She shall geue mýlke ynówgh,
So lóng as I am pléased.
Apace the mýlle shall gó,
So shall the crédle dó,
And the músterde querne alsó
No mán therwith dyséased. ll. 463–470.
The difference in rhythm which we have previously pointed out between the lines of the body of the stanza (corresponding to first halves of the alliterative line) and those of the tail (corresponding to second halves) may again be observed in most of the stanzas of this play, although not in all of them.
In other passages the sequence of rhymes is less regular; e.g. in ll. 190–209, which rhyme according to the formulas a a a b c c b, d d b e e b, e e e f g g f
§ 71. Lastly, we must mention another kind of verse or stave originating in the resolution of the four-beat alliterative line into two sections, and their combination so as to form irregular tail-rhyme stanzas, viz. the so-called Skeltonic verse. This kind of verse, however, was not invented (as is erroneously stated in several Histories of English Literature) by Skelton, but existed before him, as is evident from the preceding remarks. The name came to be given to the metre from the fact that Skelton, poet laureate of King Henry VII, was fond of this metre, and used it for several popular poems.
In Skelton’s metre the strict form of the alliterative four-beat line has arrived at the same stage of development which the freer form had reached about three hundred years earlier in Layamon’s Brut, and afterwards in King Horn. That is to say, in Skelton’s metre the long line is broken up by sectional rhyme into two short ones. The first specimens of this verse which occur in the Towneley Mysteries, in the Chester Plays, and in some of the Moralities, e.g. in The World and the Child (Dodsl. i), resemble Layamon’s verse in so far as long lines (without sectional rhymes) and short rhyming half-lines occur in one and the same passage. On the other hand, they differ from it and approach nearer to the strophic form of the alliterative line (as occurring in the Miracle Plays) in that the short lines do not rhyme in couplets, but in a different and varied order of rhyme, mostly a b a b; cf. the following passage (l. c., p. 247):