The sun never sets

By THLaird Colyne Stewart, March AS 50 (2016)

The sun never sets on old Ealdormere

Our very old debts are already paid

The trees grow so tall, well watered with blood,

Our legends won’t fall, they walk with us still—

The Iron Duke writes secure in his home,

The mighty Earl fights with sword in each hand,

The first hare of Skreal still sits in the hall,

The fox with black tail sits tall on her horse.

And those that have gone are still in our minds

Live on in their spawn, their lineage kept,

Their hearts are held close in action and deed

Remembered in prose by poet and skald

The hall that they built we add to our selves

Do not let it tilt by adding bad wood

Each log is a deed, an action we took;

A log made of greed, or envy or spite

Could topple the hall, the log rotten through.

Do not be a thrall to low base desire

Live on my good folk, live on as a pack,

Think on what I spoke, live on like true wolf.

The Italian frottola emerged in the 14^th century as a satiric, rambling verse form utilizing irregular meters and stanzas, reflecting the fact that the subject matter was usually unconnected, bizarre and sometimes senseless. They could be composed of couplets of unrhymed pentameter, heptameter or hendecasyllabic lines with internal rhyme (though some experts also believe there were blank form frottola).  In the 15^th century the form became known as the frottola-barzelleta where it became a sub-species of canto carnascialesco (carnival song), set to music, following the structure of the balata grande and being octosyllabic. At the beginning of the 14^th century it was used for moral instruction, but by the end of that century it had assumed artistic proportions with moral, political or satirical themes. It also made use of proverbs and witty instructional content (didacticism).