Coronach

[Tinker]

Explore the Craft of Writing Poetry
Irish Verse Form.

Coronach (wailing together) found in ancient Irish and Scot traditions, is a dirge or funeral song. It is specifically, a woman's lament, a funeral song "shrieked by Celtic women". It appears less strict in form than many of the ancient Irish writings. The distinct Irish feature of dunadh, beginning and ending the poem with the same word or phrase, was not practiced in the few examples I could find. Sir Walter Scott's Lady of the Lake includes a Coronach.

The elements of the Coronach are:

1. commonly written in any number of quatrains, each line 7 syllables (give or take a syllable).
2. rhymed, rhyme scheme is either xaxa xbxb etc or abab cdcd etc.
3. written without dunadh.
   
   A slave woman's song by Barbara Hartman
   
   Ramses rules our newborn sons
   must die tonight by his decree.
   Swords slash small throats, blood runs
   through streets while families flee.
   
   When, O God of Abraham,
   will you hear these mothers' cries?
   Our infants, innocent as lambs,
   slaughtered here before our eyes.
   
   How long, O God, must we live
   and die by a Pharaoh's whip?
   How much longer can we survive?
   Take me, now, into your Fellowship.