Merie sungen the munaches binnen Ely,
Tha Cnut ching rew therby:
"Roweth cnihtes neer the land,
And here we thes munches sang."
This contains a kind of rhyme, or incomplete rhyme, of the vowel sounds only (assonance) in Ely, therby, "land", "sang."
St. Godric (died 1170) also left a hymn to Our Lady, in rhymed couplets, with the music.
Of about the same period is a rhymed version of the Lord's Prayer; the number of syllables to each line varies much, as in Anglo-Saxon poetry, contrary to the rule in the poetry of France.
There are other examples all showing the untaught tendency of the songs of the people towards rhyme and towards measures unknown to the early Anglo-Saxons.
[1] The Amazons appear to have been the armed priestesses of the Hittite empire in Asia Minor, about 1200 b.c.