Cynghanedd
Quick answer: Cynghanedd is the Welsh system of consonant echo and internal rhyme inside a single line of verse. Learn its four types and how to hear the harmony.
Cynghanedd, a Welsh word meaning harmony, is a strict system of sound correspondence inside a single line of poetry, in which consonants repeat in order around a pause, or internal rhyme knits the line together, or both at once. It is the defining music of Welsh strict-metre verse, codified by the medieval bardic schools and still required in forms such as the englyn, cywydd and awdl. No other European tradition regulates the interior of the line so completely.
You meet cynghanedd wherever Welsh-language poetry is taken seriously, above all at the National Eisteddfod, where the chaired poem must use it throughout. English readers meet its influence secondhand: Gerard Manley Hopkins studied Welsh and let cynghanedd shape his dense, chiming lines, and Dylan Thomas absorbed its habits of echo without following its rules.
How It Works: The Four Types
Welsh prosody recognises four main kinds. Cynghanedd groes, the cross harmony, repeats the full sequence of consonants from the line's first half in its second half. Cynghanedd draws does the same but allows unanswered consonants in the middle. Cynghanedd sain divides the line into three parts, with the first two rhyming and the third echoing the second's consonants. Cynghanedd lusg, the drag harmony, rhymes a syllable mid-line with the penultimate syllable of the line.
A rough English approximation of the cross type: 'a road of rain, a ride of ruin', where the consonant skeleton r-d-r-n sounds twice. Real cynghanedd is stricter, counting consonants around the stress, but the example shows the sensation: one line that answers itself.
Where You Will See It
The rules were systematised for the bardic order and remain the test of a Welsh strict-metre poet; Dafydd ap Gwilym, the fourteenth-century master, made cynghanedd sound effortless in his cywyddau about love and weather. The tradition is unbroken: modern poets such as Alan Llwyd and Mererid Hopwood, the first woman to win the Eisteddfod chair, compose in full cynghanedd today, and Welsh poetry societies run classes in it as a living craft.
How to Use It in Your Own Poems
Writing correct cynghanedd in English is close to impossible, because English stress and consonant clusters behave differently, but you can train with its spirit. Take a draft line and revise it until at least three consonants recur in order. Try planting a mid-line rhyme against the line's ending, a homemade lusg. What the practice teaches is that the line, not only the stanza, can be a musical unit, and readers hear that care even when they cannot name it.
What poets can take from this
- Learn the four types by listening to Welsh examples read aloud before attempting any imitation.
- In English, aim for consonant echo across the line rather than strict one-to-one correspondence.
- Place your echoes on stressed syllables; unstressed repetition barely registers.
- Use cynghanedd-style chiming sparingly in free verse, one saturated line per stanza is plenty.
- Read Hopkins to see what a great English ear did with the Welsh harmony.
Try it yourself
Write a six-line poem about weather in which every line repeats at least three consonants in the same order, then underline the echoes and cut any line where you had to force it.
Questions
How do you pronounce cynghanedd?
Roughly kung-HAN-eth, with the final sound as the voiced th in 'breathe'. The Welsh dd is always that soft th sound.
Can cynghanedd be written in English?
Strictly, only with great strain, and most attempts relax the rules. Poets like Hopkins borrowed its density of consonant echo rather than its exact laws, which is the approach most English-language writers take.
Is cynghanedd the same as alliteration?
No. Alliteration repeats initial sounds loosely; cynghanedd is a codified system requiring specific sequences of consonants and internal rhymes in fixed positions. Alliteration is an ingredient, cynghanedd is a full recipe.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working poets. Updated July 2026.
Enter a Writory poetry contest
Enter the September contest and have your own poem read and scored. That first entry makes you a Writorian.