Entertainment / Literature / Virelay: An old French term for a short poem consisting of (A) short lines using two rhymes and (B) two opening lines that recur intermittently. A second form of the virelay consists of stanzas made up of shorter and longer lines, the lines of each kind rhyming within one stanza and with the rhymes of the shorter lines rhyming with the longer ones of the preceding stanza. The form never became popular in English because of the difficulties with the set rhyming of English words and the potential for monotony, but Chaucer apparently wrote many virelays in his youth.
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