Cynghanedd (literally "harmony"), in Welsh language poetry, is the basic concept of sound-arrangement within one line. The various forms of cynghanedd show up the definitions of all formal Welsh verse forms, such as the awdl. Cynghanedd has been used from very early times and continues in common use today. Harmony is the use and study of pitch simultaneity and chords, actual or implied, in music. ... Welsh redirects here, and this article describes the Welsh language. ... Bust of Homer, one of the earliest European poets, in the British Museum Poetry (ancient Greek: ποιεω (poieo) = I create) is an art form in which human language is used for its aesthetic qualities in addition to, or instead of, its notional and semantic content. ... Verse is a writing that uses meter as its primary organisational mode, as opposed to prose, which uses grammatical and discoursal units like sentences and paragraphs. ... An awdl is a long poem written in Welsh in one of twenty-four strict metres, using cynghanedd. ...

Forms of cynghanedd

The examples below are from the poem Cywydd y Cedor, by the fourteenth-century bard Gwerful Mechain. The caesuras are marked with slashes ("/") and rhyming parts are marked in bold. Note that Dd, Ll and Ch are counted as single consonants in the Welsh alphabet. Gwerful Mechain, who lived in Mechain in Powys during the 1400s, is perhaps the most famous female Welsh-language poet. ... The Welsh alphabet contains 28 letters, seven of which are vowels. ...

Cynghanedd groes ("cross-harmony")

All consonants which appear in the line before the caesura must be repeated after it, in the same order. For example: A cæsura, in prosody, is an audible pause that breaks up a long line of verse. ...

 clawdd i ddal / cal ddwy ddwylaw CL Dd Dd L / C L Dd Dd L 

Cynghanedd draws (also "cross-harmony")

Like cynghanedd groes, except only some of the consonants are repeated. For example:

 dabl y gerdd / a'i dwbl o goch D BL G RDd D BL G Ch 

Cynghanedd sain ("sound-harmony")

The line has two caesuras, and thus has three parts. The first and second parts rhyme; the consonants of the second part are repeated in the third part. For example: A rhyme is a repetition of identical or similar sounds in two or more different words and is most often used in poetry. ...

 pant yw hwy / na llwy / na llaw / N Ll / N Ll 

Cynghanedd lusg ("drag-harmony")

The first accented syllable in the line rhymes with the second-to-last syllable of the line. For example:

 duw er ei radd / a'i addef,, 

Bibliography

• Hopwood, Mererid (2004), Singing in chains: listening to Welsh verse. Llandysul : Gomer. ISBN 1843234025.

External links

• For an example of a poem in English using cynghanedd, see the poem by Katherine Bryant at the end of this page.
• A more thorough introduction to Welsh poetic forms
• Cynghanedd.com