The seguidilla is a stanza made up of lines of five and seven syllables arranged in two divisions. The first division consists of a quatrain of alternating seven-syllabled and five-syllabled verses, with the second and fourth verses in assonance. The second division, separated from the first by at least a moderate pause, is made up of three lines, the first and third of five syllables and in assonance, the second of seven syllables. The assonance may vary from stanza to stanza. Cf. Iriarte:
Pasando por un pueblo
De la montaña,
Dos caballeros mozos
Buscan posada.
De dos vecinos
Reciben mil ofertas
Los dos amigos.
Consonantal rhyme, as well as assonance, occurs in the endechas. In the other stanzas thus far described, assonance prevails, although consonantal rhyme is not excluded.
Of ancient as well as modern use is the strophe well illustrated in the Coplas of Jorge Manrique, cf. [p. 43]. (N.B. In the text, two independent stanzas are printed together as one stanza.) The scheme is that of a strophe of six trochaic verses with consonantal rhyme in the series a b c a b c; lines 1, 2, 4, 5 have eight syllables each, and lines 3 and 6 have four. Sometimes an extra syllable is xlv prefixed to the short lines, making them iambic in character; cf. [p. 43], l. 28, [p. 46], l. 8.