Short answers, pulled from the story.
A rhyme is a repetition of similar sounds in the final stressed syllables and any following syllables of two or more words. This kind of rhyming is consciously used for a musical or aesthetic effect in the final position of lines within poems or songs.
The spelling rhyme was introduced at the beginning of the Modern English period from a scholarly but likely etymologically incorrect association with Latin. The older spelling rime survives in Modern English as a rare alternative, such as in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
The earliest surviving evidence of rhyming is the Chinese Shi Jing from around the 10th century BCE. Rhyme became a permanent even obligatory feature of Hebrew language poetry around the 4th century CE.
Perfect rhymes occur when their final stressed vowel and all following sounds are identical. Imperfect rhymes occur between a stressed and an unstressed syllable while weak rhymes happen between two sets of one or more unstressed syllables.
Rhyme serves as a powerful mnemonic device facilitating short-term memory and helps clarify metrical structure for the listener through regular use of tail rhyme. It also functions as a repeating pattern that is pleasant to hear across various languages including Arabic, Irish, and French.