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Virelay is the title applied to more than one fixed form of verse, from the French virer, "to turn or veer". The history and exact character of the virelay are more obscure than those of any other of the old French forms. It is possible that it is connected with the Provençal ley. Historians of poetry have agreed in stating that it is a modification of the medieval lai, but it is curious that no example of the lai is forthcoming, except the following, which was first printed by the Père Mourgues in his Traité de Poésie: Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... A virelai is a form of medieval French verse used often in poetry and music. ... Provençal literature is much more easily defined than the Provençal language in which it is expressed. ... The Middle Ages formed the middle period in a traditional schematic division of European history into three ages: the classical civilization of Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and modern times. ... A Lai was a song form composed in northern Europe, mainly France and Germany, from the 13th to the late 14th century. ...

Sur lappui du Monde

Que faut-il quon fonde Despoir?

Cette mer profonde Et debris féconde

Fait voir Calme au matin londe

Et lorage y gronde Le Soir.

But this appears to be, not a complete poem, but a fragment of a virelay, which proceeds by shifting or veering the two rhymes to an extent limited only by the poets ingenuity. This is the Old Virelay (virelai ancien), of which examples have been rare in recent literature. 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. In French the old and popular verses beginning "Adieu vous dy triste Lyre, C'est trop apprter a rire", form a perfect example of the New Virelay, and in English we have at least one admirable specimen in Mr. Austin Dobson's July: The virelai ancien is a poetic form originating in France in the Middle Ages. ... The virelai nouveau is a poetic form that is both rare and difficult to use. ... Alain Chartier (c. ... Henry Austin Dobson (January 18, 1840 _ September 2, 1921) was an English poet and essayist. ...

Good-bye to the Town! good-bye!

Hurrah! 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. Francesco Petrarca or Petrarch, one of the best-known of the early Italian sonnet writers For the Saab automobile, see Saab Sonett, for the Japanese communications company see So-net. ... A ballad is a story in a song, usually a narrative song or poem. ... A villanelle (or occasionally villonelle) is a traditional poetic form which entered English-language poetry in the late 1800s from the imitation of French models. ...

References

• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.