Poetic Forms: Standard Habbie

The "standard Habbie" has also been called the Scottish Stanza, the Burns Stanza (after Robert Burns, widely known as the national poet of Scotland), or the six-line stave. This form was named for Habbie Simpson, who was a poet and the town piper of the Scottish village of Kilbarchan in the sixteenth century. Interestingly, Habbie didn't invent the form named for him. Instead, he was the subject of the first known poem in this format, "The Life and death of Habbie Simpson," written by Robert Sempill the younger of Beltrees in 1640.

Initially strictly lyrical, often the standard Habbie is comical or satirical. It can also be used to describe an interesting aspect of life or to give a picture of the times.

The standard Habbie is written in any number of six-line stanzas. In each stanza, lines 1,2,3 and 5 use four metrical feet and rhyme with each other, while lines 4 and 6 use two feet and rhyme with each other. A metrical foot is a small segment of syllables, such as "dah-DUM" or "dah-dah-DUM" (see "Poetic Meter"), that are repeated in a line or stanza to form a pattern. Four iambic feet ("dah-DUM") is called "iambic tetrameter."

The following show the line, rhyming notation and number of feet through two stanzas of the standard Habbie:

L1- a -4-feet
L2- a -4-feet
L3- a -4-feet
L4- b -2-feet
L5- a -4-feet
L6- b -2-feet

L7- c -4-feet
L8- c -4-feet
L9- c -4-feet
L10- d -2-feet
L11- c -4-feet
L12- d -2-feet

In a rhyming pattern, lines ending in a sound designated by "a" only rhyme with other "a" lines, "b" lines only with other "b" lines, and so on. A variation of the Habbie uses seven-line stanzas with the pattern a-a-b-c-c-c-b (the "b" lines are the shortened ones).

Example:

My Summer Placation

The months of work, my project done,
the big account at long last won,
my wife resolved we'd have some fun,
like she had dreamed.
Before it even had begun,
I kicked and screamed

The last thing on my burdened mind
was flying in a plane, confined;
while tasks were getting more behind,
I wouldn't rest.
But though I madly fussed and whined,
I acquiesced.

Surprised, I did relax one day,
engaged in monuments to play,
concerns lost in a Greek soiree,
I was reposed,
the Eiffel replica's cafe
was never closed.

The firm endured without me there,
my ego checked, I'm now aware
that workaholics can repair
their one-track lives.
A foliage outing we'll prepare
as Fall arrives.