The virelai ancien is a poetic form originating in France in the Middle Ages. It uses a tercet of two long lines and one short line rhyming a-a-b to build stanzas. Each stanza can have any number of tercets. It uses a form of chain rhyme with the long lines of each new stanza rhyme with the long lines of the preceding one and the short lines of the final stanza rhyme with the long lines of the first one. A simple virelay ancien rhyme scheme might be: a-a-b-a-a-b, b-b-c-b-b-c, c-c-d-c-c-d, d-d-a-d-d-a.
There is, however, a New Virelay (virelai nouveau), the newness of which is merely relative, since it was used by Alain Chartier in the 15th century.
for the sea and the sky!" The New Virelay is entirely written on two rhymes, and begins with two lines which are destined to form recurrent refrains throughout the whole course of the poem, and, reversed in order, to close it with a couplet.
The virelay is a vaguer and less vertebrate form of verse than the sonnet, the ballad or the villanelle, and is of less importance than these in the history of prosody.
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