Þát y wéne to wálke wód, | ȝef hít me léngore láste.
Instances of this kind are frequent; but the four lines of the single stanzas are never completely rhymed throughout as short-lines, as, for instance, is the case in the opening parts or ‘frontes’ of the stanzas of the poems in Wright’s Spec. of Lyr. P., pp. 27 and 83, the lines of which are far more regularly constructed. The rhymes are in these compositions still generally disyllabic.
The metrical structure of the old ballads The Battle of Otterborn and Chevy Chase is similar to that of the poem just quoted. In those ballads some original long lines are provided with middle rhyme, others not, so that the stanzas partly rhyme according to the formula a b c b, partly according to the formula a b a b. The versification is, moreover, very uneven, and the endings are, as a rule, if not without exception, masculine:
Sir Hárry Pérssy cam to the wálles,
The Skóttish óste for to sé;
And sáyd, and thou hast brént Northómberlónd,
Full sóre it réwyth mé.
The ballads of the end of the Middle English period are generally composed in far more regular lines or stanzas. The feminine endings of the Septenary are, however, as a rule replaced by masculine endings, whether the lines rhyme crosswise or only in the three-foot verses. Cf. the ballad, The Lady’s Fall (Ritson, ii. 110), which, however, was probably composed as late as the Modern English period:
Mark wéll my héavy dóleful tále,
You lóyal lóvers áll,