Torrent of Portyngale

Torrent of Portyngale (archaic spelling for "Portugal") is a Middle English romance, composed around 1400, probably in the north Midlands.

It is written in 12-line tail-rhyme stanzas, with the rhyme scheme AABCCBDDBEEB, and is number 983 in the Index of Middle English Verse.

The romance survives only in the fifteenth-century East-Midland manuscript Manchester, Chetham's Library, MS 8009 (folios 76r-119v).

The romance describes the tortuous efforts of the young earl's son Torrent to win the hand of Desonell, daughter of King Colomond of Portugal, against her father's wishes.

[1] It has been characterised as 'perhaps the most critically neglected member of the Middle English verse romances'.