aisling means A kind of Irish poem, developed during the late 17th and 18th centuries, in which Ireland appears to the poet in a vision in the form of a woman, lamenting the state of the Irish people and predicting the revival of their fortunes.
aisling is pronounced /ˈæʃlɪŋ/.
Why “aisling” is a great word
A genre of Irish allegorical poem in which Ireland, personified as a woman, appears to the poet in a vision to lament the nation's plight and prophesy its renewal. From Irish aisling ("dream, vision"), from Old Irish aislinge. Unlike a personal "dream" of sleep or the broad literary device of "allegory," the aisling is a precise, codified national lament. It is the peat-smoke haze at dawn resolving into a weeping woman of unearthly beauty, her cloak embroidered with ruined towers; the voice heard not in the ear but in the marrow, singing of wasted fields and exiled kings; the spectral figure at the edge of a rain-soaked field, her sorrow an open wound and her promise an ember in ash—the poet wakes not with relief, but with the weight of a nation’s breath upon his neck.
Etymology
From Irish aisling.
noun
- A kind of Irish poem, developed during the late 17th and 18th centuries, in which Ireland appears to the poet in a vision in the form of a woman, lamenting the state of the Irish people and predicting the revival of their fortunes.
Words closest in meaning
By meaning, not spelling — each word's AI semantic fingerprint, nearest first.
- englyn 52% match — A short Welsh or Cornish poem of a variable structure, with each line using quantitative metre and cynghanedd (a repeating pattern of consonants and accent), and different lines being arranged in standardized patterns of rhyme and half rhyme. vs aisling →
- lai 51% match — A mostly North European medieval form of lyrical, narrative poem written in octosyllabic couplets that often deals with tales of adventure and romance, with stanzas that do not repeat. vs aisling →
- elegy 49% match — A mournful or plaintive poem; a funeral song; a poem of lamentation. vs aisling →
- rosc 49% match — An ancient form of unrhymed Old Irish verse that uses alliteration and meter. vs aisling →
- poesy 48% match — A poem. vs aisling →
- awdl 48% match — A long poem written in Welsh using cynghanedd and one of twenty-four strict meters. vs aisling →
- alba 48% match — A type of lyrical poetry, traditionally Provençal, about lovers who must part at dawn. vs aisling →
- syair 48% match — Malay poetry that is made up of four-line stanzas vs aisling →