A Prayer for My Daughter its "metremes", or rhymical motifs, rather than common metrical devices. The poem also may be read to consist of straightforward iambic verse that relies on common metrical devices such as elision, acephalous lines, promotion, and metrical inversion. Lines 1, 2, 3, 5, and 8 of each stanza are iambic pentameter; lines 4, 6, and 7 are iambic tetrameter. For instance, using traditional principles of scansion, stanza two may be scanned as shown below, where syllables in all caps represent metrical beats, lower-case syllables represent metrical off-beats, the vertical bar represents the termination of a metrical foot, and apostrophes represent elisions.
A Gest of Robyn Hode Many elements of the Gest, including the knight's debt, form a major part of the Robin McKinley novel, "The Outlaws of Sherwood". Bob Frank has recorded the entire Gest on a CD, in a modern English version entitled "A Little Gest of Robin Hood." (Bowstring Records, 2002) He performs it with a guitar, in a "talking blues" style. Stanza 1: <poem> </poem> Stanza 144: <poem> </poem> A Gest of Robyn Hode "A Gest of Robyn Hode" is Child Ballad 117; it is also called A Lyttell Geste of Robyn Hode in one of the two oldest books that contain it.