Thair menes thay sowld mak than.
The same rhythmical structure is found in the old ballad, The Notbrowne Maid, in Percy’s Reliques, vol. ii. In this collection the poem is printed in twelve-lined stanzas of four- and three-foot verses. Skeat, however, in his Specimens of English Literature, printed it in stanzas of six long lines.
In either arrangement the relationship of the metre to the Septenary verse comes clearly out.
In Modern English this stanza is also very popular. It occurs in Scott (p. 460, a a2 b3 c c2 b3), Burns (doubled, p. 61, a a2 b3 c c2 b3 d d2 e3 f f2 e3, p. 211, a a2 b3 c c2 b3 d d2 b3 e e2 b3).
Often there are also two- and three-foot iambic-anapaestic verses combined in stanzas of this kind, as in Cowper (p. 427), Burns (p. 244), &c.
Subordinate varieties of this stanza consisting of other verses are quoted, with specimens, in Metrik, ii, §§ 286–8, after the formulas: a a4 b5 c c4 b5, a a4 b6 c c4 b6, a a3 b5 c c3 b5, a a3 b c c b4, a a2 b4 c c2 b4, a ~ a ~ b ~ b ~ c d ~ d ~ e ~ e ~2 c3
§ 245. A small group of tail-rhyme stanzas consists of those in which the second chief verses are shorter than the first.
Such a variety occurs in a tail-rhyme stanza of four-foot trochaic verses, the second verse of each half-stanza being shortened by two measures. It was used by Donne in his translation of Psalm 137 (Poets, iv, 43):
By Euphrates’ flow’ry side