The pair rhyme is a very well-known rhyme scheme, which is quite common in children’s rhymes, children’s songs, counting rhymes and, of course, in popular music. This is due to the fact that the pair rhyme is very simple knitted and also has a very catchy rhyme scheme. This follows the pattern aabb.
In the pair rhyme, verses that come one after the other are rhymed. This means that the endings of the individual lines within a verse in a poem sound alike.
For example, the words rhyme and bliss or house and mouse. If these words form the conclusion of successive verses within a verse, this would be a pair-rhyme. Let’s look at a fictional example.
I like the summer, because there is sun,
their appearance is a delight for all creatures
So do not stay in the house during the summer
and do not hide, like a mouse.
We see that the underlined words are rhyming and almost the same. However, only sun shines on bliss and house on mouse. We can now mark this determination in color so that the individual rhymes in the pair rhyme can be seen.
I like the summer, because there is sun,
their appearance is a delight for all creatures
So do not stay in the house during the summer
and do not hide, like a mouse.
If we have now highlighted these lines, we can see that individual pairs have formed, somehow belonging together. One could also write that in the above poem we have the rhyme scheme red, red and green, green. The colors thus form pairs.
The rhyme scheme in the pair rhyme
In literary science, however, one has agreed that such similarities are not given with colors, but rather letters. Simply because letters are all the same and so it is clear to everyone which sequence we mean.
We start with the alphabet in the front. Let us take the letter A for the red and set the B for our green marking. Already the pair rhyme looks as follows.
I like the summer, because there is sun,
their appearance is a delight for all creatures
So do not stay in the house during the summer
and do not hide, like a mouse.
If we now want to specify the rhyme schema in the pair rhyme, we simply refer to the sequence of letters. The pair rhyme is thus described with the letters aabb.
Continue the letters in the pairrece
At first we agreed that we would put letters on the letters instead of the colors to indicate the rhyme scheme. The A for the first rhyme was in a stanza and the B for the second rhyme in the poem. Naturally, we must continue this principle when new rhymes meet us. Let us look at the first verses of Heinrich Heine’s poem The Wanderratten.
There are two varieties of rats:
The hungry and rich.
The rich remain happy to the house,
The hungry but wander out.
They wander many thousand miles,
Without restraint and time,
Gradaus in her grim course,
No wind nor weather holds them up.
The individual stanzas are always composed of pairs of rhymes, the first of which has the rhyme schema aabb and the second with the letters ccdd. We use these new letters because new rhymes have been introduced.
If we were to find new rhymes in the third stanza, we would specify the pair rhyme with eeff and then gghh. This principle can, of course, be pursued further and further.
Reimpaare: Rats and rich House and Miles and miles Run and on
Function of the pair rhyme
Of course the pair rhyme is not simply used in a poem, but also has a certain effect. In literary science we would call this effect the function of the pair rhyme. For, of course, each schema also has a direct effect on the recipient, ie the reader, of the poem.
The pair rhyme and its function
The couple rhyme often brings a cheerful mood into a poem. After all, this form of singing is known to us from child members and counting rhymes.
The pair rhyme is a very catchy form. The reader falls into a certain rhythm during the reading process, which is why these poems are very easy to learn and remember.
Because of these aspects, the couple rhyme is often found in folks, as it can be undervalued, perhaps a little naive, and also childlike.
Of course, a poem does not have to be cheerful because of this rhyme scheme, because the effect can of course also be deliberately played. Even a very own tragedy can arise.