Note 56 — Chapter II · A DINNER AT THE GRANGE—A PAIR OF OWLS.

We have already spoken of Spanish asonante rhyme and the difficulty of its translation into corresponding English verse.

For those who are unacquainted with Spanish prosody the following explanation of what the asonante is may not be amiss.

Assonance consists simply in the similarity of the final, or last two vowels in the line, e. g., luna, juzoa, culpas, gula, suma. These all are considered to rhyme because they have the same vowels, u-a; honor, sol, hoy, dió, cuatro, are examples of single asonantes in o.

Dean Trench calls this the “ghost and shadow of a rhyme.” How well Mr. MacCarthy has succeeded in reproducing it the reader can see in the above extract. The asonantes in the original are u-a, for which Mr. MacCarthy has substituted u-e.