dittie

In case you missed it, here's a dittie I came up with for Barb.

Archive 2009-08-01 Molly Daniels 2009

This seemed a happy opportunity to Manutio, to sing the dittie so purposely done and devised: which hee delivered in such excellent manner, the voice and Instrument concording so extraordinary pleasing; that all the persons then in the Presence, seemed rather Statues, then living men, so strangely they were wrapt with admiration, and the King himselfe farre beyond all the rest, transported with a rare kinde of alteration.

The Decameron 2004

Yet haue ye one sorte of repetition, which we call the _doubler_, and is as the next before, a speedie iteration of one word, but with some little intermission by inserting one or two words betweene, as in a most excellent dittie written by Sir _Walter Raleigh_ these two closing verses:

The Arte of English Poesie George Puttenham

_Seizino_, not riming as other songs do, but by chusing sixe wordes out of which all the whole dittie is made, euery of those sixe commencing and ending his verse by course, which restraint to make the dittie sensible will try the makers cunning, as thus.

The Arte of English Poesie George Puttenham

Ye haue another figure which we may call the figure of euen, because it goeth by clauses of egall quantitie, and not very long, but yet not so short as the cutted comma: and they geue good grace to a dittie, but specially to a prose.

The Arte of English Poesie George Puttenham

Ye see here how ye can gather no perfection of sence in all this dittie till ye come to the last verse in these wordes _my bed I thee forsake_.

The Arte of English Poesie George Puttenham

Here all the whole sence of the dittie is suspended till ye come to the last three wordes, _then do I loue againe_, which finisheth the song with

The Arte of English Poesie George Puttenham

For if he were not of a plentiful discourse, he could not vpon the sudden shape an entire dittie vpon your imperfect theame or proposition in one verse.

The Arte of English Poesie George Puttenham

Ye haue another sort of repetition quite contrary to the former when ye make one word finish many verses in sute, and that which is harder, to finish many clauses in the middest of your verses or dittie (for to make them finish the verse in our vulgar it should hinder the rime) and because

The Arte of English Poesie George Puttenham

Sir _Philip Sidney_ very pretily closed vp a dittie in this sort.

The Arte of English Poesie George Puttenham