Guys,

I was just humming an Irish song to myself when I was struck by the rhythm. The song is ‘The Foggy Dew’, an Irish Republican song from 1919.

The lines I am thinking of go thus-

But their lonely graves are by Suvla’s waves
Or the fringes of the cold North Sea.

I reckon you can discount the opening syllables of each line as metrical units. They’re slurred directly into the second syllable- a standard folk music trick. What I’m interested in is the anapaestic cores to these lines. The trisyllabic skip within the disyllabic envelope sounds really interesting.

The first line goes- iamb iamb anapaest iamb

The second- iamb [pyrrhic] anapaest iamb


I think I need to practise writing some lines with this metre. Probably best to stop reading now if you don’t fancy seeing/listening to the folk genre parodied and murdered.

Far away in the west where the sunlight died
On the ridges of the Cuillin range,
It was there that I spied on the Isle of Skye
A Dark Maiden who was fey and strange.


Well, it fits the music to the Foggy Dew, so the metre must be right. I reckon I might be able to make use of this. I know the above is a very clumsy parody- but it does strike me that I might be able to get something real out of it when I next write a landscape poem about Scotland. It has a kind of grim muscularity, this metre.

Anyway- sorry for going on. Just thought someone else might be interested too.

All the best.