[1] The triolet is a close cousin of the rondeau, the rondel, and the rondelet, other French verse forms emphasizing repetition and rhyme.
[3] Seven more easily datable 13th century triolets (also known as songs) are to be found in "Cléomadès" by Adenet le Roi.
[4] In the early 14th century, the songwriter, Jean Lescurel, wrote many triolets under the term of rondel.
[5] In the early 15th century, Christine de Pisan experimented with a slightly abbreviated seven-line variation of the triolet which she, like her predecessors, also termed a rondel.
Toward the end of this century, Dutch language triolets (though designated as rondels) by Anthonis de Roovere appear.
[9] Though the triolet did not recover its former popularity in 18th century France, it did, with the appearance of Théodore de Banville in the mid-19th century, experience a revival of interest with triolets being written by Arthur Rimbaud, Maurice Rollinat, Alphonse Daudet, and Stéphane Mallarmé.
[10] The earliest known triolets composed in English were written in 1651 by Patrick Cary, briefly a Benedictine at Douai, who purportedly used them in his devotions.
[13] This, though, was less through his own efforts than through the impact of an influential article written by Edmund Gosse and printed in 1877 in the Cornhill Magazine reintroducing the triolet to the English public at large, among whom it enjoyed a brief popularity among late-nineteenth-century British poets.
[15] In addition to German, the triolet also appeared in Dutch, Greek, Hungarian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and possibly other languages during these two centuries.
[16] Moreover, in Brazil in the late 19th century, the triolet spawned a new, somewhat abbreviated, six-line verse form known as the biolet.
[17] Though possessing a long history, triolets, with the exception of France in the years from 1648 to 1652, have always been a relatively rare verse form.
At quiet, in my peacefull cell, I'll think on God, free from your snares; Worldly designs, fears, hopes, farewell!
Robert Fellows' piece "The first of May" derives its title from an English translation of the first line of an older triolet written by the French poet Ranchin in c. 1690.