Rime of the Ancient Mariner?

I recently read the beautiful poem by Samuel Coleridge. Why did he call it a rime? I looked up rime on the dictionary, and it means a thin layer of ice; so was the name playing around with the rhyme of the words "rime" and "rhyme" at the same time, referring to the icy time when the Ancient Mariner killed the albatross (that was when the ship was somewhere near the Southern Pole)?

Solution 1:

It's simply an archaic, variant spelling. From Wikipedia:

The spelling rhyme (from original rime) was introduced at the beginning of the Modern English period, due to a learned (but etymologically incorrect) association with Greek ῥυθμός (rhythmos, rhythm).

The older spelling rime survives in Modern English as a rare alternative spelling. A distinction between the spellings is also sometimes made in the study of linguistics and phonology, where rime/rhyme is used to refer to the nucleus and coda of a syllable. In this context, some prefer to spell this rime to separate it from the poetic rhyme covered by this article (see syllable rime).

Solution 2:

The poem was first published in 1798 - but even by the standards of the time, it had a lot of archaic words and spellings.

It was substantially revised by Coleridge before being republished some 20 years later, but he kept lots of archaic spellings, including rime.

I'd just say Coleridge did this for artistic effect, and leave it at that. But here's some more detail if you want to follow it up.

Solution 3:

Look at the age of the book, 1798, pre-dictionary.

It was originally called The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere, some of the words have been corrected. Not all of them have. Rime can still be used for rhyme.