riding rhymen.

1573 G. Gascoigne Hundreth Sundrie Flowres 430 For I find the world did iudge me once, A witlesse writer of these louers layes,..I laye aside this folish riding rime.

1575 G. Gascoigne Certayne Notes Instr. in Posies sig. U.ij^v I had forgotten a notable kinde of ryme, called ryding rime, and that is suche as our Mayster and Father Chaucer vsed in his Canterburie tales, and in diuers other delectable and light enterprises.

1589 G. Puttenham Arte Eng. Poesie ii. iv. 62 Chaucer, Lydgate & others,..many times made their meetres (they called them riding ryme) of such vnshapely wordes as would allow no conuenient Cesure, and therefore did let their rymes runne out at length, and neuer stayd till they came to the end.

1600 F. Thynne Emblemes & Epigr. (1876) 77 I..that shame not to present vnto thy sight Sir Topas ridinge rime not meet for thee.

a1612 J. Harington Epigrams (1618) iii. 44 Faire Leda reads our Poetry sometimes, But saith she cannot like our Ryding-rimes.

a1771 T. Gray Observ. Eng. Metre in Wks. (1814) II. 15 The Riding Rhyme I rather take to be that which, is confined to one measure, whatever that measure be, but not to one rhythm.

1853 R. Southey Life Cowper in Wks. W. Cowper I. xii. 296 The strain in which the knight related his tale of Palamon and Arcite..was degraded in public estimation, and distinguished by the contemptuous term of riding rhymes.

1884 E. W. Washburn Stud. in Early Eng. Lit. vi. 115 The play was in rhyme, sometimes..the eight-syllabled stanza, sometimes the long heroic, or the riding rhyme.

1920 J. B. Esenwein & M. E. Roberts Art of Versification (rev. ed.) xi. 110 The meter of Chaucer's ‘Canterbury Tales’ was called Riding Rhyme from the fact that the Tales were told as the pilgrims rode in company from London to Canterbury.

1954 College Eng. 15 276/1 Perhaps such rhymes are not a defect here, since they reduce the closure of the couplet form and help to suggest ‘riding rhyme’ rather than the ‘heroic couplet’.

2002 H. Cooper in L. Boldrini Medieval Joyce 154 The Skeat edition [of Chaucer's Sir Thopas]..shows how strikingly the poem distinguishes itself in terms of page layout from the normative riding rhyme.