1919.] 
New Zealand Institute Science Congress. 
333 
were one and the same thing. Again, as a complete thought is usually 
composed of two complementary or antithetical clauses, so the primal verse 
and stanza falls into two more or less equal halves, the whole beating and 
hovering about the evolving verse of eight units. This beating and 
hovering, preceding the settling into the fixed forms, is plainly discernible 
in the old simple ballads In these the thoughts are simple and direct; 
but as the minds of the singers and listeners became more cultivated the 
thoughts became more elaborated ; and, whilst the verses remained the same 
length, the stanzas expanded to accommodate the growing thought. The 
culmination of this expansion is in the sonnet, sestina, and chant royal, 
in each of which forms is expressed a single elaborated thought. To the 
majority of minds, however, these long intricate stanzas make little appeal; 
but the appeal made by the short lyric stanza, the primitive form, is 
universal. Each thought was a picture ;• and as a picture acquires 
definiteness by being framed off from its surroundings, so the thought 
acquired definiteness by being detached from surrounding thoughts— 
the means of detachment being the rimed stanza. 
When the alliterative stave, as the Icelandic stanza was called, broke 
up under the influence of southern verse there was a re-forming in two 
directions—the couplet, composed of two riming lines, each of four stresses, 
f nd the long couplet, composed of two riming verses, each of seven stresses. 
The latter divided, forming a four-lined stanza—the stanza of our common 
Ballad metre. The couplet, by the agglutination of another couplet also 
formed a four-lined stanza. These two simple stanzas form the basis of all 
subsequent stanzas ; and it remains to show how five-, six-, and seven- 
lined stanzas sprang from these. At times the thought ran beyond the 
usual four lines, when another verse was added, producing the Ballad 
six :— 
And I would never tire, Janet, 
In fairy land to dwell; 
But aye at every seven years 
They pay the teind to hell; 
And though the queen inak’s much o’ me, 
I fear ’twill be mysell. 
This addition is simple enough, and there are others as simple that need 
not be specified. In the ballad “ Sir Cauline,” however, the following 
stanza occurs 
Faire Christabelle that lady bright 
Was had forth of the towre; 
But ever she droopeth in her mind, 
As nipt by an ungentle winde 
Doth some faire lillye flowre. 
It is quite evident that the poet, whilst remembering that his thought must 
be contained in an average verse of seven units, felt that the average might 
be exceeded for the sake of the beauty the fuller thought contained. He 
could quite easily have written 
Faire Christabelle that lady bright 
Was had forth of the towre; 
But ever she droopeth in her minde 
As doth a lillye flowre, 
and the thought is still beautiful. It is, however, much more beautiful 
with the extra line added ; and here is the first exception to the law that 
each stanza consists of four lines of four, three, four, three units respectively. 
