which it begins. The technical term for this ending is dunadh, and it occurs in all the Gaelic forms. The diagram looks like this
Lines syllables and rhymes
| 1 | XXXX(XXA) |
| 2 | XXXXX(XB) |
| 3 | XXXX(XXA) |
| 4 | XXXXX(XB) |
Love Curse
What's love but a bobolink
Beating its voice on the air,
A morningsong robawink,
Wrack of sleep beyond repair?
What's love but a nematode,
The worm that gnaws its wee hole,
A minuscule episode
Restless to become the whole?
Love, love, let me mock you thrice
With catspaw, rue, and foxglove.
Basilisk and cockatrice
Knowhow to answer, "What's Love?"
-- Wesli Court
Turco, L. (2000). The book of forms: A handbook of poetics. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England.
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