1 



Rhyl, Flintshire. East Parade from the High Street 



invalids. Rhyl was a fishing village 

 before it developed into a water- 

 ing-place in the 19th century. Pop. 

 9,000. 



Rhyme OR RIME (Anglo-Saxon, 

 rim, probably from Gr. rhythmos, 

 rhythm). In poetry, the repetition, 

 at the end of one or more lines, of 

 the sound or combination of sounds 

 at the end of another line. In Eng- 

 lish verse the last stressed vowel 

 and all the following sounds of each 

 rhyming line are identical, the pre- 

 ceding consonants being different, 

 whereas in French verse the latter 

 may be identical (rich rhyme), 

 provided that the words are not 

 the same. In masculine rhymes the 

 final syllable alone rhymes ; femin- 

 ine rhymes consist of a stressed 

 followed by an unstressed syllable. 

 Triple rhyme, with two unstressed 

 syllables, is used in English poetry 

 mainly for comic or grotesque 

 effect. Internal rhyme, viz. within 

 the limits of a single line, is com- 

 mon in ballads. Many modern 

 poets prefer inexact rhymes, to 

 avoid machine-like regularity. 



As a natural means of marking 

 and enriching rhythm, rhyme arose 

 independently among various races. 

 Outside Europe, it is used by 

 the Chinese, Hindus, Arabs, and 

 others. Intimately associated with 

 accentual metre, it was avoided in 

 Greek and Latin poetry, which 

 followed the rules of quantitative 

 metre, and reappeared in Latin 

 verse in the 4th century A.D., when 

 the native instinct for accent re- 

 asserted itself. Medieval Latin 

 hymns were probably the main 

 source of rhyme in the W. Euro- 

 pean literatures. In English and 

 other Teutonic languages it slowly 

 replaced alliteration from the 9th 

 century to the 15th. With the 

 revival of classical learning a pre- 

 judice arose against rhyme, and 

 many experiments were made with 

 unrhymed metres, but until recent- 

 ly none had established itself except 

 blank verse. See Blank Verse ; 

 Couplet ; Poetry ; Prosody ; Qua 

 train ; Vers Libre. 



6599 



R h y m e r's 

 Glen. Glen near 

 Melrose in Rox- 

 burghshire. 

 Huntly Burn 

 flows through it, 

 and its name is 

 due to the story 

 that here Thomas 

 the Rhymer met 

 the queen of the 

 fays. 



Rhyinney OR 

 RUMNEY. River 

 of England and 

 Wales. Forming 

 the boundary be- 

 t w e e n M o n- 

 mouthshire and Glamorganshire, 

 it flows 30 m. S. to the Bristol 

 Channel, which it enters 2 m. E. 

 of Cardiff. 



Rhyinney. Urban dist. of Mon- 

 mouthshire, England. It stands on 

 the Rhymney, 2 m. from Tredegar, 

 with stations on the G.W. and 

 Rhymney Rlys. All around are 

 rich coal mines, and the place has 

 important iron and steel works. 

 Pop. 11,400. 



Rhyolite (Gr. rhein, to flow ; 

 lithos, stone). In geology, name 

 given to an acid lava of por- 

 phyritic texture and siliceous com- 

 position. Those in which soda is 

 present as a large percentage are 

 called soda rhyolites, and when the 

 rock is compact and massive it is 

 termed rhyolite porphyry. The 

 rock may be glassy, like pumice 

 stone, scoriaceous or vesicular, and 

 is found in many volcanic regions. 

 The name was suggested by Richt- 

 hofen from the characteristic flow- 

 structure of the rock. See Laparite. 

 Rhys, SIR JOHN (1840-1915). 

 Welsh philologist. Bom June 21, 

 1840, in Cardiganshire, and edu- 

 cated at Jesus 

 College, Ox- 

 ford, he con- 

 tinued his 

 studies at the 

 S o rbonne 

 and in Ger- 

 many, and be- 

 came an in- 

 spec tor of 

 schools in 

 Wales. In 

 *""" 1877 he was 



appointed professor of Celtic at Ox- 

 ford, and in 1895 principal of his old 

 college, a post he retained until 

 his death. He was a great authority 

 on Celtic inscriptions. He also took 

 great interest in all matters con- 

 nected with Wales, such as educa- 

 tion and land reform. His most 

 important works are Lectures on 

 Welsh Philology, 1877; Celtic 

 Britain, 1882 ; The Welsh People, 

 IQOOjTheCeltioInscriptionsofGaul, 

 1911-13. He died Dec. 18, 1915. 



Sir John Rhys, 

 Welsh philologist 



Rhythm (Gr. rhythmos, mea- 

 sured motion, symmetry). Perio- 

 dicity of processes, motions, or 

 sounds. Rhythm is a fundamental 

 fact of life, consisting in the alter- 

 nating preponderance of the two 

 antithetical processes of waste and 

 repair, of discharge and restitution, 

 of activity and recuperation. As 

 stated by Professor Pfeffer in his 

 Physiology of Plants, all life is 

 rhythmic in character, each life- 

 cycle being a repetition of a preced- 

 ing one, and during the progress of 

 the grand period of each individual 

 various periodic movements occur 

 in growing and adult organs. 

 Further, all metabolism consists of 

 rhythmically recurrent processes 

 of anabolism and catabolism. In 

 addition to this autogenic rhythm 

 regularly repeated external factors 

 may induce a secondary rhythm, 

 and the phenomena observed in na- 

 ture are the result of the coopera- 

 tion of these two forms of rhythm. 



In its more general connotation 

 rhythm is one of the three essential 

 elements of music, the others being 

 harmony and melody, and it is the 

 distinguishing characteristic of 

 dancing. Resulting from the inti- 

 mate association of poetry with 

 music, all verse having originally 

 been composed for intoning to the 

 harp or singing to the pipe or lyre, 

 rhythm draws the capital distinc- 

 tion between poetry and prose, 

 which is the vehicle of thought 

 intended to be spoken. Verse, 

 whether rhymed or unrhymed, is 

 written in metre and strict rhythm, 

 on its technical side thus becoming 

 a subject for the grammarian, of 

 whose science the laws of versifica- 

 tion form part under the name of 

 prosody (q.v.). 



Prose, on the contrary, is writtea 

 without constraint of metre, and 

 in rhythm so various as to have 

 defied all attempts to reduce it to 

 rule. Nevertheless, rhythm is an 

 integral, not an accessory, part of 

 good prose, at once the effect and 

 the cause of emotion in polished 

 oratory, and providing for the 

 finest thought a diction perfectly 

 apt, because possessing a musical 

 cadence of a beauty in harmony 

 with the truth expressed. Free- 

 dom from law is the distinguishing 

 characteristic of prose rhythm, and 

 it falls short of perfection by pre- 

 cisely so much as it is the product 

 of mechanical devices such as anti- 

 thesis, parallelism, and the rest. 

 The curious may study the matter 

 in such works as Thomson's The 

 Basis of English Rhythm, and 

 Saintsbury's A History of English 

 Prose Rhythm. The wise will 

 steep themselves in the Authorised 

 Version of the Bible. See Music , 

 Poetry ; Prose. 



