Burns Stanza, Standard Habbie, Six Line Stave, Scottish Stanza

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Scottish Verse

Burns Stanza, also known as the Standard Habbie, Six Line Stave or the Scottish Stanza is a tail-rhyme stanza, meaning the last line of the stanza is short and rhymes with another short line within the stanza. Because of the quick lines, the stanza is not particularly suited to meditation but better suited as a vehicle for social observations. The stanza is pretty much a single sentence which because of the composition of lines, tests the dexterity of the poet. In order to write in this form, it is said the poet should have a "healthy irreverence toward rhyme and diction". E. Stichy George Mason University Scot Poetry.

The Burns stanza is a descendant of the Stave and was made popular by 18th century Scot poet, Robert Burns even though it was previously used by another Scot, Habbie Simpson in the early 1600s. The contemporary Scottish poet Douglas Dunn refers to Burn's work as "a triumphant pursuit of an awkward stanza." The form could also be categorized as a variation of the 16th-century Occitan form Rime Couée.

The elements of the Burns Stanza are:

1. stanzaic, written in any number of sixains.
2. metered, the standard meter of Scottish poetry is tetrameter. This stanza is most often written with L1, L2, L3, L5 in iambic tetrameter and L4 and L6 in iambic dimeter. Some sources indicated the form to be syllabic, with the long lines being between 8 and 9 syllables and the short lines between 4 and 5 syllables.
3. rhymed, rhyme scheme aaabab cccdcd etc.
   
   A true Scottish Standard Habbie,   Stuckie by Fraser Mac

   Requiem for Mac Adoo by Judi Van Gorder

   Tonight my parrot died a quick
   and senseless death and I am sick
   with guilt that I allowed the tick
   of time to spin
   ahead of care and play the trick
   that caused this sin.
   
   I had no time to stop the kill,
   the dog who seemed to have no will
   or thought of it, with deadly chill,
   in instant snatch
   took down the bird, in seconds still
   without a scratch.

   No more a watch bird guards my home,
   her comic antics were just on loan
   to make me laugh and write a poem
   of noise and mess
   and all the rest that sings a tome
   with love's caress.