roundelay

English

WOTD – 22 July 2012

Alternative forms

• rondelay

Etymology

From Middle French rondelet, diminutive of Old French rondel (French: rondeau). Ending -lay either from lay (“ballad or sung poem”), or from virelay.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈɹaʊndɪˌleɪ/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈɹaʊndəˌleɪ/

Noun

roundelay (plural roundelays)

1. (music) A poem or song having a line or phrase repeated at regular intervals.
   • 1579, Immeritô [pseudonym; Edmund Spenser], The Shepheardes Calender: […], London: […] Hugh Singleton, […], →OCLC:

     It fell upon a holly eve,
     Hey ho, hollidaye!
     When holly fathers wont to shrieve,
     Now gynneth this roundelay.

   • 1830, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Poems, Chiefly Lyrical, Song - The Owl:

     When merry milkmaids click the latch
     And rarely smells the new-mown hay,
     And the cock hath sung beneath the thatch
     Twice or thrice his roundelay,
     Twice or thrice his roundelay;
     Alone and warming his five wits,
     The white owl in the belfry sits.

   • 1859, Alfred Tennyson, “(please specify the page)”, in Idylls of the King, London: Edward Moxon & Co., […], →OCLC:

     "Ay, fool," said Tristram, "but 'tis eating dry
     To dance without a catch, a roundelay
     To dance to." Then he twangled on his harp,
     And while he twangled little Dagonet stood
     Quiet as any water-sodden log
     Stay'd in the wandering warble of a brook; […]

   • 1903, Howard Pyle, “Chapter First”, in The Story of King Arthur and His Knights, Part II, page 61:

     For then the little birds do sing their sweetest song, all joining in one joyous medley, whereof one may scarce tell one note from another, so multitudinous is that pretty roundelay; […]

   • 1936, Norman Lindsay, The Flyaway Highway, Sydney: Angus and Robertson, page 42:

     "Instead of being a rollicking bull-necked quarterstaff player with an eye for a wench and a good but untutored voice for roaring a roundelay, he's nothing but a weasel-faced herring-gutted wowser deliberately stuck in a cell to mislead travellers."

2. A dance in a circle.
3. Anything having a round form; a roundel.

See also

• rondeau
• roundel