Joan Cudgels Ned
Joan cudgels Ned, yet Ned's a bully;Will cudgels Bess, yet Will's a cully.Die Ned and Bess; give Will to Joan,She dares not say her life's her own.Die Joan and Will; give Bess to Ned,And every day she combs his head.
Words in this poem
- cully n.
- A person easily deceived, tricked, or imposed on; a mean dupe; a gull. [Abbrev. fr. cullion.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Joan Cudgels Ned is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume 1, Project Gutenberg ebook #14353; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Jonathan Swift, Joan Cudgels Ned, in On Poetry: A Rhapsody, and Other Poems (1727), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #14353, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/swift-poems-vol1/joan-cudgels-ned.html, id L24601.
Form and metre
Joan Cudgels Ned is 6 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets, 67% of the lines: heroic couplets. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 90%).
See other poems in heroic couplets, other poems in iambic pentameter.
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 --AABB bully · cully · joanA · ownA · nedB · headB
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 iambic pentameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Joan cudgels Ned, yet Ned's a bully; | 9 | ·/˘····/˘ |
| Will cudgels Bess, yet Will's a cully. | 9 | ·/˘····/˘ |
| Die Ned and Bess; give Will to Joan, | 8 | ········ |
| She dares not say her life's her own. | 8 | ········ |
| Die Joan and Will; give Bess to Ned, | 8 | ········ |
| And every day she combs his head. | 8 | ·/˘····· |
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.