The Schweifreim is one of the rhymes, which we meet very early in the teaching of German, and is, besides the pair rhyme and cross-rhyme, one of the best known representatives of his guild. The tail rhyme is always composed of six verses.
In the Schweifreim, the first two verses form a pair of rhymes, with which an embracing rhyme is made of four lines of verse. Thus, the rhyme scheme in the hog rhymes follows the pattern aa b cc b.
Let us take a look at the first stanza of the well-known poem by Matthias Claudius, which is familiar to most people from childhood. Here the words are rhyming and marching, clear and wonderful, silent and rising.
The moon has risen,
the golden stars
in the sky bright and clear;
the forest stands black and silent,
and from the meadows
the white mist wonderful.
The underlined words can be found in verses 1 and 2, 3 and 6, 4 and 5. If we now mark these individual pairs of rhymes in color, perhaps with a text marker or a simple crayon, the typical rhyming scheme of the tail rhymes becomes clear clear.
The moon has risen,
the golden stars
in the sky bright and clear;
the forest stands black and silent,
and from the meadows
the white mist wonderful.
By this emphasis, we can now make a statement about the rhyme schema. We see color and rhyme pairs that somehow belong together. We could now write that in the above stanza we have the scheme red, red, green, orange, orange, green.
The rhyme scheme in the tail rhyme
However, we do not give such a pattern by means of the color combination, but we have agreed on letters in German studies, so also in German lessons.
We start with the alphabet in the front. Let us take the letter A for the red, the B for the green and the orange with a Cs. We also take small letters for labeling and can now specify the tail rhyme by means of abbreviations.
The moon has risen,
the golden stars
in the sky bright and clear;
the forest stands black and silent,
and from the meadows
the white mist wonderful.
We can now simply specify this clear sequence of letters to show that we are dealing with a tail rhyming. The rhyme scheme in the hive is thus aabccb
Continue letters in the tail
Of course, it is not the case that a poem consists only of a single stanza, but sometimes continues. If this is the case, we must of course continue our respective letters, always when a new rhyme in the poem comes to our attention. Let us add the second verse from Claudius’s “Abendlied,” which also has a tail-rhyme.
The moon has risen,
the golden stars
in the sky bright and clear;
the forest stands black and silent,
and from the meadows
the white mist wonderful.
How is the world so silent,
And in the insulation casing
So warm and so sweet!
As a silent chamber,
Where the day of your wail
Slept and forgotten.
Both strophes are determined by a tail rhyme. The first shows the rhyme scheme aabccb, and in the second it is ddeffe. We used these new letters because new rhymes came into play.
If we were to find new rhymes in the next verse, we would specify them with gghiih and in the next with jjkllk. This pattern can, of course, be continued indefinitely.
Reimpaare: risen and prangen clear and wonderful keep silent and climb silence and cover hold and shall Chamber and lamentation
Effect and function of the tail
Of course, a tail rhyme is not simply used in a poem, but has an immediate effect on the reader and rhythm of the work. This effect is described in Germansitics as a function, and when we analyze stylistic means in a poem, we functionalize it.
The Schweifreim and its function
The tail rhyme has an immense binding force, which reaches over several lines of verse. This means that the last verse resembles a stanza of a pointe and leads us back into the imposed rhythm.
Furthermore, the last verse often acts as a surprise, since the obvious rhyme scheme is lifted in the third line and then passed on in the end.
As with other end rhymes, the tail rhyme can cause a kind of singing singing, which is why we often find it in folks or children’s songs (→ children’s rhymes).
