Honing the Craft

The Lai Family of forms are French, 12th century, variable forms that share a narrative nature and in all but the Kyrielle, long / short lines. The style of writing is attributed to a French noblewoman simply known as Marie. She has since been named by historians as Marie de France.

The Lai is a short story in verse. In its strictest form it is a verse form with a rhymed syllabic pattern in three tercets. The elements of the Lai as verse form are:
         1. a narrative, tells a story.
         2. usually a nonet, 9 lines made up of 3 tercets. It can be a hexastich made up of 2 tercets.(When written in 9 lines is can also be called a Bergerette or a Viralai stanza.)
         3. rhymed, turned on only 2 rhymes, rhyme scheme aab aab aab.
         4. syllabic, syllables per line are 5-5-2 5-5-2 5-5-2
         5. Tradition states that the short line must not be indented; it must be left dressed to the poem, a technique known as "arbre fourchu", (forked tree), meant to suggest the appearance of a tree.