Ca dao

Ca dao is a genre of Vietnamese folk poetry, made up of poems derived from folk songs that were rewritten for recitation; the term itself is Sino-Vietnamese, tracing its origin to the Chinese Classic of Poetry. Ca dao poems are generally short, typically no more than a single couplet of fourteen syllables, though longer examples exist, composed in four-syllable, five-syllable, six-eight, or so-called two-seven-six-eight line patterns and designed to be sung without the filler words that the original folk songs required. The poems tell stories of everyday life, most often the relationships between men and women, including lost love and husbands and wives complaining of one another, frequently drawing analogies between humans, animals and plant life. Peasants of the Red River and Mekong deltas used a related riddle form called do as entertainment to relieve the routine of rice planting or after a day's toil. Ca dao poems are anonymously composed and have been passed down as a regional heritage rather than attributed to individual authors.