#22 Hir a thoddaid

[Tinker]

Explore the Craft of Writing Poetry
Welsh Verse
Features of the Welsh Meters
Welsh Codified Divisions

Hir a thoddaid, heer-ah-thódd-eyed (long stanza with toddaid), the 22nd codified Official Welsh Meter is the most commonly written awdl meter of modern time. The National Eisteddfod, as of only a few years ago, offered an annual prize for the poem written in this meter. (It also must be in written in Welsh.) The theme is usually a memorial, a eulogy.

The elements of the Hir a thoddaid are:

1. stanzaic, written in any number of sixains made up of a mono-rhymed quatrain followed by a Toddaid couplet.
2. syllabic, lines 1-5 are written as 10 syllable lines and L6 is a 9 syllable line.
3. mono-rhymed,
4. composed with an addendum, a gair cyrch following the main rhyme and caesura of L5. The gair cyrch end rhyme is echoed in the first half of L6 in secondary rhyme, assonance or consonance.x x x x x x x x x A

   x x x x x x x x x A
   x x x x x x x x x A
   x x x x x x x x x A
   x x x x x x x A - x b
   x x x b x x x x A
    

In Memory John Paul II by Judi Van Gorder                        You came to the Church dynamic and strong, gave hope, fought injustice, with Him belong, taught us to live well and wept at our wrong, you listened to our youth, a quest lifelong. Faithful gather, bells call the throng - for prayer to heaven where the saints sing your song.

Gwynnvyd gwyr y byd oed vod Agharat Gwennvuun yn gyfun ae gwiwuawr garyat Sgannllun am llud hun hoendwc barablad Gwynlliw eiry difiw difrisc ymdeithyat Gwen dan eur wiwlenn ledyf edrychyat - gwyl Yw vannwyl yn y hwyl heul gymheryat. by Einion 15 century