Tail rhyme is a family of stanzaic verse forms used in poetry in French and especially English during and since the Middle Ages, and probably derived from models in medieval Latin versification.
Michael Drayton's "Ballad of Agincourt", first published in 1605, offers a simple English example, rhymed AAABCCCB; the shorter (dimeter) B-lines form the 'tail' lines and appear at regular intervals among the longer (trimeter) lines:
Fair stood the wind for France,
When we our sails advance,
Nor now to prove our chance,
Longer will tarry;
But putting to the main,
At Caux, the mouth of Seine,
With all his martial train,
Landed King Harry. (lines 1–8)
However, tail rhyme stanzas can take many forms, potentially containing either more or fewer lines than this example. Tail rhyme is a principle of construction, not one set pattern; the "Burns stanza" is an example of a specific pattern which forms a sub-type of tail rhyme.[1]