The Barley-Mow Song (Suffolk Version.)
HERE’S a health to the barley mow!Here’s a health to the manWho very well canBoth harrow and plow and sow!
When it is well sownSee it is well mown,Both raked and gavelled clean,And a barn to lay it in.He’s a health to the manWho very well canBoth thrash and fan it clean!
Words in this poem
- mown p. p.
- Cut down by mowing, as grass; deprived of grass by mowing; as, a mown field.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Barley-Mow Song (Suffolk Version.) is in the public domain. This text is taken from Ancient Poems, Ballads, and Songs of the Peasantry of England, Project Gutenberg ebook #649; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Robert Bell, The Barley-Mow Song (Suffolk Version.), in Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of the Peasantry of England (1857), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #649, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/bell-ancient-poems/the-barley-mow-song-suffolk-version.html, id L11957.
Form and metre
The Barley-Mow Song (Suffolk Version.) is 11 lines in 2 stanzas. The metre is trochaic trimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 78%). 96% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 6.2 syllables. 46% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other poems in trochaic trimeter.
Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 1 ABBA mowA · manB · canB · sowA
- 2 AABACCB sownA · mownA · cleanB · inA · manC · canC · cleanB
Scansion, line by line
Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. Read against trochaic trimeter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| HERE’S a health to the barley mow! | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| Here’s a health to the man | 6 | ······ |
| Who very well can | 5 | ·/˘·· |
| Both harrow and plow and sow! | 7 | ·/˘···· |
| When it is well sown | 5 | ····· |
| See it is well mown, | 5 | ····· |
| Both raked and gavelled clean, | 8 | ··˘·/˘˘· |
| And a barn to lay it in. | 7 | ······· |
| He’s a health to the man | 6 | ······ |
| Who very well can | 5 | ·/˘·· |
| Both thrash and fan it clean! | 6 | ······ |
The reader shows the same poem with its rhymes coloured and a stress row above each line, the notes beside their stanzas, and any word's definition on a tap; the analysis page takes the whole book apart. How every part of this site was made.