Metres and structures

Like the bardic poetry of the Middle Ages, the Gaelic ballads are composed in (usually) four-line stanzas of syllabic metre.  Bardic verse is composed in strict forms of syllabic metre which obey rules laid down by the medieval bardic schools. Gaelic ballads, however, are consistently fashioned in loose forms of syllabic metre known collectively as ógláchas. Other types of verse employing this type of metre are well attested: there are, for example, the courtly love lyrics known as dánta grádha, and ógláchas may have been more acceptable within the 'learned' tradition than has been customarily believed hitherto.  There are, in fact, varying degrees of looseness. Some lays have a fairly tight metrical structure, with a rhyme-scheme which pays considerable attention to alliteration and internal rhyme.  Others have no more than a perfunctory rhyme-scheme, and, as the tradition progresses, there is a tendency towards loss of metrical finesse.  The most popular metres for narrative purposes are of the rannaigheacht and deibhidhe types, both employing quatrains with seven syllables in the line.  Poem XIII, which describes the death of the Fian warrior, Diarmaid Ua Duibhne, sets the scene of his death at Glenshee, evidently in Perthshire. The opening quatrain is as follows, and is in the metre known as rannaigheacht mhór.  There is end-rhyme between lines b and d, and the last syllables of lines a and c rhyme with syllables inside lines b and d, a device known as aicill:

 

                                    Gleann Síodh an gleann seo rém thaoibh
                                    a mbinn faoidh éan agus lon;
                                    minic rithidís an Fhéin
                                    air an t-srath seo a ndéidh a gcon.

                                   Glenshee is this glen by my side
                                    where sweet are birds’ and blackbirds' sounds;
                                   frequently the Fiana would run
                                   on this strath behind their hounds.

Some of the more fast-moving poems in praise of warriors have metres with shorter lines.  Thus, Poem XII, in praise of the Fian warrior, Goll mac Morna, begins:

 

                                   Ard aigne Ghuill
                                   fear-cogaidh Fhinn,
                                   laoch leabhar lonn,
                                   a fhoghail ni tim.

                                   Goll's spirit is high,
                                    Fionn's fighting man;
                                   hero light and lithe,
                                   his foray's not wan.

Different types of metre may intermingle within the same poem, especially in the later tradition, where it would seem that older verse units, frequently of a formulaic kind, are occasionally fitted into newer narrative frames (see, for example, Poem XVI).  Most of the poems were also intended for singing or chanting, although some ballads, often consisting of long catalogues of antiquarian lore, are unlikely to have been sung.