Macaronic Verse is properly a kind of humorous poetry, in which, along with Latin, words of other languages are introduced with Latin inflections and construction; though the name is sometimes applied to verses which are merely a mixture of Latin and the unadulterated vernacular of the author. Thus 'lassas kissare bonæas' ('to kiss the bonnie lassies'), and 'burnantem extinguere thirstum,' are parts of macaronic hexameters.
Teofilo Folengo, called Merlinus Coccaius (1491-1554), a witty and graceless Benedictine, has been erroneously regarded as the inventor of macaronic poetry; but he was the first to employ the term in this sense. His Maccaronea (1517) is a long satiric poem, in which Latin and Italian are mingled. A predecessor of his by half a century was Odassi or Odaxius of Padua. Good specimens are found in the Malade Imaginaire, and in the Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum. The Polemio-Middinia (1683), ascribed to Drummond of Hawthornden, but rather by an obscure pamphleteer, Samuel Colvill (writing about 1680), is probably the best-known British example. Fortunately macaronic poetry has not been very extensively cultivated, although specimens of it may be found in the literature of almost all European countries.
See Genthe, Geschichte der Macaronischen Poesie (1829); Octave Délepière's Macaroniana (1852), and his De la Littérature Macaronique (1856); Morgan's Macaronic Poetry (New York, 1872); Brunet's Littérature Macaronique (1879); and Portierli's Opere Macaroniche di Merlino Coccaio (3 vols. Mantua, 1882-89).