' The musical powers of this company give the
poet an opportunity for learned discourse.
poet an opportunity for learned discourse.
Cambridge History of English Literature - 1908 - v02
In literary crafts-
manship, the poem excels its later and more elaborate analogue
The Nut Brown Maid. The older and simpler language, and
the ballad timbre (which runs throughout many of Henryson's
minor poems) place Robene and Makyne almost entirely outside
Chaucerian influence. This is even more obvious in Sum Prac-
tysis of Medecyne; and, for this reason, some have doubted
Henryson's authorship. The divergence is, however, no evidence
against the ascription. Taken with the pieces of the same type
which are known to be by his contemporaries, it gives us an
earlier link in the chain of popular alliterative (or neo-alliterative)
verse which resisted the Chaucerian infusion and was destined to
exert a strong influence upon later Scottish poetry. These bur-
lesque pieces in Henryson, Dunbar and Douglas and, later, in
Lyndsay (in each case a single and disconnected effort) appear
to have been of the nature of experiments or exercises in whim-
sicality, perhaps as a relief from the seriousness or more orderly
humour of the muse. The roughness in tone resembles that of
## p. 250 (#268) ############################################
250
The Scottish Chaucerians
the 'flytings,' in which it is intentional, and, in many cases,
without parallel in English literature. The persistence of this
form throughout the century, and in places least expected, may
supply an argument for James I's authorship of Peblis to the
Play and Christis Kirk on the Grene. At least, the dissimi-
larity between these and the Kingis Quair would not, did other
reasons not intervene, disprove that they came from the same pen? .
William Dunbar has held the place of honour among the Scottish
'makars. ' It may be that his reputation has been exaggerated at
the expense of his contemporaries, who (for reasons now less valid)
have not received like critical attention. Scott's statement that
he is ‘unrivalled by any which Scotland ever produced' strikes
the highest note of praise, and is, perhaps, responsible for much of
the unvaried appreciation which has followed. Russell Lowell's
criticism has arrested attention because it is exceptional, and
because it is a singular example of extravagant deprecia-
tion. It has, however, the indirect value that it prompts us to
test our judgments again, and weigh the value of such popular
epithets as 'the Scottish Chaucer' and 'the Scottish Skelton. '
There is generally a modicum of truth in easy titles of this
kind, though the essence of the epithet is too often forgotten
or misunderstood.
Of the personal history of William Dunbar, we have only a few
facts; and of the dates of his writings or of their sequence we
know too little to convince us that any account of his literary
life is more than ingenious speculation. As Dunbar appears to
have graduated bachelor of arts at St Andrews in 1477, his birth
may be dated about 1460. Internal evidence, for the most part
indirect, points to his having survived the national disaster at
Flodden, perhaps till 1520. Like Kennedy, his poetic rival in the
Flyting, Gavin Douglas and Lyndsay, and, indeed, like all the
greater poets from James I, with the exception of the school-
master of Dunfermline, he was connected with the court and,
like most of them, was of noble kin. These facts must be
kept in mind in a general estimate of the courtly school of
Scottish verse, in explaining its artificialities and in under-
standing the separation in sentiment and technique from the
more popular literature which it superseded for a time. This
consideration supplies, among other things, part of the answer
to the problem why the national or patriotic note, which is
1 See Chapter u.
## p. 251 (#269) ############################################
William Dunbar
251
strongly characteristic of later writers, is wanting at a period
when it might be expected to be prominent. In preceding
work, with the exception, perhaps, of Wallace, the appeal to
history is in very general terms; during the golden age,' when
political forces were active and Border memories might have
stirred the imagination, the poets are wholly absorbed in the
literary traditions of romance, or in the fun and the disappoint-
ments of life at court; only in the mid-sixteenth century, and,
first, most unmistakably in the French-made Complaynt of
Scotlande, do we find that perfervid Scotticism which glows in later
literature
Dunbar's kinship with the house of Dunbar did not bring him
wealth or place. After his college course he became a novice,
subject to the strict rule of the Observantines of the Franciscan
order. He appears, however, to have fretted under the restraint
of his ascetic calling. In a poem entitled How Dumbar wes
desyrd to be ane freir he makes frank confession of his diffi-
culties, and more suo describes the exhortation to him to 'refuse
the world' as the work of the devil.
This freir that did Sanct Francis thair appeir,
Ane feind he wes in liknes of ane freir;
He vaneist away with stynk and fyrie smowk;
With him me thocht all the houshend he towk,
And I awoik as wy? that wes in weir 8.
He found some relief in the roving life of a friar, and he appears
to have spent a few years in Picardy and other parts of France,
where he certainly was in 1491 with Bothwell's mission to the
French court for a bride for the young James IV. There, among
the many Scots then haunting Paris, he may have met Gavin
Douglas, Elphinstone, bishop of Aberdeen, Hector Boece and John
Major; but the Sorbonne, where they were to be found, had,
probably, few attractions for him. It is tempting to speculate that
the wild life of the faubourgs and the talent of Bohemians like
François Villon (whose poems had just been printed posthumously,
in 1489) had the strongest claims upon the restless friar. It has
been assumed, not without some plausibility, that there are traces
in the Scot's poems of direct French influence, in other and
deeper ways than in the choice of subjects which Villon had
made his own. By 1500, he was back in Scotland, no longer an
Observantine, but a priest at court, pensioned by the king, and
moving about as a minor official in royal business. The title
See also Chapter IL
• fear (doubt).
man.
## p. 252 (#270) ############################################
252
The Scottish Chaucerians
‘rhymer of Scotland,' in the English privy council accounts
during the sojourn in London of the Scottish embassy for the
hand of Margaret Tudor, has been taken by some to mean that,
beyond his being the poetical member of the company who
praised London in verse", he was recognised to some extent as
laureate. Of his literary life, which appears to have begun with
his association with the court in 1500, we know nothing beyond
what the poems tell us indirectly; but of the sentiment of his age,
as seen by a courtier, we have the fullest particulars.
Dunbar's poems fall into two main divisions—the allegorical
and occasional. Both show the strength of Chaucerian tradition,
the former in a more immediate way, the latter (with full allow-
ance for northern and personal characteristics) in the continuance
of the satirical, moral and religious themes of the shorter poems of
Chaucer's English followers. There is, however, a difference of
atmosphere. Dunbar's work is conditioned by the circumstance
that it was written by a courtier for the court Poetry had fallen,
as has been hinted, into close association with a small royal and
aristocratic coterie. But life at court, though it showed a political
and intellectual vigour which contrasts favourably with that
of earlier reigns, and had grown more picturesque in serving the
exuberant taste of the 'redoubted roye,' was circumscribed in
its literary interests, and, with all its alertness, added little or
nothing to the sum of poetic endeavour. The age may have been
'golden '; it was not ‘spacious. ' Literary consciousness, when it
existed, turned to the romantic past or to the old ritual of allegory,
or to the re-editing, for contemporary purposes, of plaints of empty
purses, of the fickleness of woman, of the vanity of the world and
of the lack of piety; or it was absorbed in the merely technical
task of illuminating or aureating the 'rude' vernacular? If,
however, the area was not enlarged, it was worked more fully.
From this experience, at the hands of writers of great talent,
much was gained for Scottish verse which has the appearance of
newness to the literary historian. What is, therefore, outstanding
in Dunbar, is not, as in Henryson, the creation of new genres
1 Beginning 'London, thou art of townes A per se,' and with London, thou art
the flour of Cities all,' as the burden of each stanza. The poem is, with all its con.
ventionality of phrase, of considerable historical interest.
Cf. the address to Chaucer, Gower and Lydgate in the well-known stanzas of
the Goldyn Targe (11. 253—270). There, the praise is of Chaucer's ‘anamalit termis
celicall,' and of the light which he brought to oure Inglisch' (i. e. Lowland Scots).
And the praise of Gower and Lydgate is that by their “sugarit lippis and tongis
aureate' and 'angel mouthis most mellifluate' they have illumined the language and
'our-gilt oure speche, that imperfyte stude. '
6
## p. 253 (#271) ############################################
Dunbar's Allegories 253
or fresh motives. Compared with Henryson, Dunbar shows
no advance in broad purpose and sheer originality. He is,
apart from all question of vocabulary, more artificial in the stricter
historical sense; and he might have deserved no better from
posterity than Lydgate and Occleve have deserved had he not
suppled the rhythms and added life and humour to the old matter.
Dunbar's debt to Chaucer is less intimate and spiritual than
Henryson's or king James's. He could not have given us the after-
tale of Cresseid, or caught so clearly the sentiment of the master
in a new Quair. Chaucer is, to him, the 'rose of rethoris all'
(as every poet of the century admitted), but he follows him at
a distance and, perhaps, with divided affection for the newer
French writers. Still, the Chaucerian influence is there, though the
evidence of direct drawing from the well of English is less clear.
The Goldyn Targe has the simple motif of the poet's appearance
(in a dream, on a conventional May morning) before the court of
Venus, where he endeavours to resist the arrows of dame Beauty
and her friends with the aid of Reason's 'scheld of gold so
schene. ' He is wounded near to death and taken prisoner. Then
he knows that the lady is 'lustiar of chere': when she de-
parts, he is delivered over to Heaviness. As she sails off, the
noise of the ship’s guns wake him to the enjoyment, once more, of
the May morning and the singing birds. The allegory is of the
simplest; the contemporary didacticism has hardly invaded it, and
the abstractions which the poet introduces are in closer kinship
with the persons of courtly allegory than with the personages
in the moralities of the period. A similar theme appears in
his well-known short poem, Sen that I am a presoneir (some-
times known as Beauty and the Prisoner); but there didactic
and personal elements have been added. It is probable that
criticism has been over busy in seeing references to the king,
to his liaison with Margaret Drummond and to her suspicious
death. In The Thrissil and the Rois, the intrusion of the
moralitas is at once obvious. The setting is heraldic: the
theme is the marriage of James IV and Margaret Tudor. The
familiar machinery of the dream-poem is here; but the general
effect is that of an elaborate prothalamium. It is an easy stage
from this poetic type to the pageant and masque ; but in the
single example of Dunbar's 'dramatic' endeavour-in the fragment
of The Interlude of the Droichis Part of the Play—the alle-
gory is used merely to enhance the whimsicality of the design.
In Chaucer's simpler narrative manner, we have the tale of
The Freiris of Berwik, dealing with the old theme of an untrue
## p. 254 (#272) ############################################
254
The Scottish Chaucerians
wife caught in her own wiles. The ascription of this piece to
Dunbar has been doubted, but there is nothing in it unworthy
of his metrical art or his satiric talent. The Tretis of the Tua
Mariit Wemen and the Wedo, which is certainly his, echoes the
gossip of the Wife of Bath, but it speaks with a freedom from
which Chaucer would have shrunk. Its antique line and allitera-
tion connect it formally with the popular poetry which Chaucer
parodied and undid ; yet the association is remote. For it is
essentially a literary exercise, perhaps a burlesque pastiche to
satisfy the romantic fashion of the court. The art of this remark-
able poem is always conscious. In the fierce thrusts of sarcasm,
in the warping of words, uncouth and strong, we seem to see the
personal satisfaction of the craftsman in his triumph of phrase
and line.
I have ane wallidrag, ane worme, ane auld wobat carle,
A waistit walroun, na worth bot wourdis to clatter;
Ane bumbart, ane dron bee, ane bag full of flewme,
Ane skabbit skarth, ane scorpioun—
So hurtle the words in this dialogue on matrimonial risks. In
some respects, it is difficult to differentiate this tour de force from
a 'flyting'; but the husbands are not present, and may not (if they
could) meet the torrents of abuse.
In considering the satirical and occasional poems of Dunbar,
which constitute at once the greater and more important portion
of his work, it is well, in the first place, to see how far the
Chaucerian influence holds. Here, at least, it is difficult to allow
the aptness of the title 'the Scottish Chaucer,' unless it mean
nothing more than that Dunbar, by analogical compliment, has the
first place in Early and Middle Scots, as Chaucer has in Middle
English. It cannot mean that he shows Chaucer's spirit and out-
look, as Henryson has shown ; nor that Dunbar is, in these satirical
and occasional pieces, on which his wider reputation rests, a
whole-hearted pupil in the craft of verse. The title would have
appeared more fitting in his own day, when his appeal to con-
temporaries (apart from any acknowledged debt to his forerunner)
was of the same technical kind which Chaucer had made to his;
but a comparison, nowadays, has to take account of other matters.
Both poets are richly endowed with humour: it is the outstanding
quality of each ; but in no respect do their differences appear
more clearly. Here, Dunbar is unlike Henryson in lacking the
gentler and more intimate fun of their master. He is a satirist in
a
the stronger sense ; more boisterous in his fun, and showing, in his
wildest frolics, an imaginative range which has no counterpart
## p. 255 (#273) ############################################
The Grotesque in Dunbar
255
in the southern poet. His satirical powers are best seen in his
Tidings from the Session, an attack on the law courts, and in his
Satire on Edinburgh, in which he denounces the filthy condition
of the capital; in his verses on his old friends the Franciscans,
and on the flying friar of Tungland who came to grief because he
had used hens' feathers; in his fiercer invectives of the General
Satire and The Epitaph on Donald Owre; and in the vision of
The Dance of the Sevin Deidlie Synnis. The last is one of the best
examples of Dunbar's realism and literary cunning in suiting the
word and line to the sense, as in the description of Sloth-
Syne Sueirnes, at the secound bidding,
Come lyk & sow out of a midding,
Full slepy wes his grunziel:
Mony sweir2 bumbarda belly-huddroun,
Mony slute daw and slepy duddroun5,
Him serwit ay with sounzie 6.
In all, but especially in the Dance, there is not a little of the
fantastic ingenuity which appears in his more purely comic
sketches. And these again, though mainly 'fooleries,' are not
without satirical intention, as in his Joustis of the Tailzeour and
the Sowtar and his Black Lady, where the fun is a covert attack
on the courtly craze for tourneys. Of all the pieces in this category,
his Ballad of Kynd Kittok best illustrates that elfin quality which
relieves his 'busteous' strain of ridicule. The waggish description
of the thirsty alewife, her journey on a snail, her arrival in
heaven and her sojourn there till, desiring a 'fresh drink,'
she wanders forth and is not allowed to return, her going back to
her ale-house and the poet's concluding request,
Frendis, I pray 30u hertfully,
Gif ze be thristy or dry,
Drink with my Guddame, as 30 ga by,
Anys for my saik-
strike a note, of which the echoes are to be often heard in later
northern verse? . There is more than an accidental likeness between
this roguish request to the reader and the close of Burns's Address
to the Deil and The Dying Words of Poor Mailie. The reach of
Dunbar's fancy is at its greatest in The Interlude. There, in
his description of Fyn, he writes-
He gat my grauntschir Gog Magog ;
Ay quhen he dansit, the warld wald schog 8;
Five thousand ellis zeid in his frog
9
Of Hieland pladdis, and mair.
i face (snout).
8 glutton. • dirty slut.
osloven.
care, attention.
7 See Chapter XI.
8 shake.
frook,' tunio.
a lazy.
## p. 256 (#274) ############################################
256
The Scottish Chaucerians
>
zit he was bot of tendir zouth;
Bot eftir he grewe mekle at fonthi,
Ellevyne myle wyde met was his mouth,
His teith was ten ell sqwair,
He wald apon his tais stand,
And tak the sternis doune with his hand
And set them in a gold garland
Above his wyfis hair.
This is a triumph of the grotesque on the grand scale which the
creator of Gargantua would have admired, and could not have
excelled. Something of the same quality is seen in his wild
picture of the birth of Antichrist in mid-air, in his Vision, which
opens with the customary dream-setting and gives no hint of
this turn in the poet's fancy.
Of lyrical, as of strictly dramatic, excellence, there is little
in Dunbar. His love poems are few and, taken as a whole,
undistinguished. His religious and moral verses, the one of the
hymn type, the other on the hackneyed themes of Good Counsel,
Vanitas vanitatum and (when he is cheery in mood) Blitheness,
deserve commendation for little beyond their metrical facility.
They are too short to be tedious to the modern reader. He uses
the old device of the 'testament' to good purpose in the comic
poem on the physician Andrew Kennedy; and, here again, his
imagination transforms the old convention. In all Goliardic
literature there is nothing to excel this stanza :
A barell bung ay at my bosum,
Of varldis gud I bad na mair;
Et corpus meum ebriosum
I leif onto the toune of Air;
In a draf mydding for ever and ay
Ut ibi sepeliri queam,
Quhar drink and draff may ilka day
Be cassyne super faciem meam.
In The Dance, already referred to, Dunbar works up the familiar
material of the Danse Macabre. In his Flyting of Dunbar and
Kennedie (his poetic rival Walter Kennedy) we have a Scottish
example of the widely-spread European genre in its extremest
form. It remains a masterpiece of scurrility. The purpose of
the combatants in this literary exercise was to outdo each other in
abuse, and yet not to quarrel. It is hard for the most catholic
modern to believe that they kept the peace, though Dunbar speaks
kindly of his 'friend' in his Lament. The indirect value of
The Flyting is great-linguistically, in its vocabulary of invective;
1 lit. "in fullness (fulth). '
9
post.
measure.
3
## p. 257 (#275) ############################################
Dunbar's Prosodic Range 257
6
biographically, for it tells us more of the poet than we derive
from any other source ; historically, in respect of its place in
the development of this favourite genre in Scots, and its testimony
to the antipathies of Celtic and Lowland civilisations in the early
sixteenth century? A like indirect interest attaches to The
Lament for the Makaris, which Dunbar wrote 'quhen he was
seik. ' It is a poem on the passing of human endeavour, a motif
which had served the purpose of scores of fifteenth century laments.
If it was written under the influence of Villon's master ballades,
praise must be allowed to Dunbar that he endenised the French-
man's art with some success. The solemn effect of the burden,
Timor mortis conturbat me, occasional happy turns, as
He takis the campioun in the stour,
The capitane closit in the tour,
The lady in bour full of bewte;
Timor Mortis conturbat me
and a sense of literary restraint give the piece distinction above
the average poem of this type. Much of its reputation nowadays
is as a historical document, which tells us nearly all that we
know of some of Dunbar's contemporaries. He names his greater
predecessors, and, properly, puts Chaucer first on the roll.
Dunbar, we have said, has been called the 'Scottish Skelton. '
There is some justice in the likening, but the reasons are not
consistent with those which give him the title of the 'Scottish
Chaucer. ' His allegiance to Chaucer is shown in literary reminis-
cence, whether of motif, or phrase, or stanza-a bookish reminis-
cence, which often helps us to distinguish the fundamental
differences in outlook. There is a spiritual antithesis ; but there
are textual bonds. With Skelton, on the other hand, who must
have been the borrower, had any contact been possible, he stands
in close analogy, in two important respects. In the first place,
both poets, in their unexpected turns of satire and in their
jugglery of words, anticipate the Rabelaisian humour in its intel-
lectual audacity and inexhaustible resource. Whether in wider
excursions of fancy, or in verbal orgies, such as in the Com-
plaint to the King-
Bot fowll, jow-jowrdane-hedit jevellis,
Cowkin-kenseis, and culroun kewellis;
Stuffettis, strekouris, and stafische strummellis;
Wyld haschbaldis, haggarbaldis, and hummellis;
Drunoartis, dysouris, dyvouris, drewellis,
Misgydit memberis of the dewellis; etc.
i See Chapter 1v.
E. L. II. CH. I.
17
<
## p. 258 (#276) ############################################
258
The Scottish Chaucerians
6
we are constantly reminded of the rector of Diss, and often of
the historian of Gargantua and his son Pantagruel. In the second
place, their metrical purposes have much in common. The
prosodic variety of both is always our first impression-of Dunbar,
without parallel in range and competence in any English writer
before his time. The interest of the matter in him, as in Skelton,
is that the variety is not the effect of mere literary restlessness,
but the outcome of experiment to extend the capabilities of
English verse in counterpart to what was being done by 'aurea-
tion' and other processes for poetic diction and style. If Dunbar's
prosodic cunning were less remarkable, and if Skelton's so-called
“doggerel' were even less palatable than it is to those who
take a narrow view of this problem of English, the endeavour
of both poets, and of the Scot in particular, would lose none of
its historical value. Dunbar borrows from all quarters, chiefly
from Chaucer, but also from older popular forms, and from
French models found in that other Bohemian genius, François
Villon. Yet he is not a mere copyist: his changes in the
grouping of the lines in the stanza, his varying the length
of the verses and his grafting of one form upon another,
are evidence of the literary artist at work. It is useless to
attempt to illustrate this by selection from the hundred and one
poems which are ascribed to him, for a selection cannot disclose
his kaleidoscopic ingenuity. The remarkable range and resource
of his technique and the vitality of his imagination must redeem
his work in the eyes of the most alien modern of the charges
which have been brought against the art of Lydgate and Occleve.
His was not the heavy-headed fancy of a moribund medievalism.
The explanation of the difference may be, after all, largely personal.
Only so far is he of the renascence. The chief interest to us lies in
the old things which he has chosen and recast, as genius may
do at any time, whether the age be 'dark' or 'new. '
If no serious effort has been made to claim Dunbar as a child of
the renascence, except in respect of his restlessness, in which
he shows something of the human and individual qualities asso-
ciated with that movement, his contemporary Gavin Douglas bas
been frequently described as the embodiment the fullest and
also the first among Scottish poets, of the principles of neo-
classicism. A critic of high consideration has recently said that
‘no poet, not even Dante himself, ever drank more deeply of the
spirit of Virgil than Gavin Douglas. ' Others who consent to this
## p. 259 (#277) ############################################
Gavin Douglas
259
6
have laid stress on the fact that Douglas was the first translator of
a great verse classic into the vernacular. If this conclusion were
as just as it is, at first sight, plausible, Douglas could have no
place, or only a very minor place in this chapter, which assumes
a fundamental homogeneity in medieval method, in most respects
incongruent with the literary intention of the new learning.
Like Dunbar, Douglas was of good family, and a cleric; but he
had influence and fortune which brought him a large measure of
worldly success. He had become a dignitary of the church when
the erst-friar was riming about the court and writing complaints
on his empty purse. Unlike Dunbar, he had no call to authorship.
His literary career, if we may so speak of the years when all
his work was written, is but a part of a busy life, the early
experience of a man destined to lose his leisure in the strife
of politics. He was the third son of Archibald, fifth earl of
Angus, the 'great earl,' better known as 'Bell-the-Cat. ' He was
born a 1475, and completed his early training in 1494, when
he graduated at St Andrews. In 1501, after spending some
time in cures in Aberdeenshire and the Lothians, he became
provost of the collegiate church of St Giles in Edinburgh,
his tenure of which partly synchronised with his father's civil
provostship of the capital. Between this date and 1513 (that
defining year in all Scottish biography of this period) he did all
his literary work, The Palice of Honour, King Hart, Conscience
and the translation of the Aeneid, begun early in 1512 and printed
in 1513. Other writings have been ascribed to him-a translation
of Ovid (though, in one place, he speaks of this work as a task
for another), plays on sacred subjects and sundry Aureae
orationes ; but none are extant, and we have his testimony in
the 'Conclusion of the Aeneid), which may be accepted as valid,
that he made Vergil his last literary task.
Thus vp my pen and instrumentis full zoyr
On Virgillis post I fix for evirmore,
Nevir, from thens, syk materis to discryve:
My muse sal now be cleyn contemplatyve,
And solitar, as doith the byrd in cage;
Sen fer byworn is all my childis age,
And of my dayis neir passyt the half dait
That natur suld me grantyn, weil I wait.
His later history is exclusively political, a record of promotions
and oustings. He was bishop of Dunkeld from 1516 to 1520, when
he was deprived of his see because he had gone to the English
court for aid in the Douglas-Albany quarrels. Two years later, he
17-2
## p. 260 (#278) ############################################
260
The Scottish Chaucerians
died of plague in London, in the house of his friend lord Dacre.
Just before his death, he had sent to another friend, Polydore
Vergil, material for the latter's History, by way of correction
of Major's account, which Vergil had proposed to use.
The Palice of Honour, Douglas's earliest work, is an example,
in every essential sense, of the later type of dream-poem, already
illustrated in the Goldyn Targe. It is, however, a more ambitious
work (extending to 2166 lines); and it shows more clearly the de-
cadence of the old method, partly by its over-elaboration, partly
by the inferior art of the verse, partly by the incongruous welding
of the pictorial and moral purposes. The poem is dedicated to
James IV, who was probably expected to read between the lines
and profit from the long lesson on the triumph of virtue. The
poem opens in a 'gardyne of plesance,' and in May-time, as
of yore. The poet falls asleep, and dreams of a desert place
‘amyd a forest by a hyddeous flude, with grysly fische. ' Queen
Sapience appears with her learned company. This is described
by the caitiffs Sinon and Achitophel, who wander in its wake.
Solomon, Aristotle, Diogenes, Melchisedech and all the others
are there and are duly catalogued. The company passes on to the
palace. Then follow Venus and her court with Cupid, 'the god
maist dissauabill.
' The musical powers of this company give the
poet an opportunity for learned discourse. We recall several
earlier passages of the kind, and especially Henryson's account in
the Orpheus. Douglas's remark,
Na mair I vnderstude thir numbers fine,
Be God, than dois a gukgol or a swine,
almost turns the likeness into a plagiarism from his predecessor.
The procession of lovers moves the poet to sing a 'ballet of in-
constant love,' which stops the court and brings about his arrest.
His pleas that ‘ladyis may be judges in na place' and that he
is a 'spiritual man' avail nothing; he is found guilty. Re-
flecting sorrowfully on what his punishment may be, he sees
another procession approach, that of the muses with their court
of poets. Calliope pleads for him, and he is released on condition
that he will sing in honour of Venus. Thereafter, the poet
proceeds to the palace, in companionship with a nymph, bestowed
by Calliope. They pass through all countries and by all historic
places, and stop for festivity at the well of the muses. Here
Ovid, Vergil and others, including Poggio and Valla, recite by
command before the company. The palace lies beyond on a
1 cuckoo.
## p. 261 (#279) ############################################
Douglas's Allegory
261
rock of 'slid hard marbell stone,' most difficult of ascent. On
the way up, the poet comes upon the purgatory of idle folk. The
nymph clutches him by the hair and carries him across this pit to
the top, 'as Abacuk was brocht in Babylone. ' Then he looks
down on the wretched world and sees the carvel of the State
of Grace struggling in the waters. After a homily from the nymph
on the need of grace, he turns to the palace, which is described
with full architectural detail. In it, he sees Venus on her throne;
and he looks in her mirror and beholds a large number of noble
men and women (fitly described in a late rubric as a 'lang catha-
a
logue'). Venus observes her former prisoner, and, bidding him
welcome, gives him a book to translate.
Tuichand this buik peragenture ze sall heir
Sum tyme eftir, quhen I have mair laseir.
So it would appear that Douglas had his Aeneid then in mind.
Sinon and Achitophel endeavour to gain an entrance. Cati-
line, pressing in at a window, is struck down by a book thrown by
Tully. Other vicious people fail in their attempts. Then follows a
description of the court of the prince of Honour and of secretary
Conscience, comptroller Discretion, ushers Humanity and True
Relation and many other retainers. The glories of the hall
overcome the poet, who falls down into a 'deidlie swoun. ' The
nymph ministers to him, and gives him a thirteen-stanza sermon
on virtue. Later, she suggests that they should take the air in
the palace garden. When following her over the tree-bridge
which leads to this spot, the poet falls 'out ouir the heid into
the stank adoun,' and (as the rime anticipates) 'is neir to droun. '
Then he discovers that all has been a dream. A ballad in com-
mendation of honour and virtue concludes the poem.
The inspiration of the poem is unmistakable; and it would
be easy to prove that not only does it carry on the Chaucerian
allegory, but that it is directly indebted to
Geffray Chauceir, as A per se sans peir
In his vulgare,
who appears with Gower, Lydgate, Kennedy, Dunbar and others
in the court of poets. There is nothing new in the machinery
to those who know the Rose sequence, The House of Fame
and The Court of Love. The whole interest of the poem is
retrospective. Even minor touches which appear to give some
allowance of individuality can be traced to predecessors. There
is absolutely nothing in motif or in style to cause us to suspect
the humanist. Douglas's interest in Vergil—if Venus's gift be
6
## p. 262 (#280) ############################################
262
The Scottish Chaucerians
a
rightly interpreted—is an undiscriminating interest which groups
the Mantuan, Boccaccio and Gower together, and awards like
praise to each. He introduces Ovid and Vergil at the feast by
the well of the muses, much as they had been introduced by
the English poets, though, perhaps, with some extension of their
'moral' usefulness, as was inevitable in the later type of allegory.
The Palice of Honour is a medieval document, differing from
the older as a pastiche must, not because the new spirit disturbs
its tenor.
Of King Hart, the same may be said, though it must be allowed
to be a better poem, better girded as an allegory, and surer in
its harmony of words. Its superiority comes from a fuller appre-
ciation of Chaucerian values : it cannot be explained, though some
have so considered it, as an effect of Vergilian study. There
is not the faintest trace of renascence habit in the story of
king Heart in his 'comlie castle strang' and of his five servitors
(the senses), queen Pleasance, Foresight and other abstractions.
The setting and sentiment recall the court of the prince of
Honour in the Palice of Honour; and that, again, repeats the
picture of the court of the palace in all the early continental
versions of the cours d'amour.
Conscience is a four-stanza conceit telling how the moral
sense has grown dull in men. 'Conscience' they had ; then they
clipped away the 'con,' and had 'science' and 'na mair. ' Then,
casting off 'sci,' they were left with 'ens,'
Quhilk in our language signifies that schrew
Riches and geir, that gart all grace go hens.
Douglas's translation of the twelve books of the Aeneid and
of the thirteenth by Mapheus Vegius is his most interesting work,
apart from the question how far his tone is Vergilian in the stricter
humanistic sense. In respect of the thirteen prologues and
supplementary verses of a more personal character, it may be
said to be more original than the so-called 'original' allegories.
Not all of these are introductory to the 'books' to which they
are attached; and those which are most pertinent are concerned
with the allegory of Vergil's poem. Some may be called academic
exercises, which may have been written at odd times, and, perhaps,
for other purposes. A picture of a Scottish winter, which has been
often quoted, introduces book vı; another, of May, book XII;
and another, of June, book XIII. The subjects may have been
suggested by the time of the year when the poet reached these
stages in translation ; if they were deliberately introduced for
1
6
## p. 263 (#281) ############################################
Douglas's Aeneid
263
pictorial relief, they are the nearest approach to renascence habit
in the whole work and in all Douglas's writings. A tour de force
in the popular alliterative stanza, not without suspicion of burlesque
intention, is offered as the appropriate preface to the eighth book!
Sum latit lattoun, but lay, lepis in laud lyte;
Sam penis furth a pan boddum to prent fals plakkis;
Sum goukis qubill the glas pyg grow full of gold zit,
Throw cury of the quentassens, thocht clay mugis crakis;
Sum warnour for this warldis wrak wendis by his wyt;
Sum trachour crynis the cunze, and kepis corn stakis;
Sum prig penny, sum pyk thank wyth privy promyt;
Sum garris wyth a ged staf to jag throw blak jakkis.
Quhat fynzeit fayr, quhat flattry, and quhat fals talis !
Quhat misery is now in land!
How mony crakyt cunnand!
For nowthir aiths, nor band,
Nor selis avalisl.
This audacious break in the web of the Aeneid may have served
some purpose of rest or refreshment, such as was given by the
incongruous farce within the tedious moralities of the age; but it
is not the devising of a humanist. The dialogue between the trans-
lator and Mapheus Vegius, in the thirteenth prologue, follows the
medieval fashion, which was familiar before Henryson conversed with
Aesop about his Fables. The first, or general, prologue is the most
important, and is frequently referred to for evidence of Douglas's
new outlook. The opening homage to Vergil is instructive.
Laude, honor, prasingis, thankis infynite
To the, and thi dulce ornate fresch endite,
Mast reverend Virgill, of Latyne poetis prince,
Gemme of ingine and fluide of eloquence,
Thow peirles perle, patroun of poetrie,
Rois, register, palme, laurer, and glory,
Chosin cherbukle, cheif flour and cedir tree,
Lanterne, leidsterne, mirrour, and A per se,
Master of masteris, sweit sours and springand well.
It is not difficult to underline the epithets which have done good
service in the Chaucerian ritual. Indeed, were we to read
'Chaucer' for 'Virgill' and 'English' for 'Latyne' in the third line,
we should have a straightforward 'Chaucerian' passage, true
in word and sentiment. But Chaucer is really not far away.
Douglas names him ere long, and loads him with the old honours,
though he places him second to Vergil. The reason for this is
1 Glossarial notes to this passage would be too numerous and too speculative for
this place. Those who are familiar with this genre know that strict verbal interpreta-
tion is hardly possible, and that any serious attempt towards it may disologe little but
a pedantio misunderstanding of the poet's intention,
## p. 264 (#282) ############################################
264
The Scottish Chaucerians
6
interesting. Chaucer, in telling the story of Dido in The Legend
of Good Women, had said,
I cond folwe, word for word, Virgyle,
But it wolde lasten al to long a whyle.
This, Douglas politely disputes, especially as Chaucer had said,
rather 'boldly,' that he followed Vergil in stating that 'Eneas
to Dido was forsworne. ' Douglas is careful to disprove this,
because it distorts Vergil's purpose to teach all kind of virtue
by the consistent goodness of his hero, and to point out (as
Henryson seems to have thought in his Cresseid) that Chaucer
was ever, God wait, wemenis frend. ' We are a long way
from Vergil here; as we are when the poet complains that
Caxton's translation does not do justice to what is hidden under
the cluddes of dirk poetry. ' Douglas makes a more plausible claim
to be a modern in a further objection that Caxton's translation
(taken from a French version) is bad, that it is out in its words
and its geography, and marred by omissions ; in quoting
Horace on the true method of rendering a foreign author;
and in urging the advantages to vernacular style from the
reading of the Latin poet. Yet, after all, his aim was to make
Vergil's book a literary bible, as Boccaccio's and Chaucer's were.
He desires to be thanked by schoolmasters and by 'onletterit'
folk, to whom he has given a new lesson”; he joins St Gregory's
opinion with Horace's; he sees a Christian purpose in his work,
and he prays for guidance to Mary and her Son, that heavenlie
Orpheus. ' His Vergil is, for the most part, the Vergil of the dark
ages, part prophet, part wizard, master of 'illusionis by devillich
werkis and coniurationis. ' These, he confesses, are now more rare
for 'the faith is now mair ferme'; but the circumstances should
have been allowed for by the dullard Caxton. When he returns
in the prologue to the sixth book to chide those who consider
that book but full of 'gaistis and elriche fantaseis ' and 'browneis
and bogillis,' he says of Vergil-
As tuiching hym, writis Ascencius :
Feill of his wordís bene lyk the appostillis sawis;
He is ane hie theolog sentencius,
And maist profound philosophour he hym schawis.
Thocht sum his writis frawart our faith part drawis,
Na wondir; he was na cristin man, per de;
He was a gentile, and leifit on payane lawis,
And zit he puttis ane God, Fadir maist hie.
So it would appear, only too clearly, from these interesting
1 Directioun and Exclamatioun.
## p. 265 (#283) ############################################
Douglas's Medievalism
265
prologues, that Douglas's literary attitude was not modern, and
that he is not even so much a Janus-poet as his position and
opportunities would warrant. When we separate him from his
literary neighbours, it must be as a dilettante.
Probably, the main interest of the translation, and of most
of Douglas's work, is philological. No Scot has built up such
a diction, drawn from all sources, full of forgotten tags of allitera-
tive romance, Chaucerian English, dialectal borrowings from
Scandinavian, French, Latin. No one is harder to interpret.
Literary merit is not wanting; yet, in those passages, and especially
in his Aeneid, which strike the reader most, by the vigorous,
often onomatopoeic force of the vocabulary, the pleasure is
not what he who knows his Vergil expects, and must demand.
The excellence of such a description as that of Acheron-
With holl bismel, and hiduus swelth wnrude,
Drumlie of mud, and scaldand as it wer wodą,
Poplands and bullerand* furth on athir hand
Onto Cochitus all his slik 5 and sand,
is not the excellence of the original. We are sometimes reminded
of Stanyhurst's later effort, in which, however much we may
admire the verbal briskness in the marshalling of his thunder
and storm passages, we feel that all ‘wanteth the trew decorum
of Vergilian sentiment. The archaic artifices, the metrical loose-
ness and the pedestrian tread, where Vergil is alert, destroy the
illusion. Still, if we may not give Douglas more than his due,
we must not give him less. His Aeneid is a remarkable effort,
and is gratefully remembered as the first translation of a great
classical poet into English, northern or southern.
Douglas's work, considered as a whole, expresses, in the amplest
way, the content of the later allegorical literature. He has lost
the secret of the older devices, and does not understand the new
which were about to usurp their place. He has not the artistic
sense of Henryson, or the resource of Dunbar. His pictorial
quality, on which so much stress has been laid by some who would
have him to be a modern, is not the pagan delight, nor is its use as
an interpretation of his mood after the fashion of the renascence.
Some passages which have been cited to prove the contrary are but
copies from Henryson and earlier work. In him, as in Hawes (to
quote a favourite metaphor of both) ‘the bell is rung to evensong. '
If Lyndsay and others in the next period still show Chaucerian
influence, with them it is a reminiscence, amid the turmoil of
the new day.
abysm. 3 mad, wild. "bubbling. ' roaring, "boiling. ' slime, wet mud.
## p. 266 (#284) ############################################
266
The Scottish Chaucerians
The minor contemporaries of Henryson, Dunbar and Douglas
add nothing to our sketch of Middle Scots poetry. What in-
formation we have of these forgotten writers is derived from
Dunbar's Lament for the Makaris, Douglas's Palice of Honour
and Lyndsay's Testament of the Papyngo. Historians have
probably exaggerated the extent and importance of this subor-
dinate literaturel. It is true we know little of the authors or of
their works, but what we do know shows that to speak of 'nests of
singing birds,' or to treat Dunbar as a kind of Shakespearean
eminence overtopping a great range of song, is amiable hyperbole.
What is extant of this 'Chaucerian' material lies in the lower
levels of Lydgate's and Occleve's work. The subjects are of the
familiar fifteenth century types, and, when not concerned with the
rougher popular matter, repeat the old plaints on the ways of
courts and women and on the vanity of life. Walter Kennedy,
Dunbar's rival in The Flyting, and the most eminent of these
minors, has left five poems, The Passioun of Christ, Ane Ballat
in praise of Our Lady, Pious Counsale, The Prais of Aige and
Ane agit Manis invective against Mouth-thankless. His reputa-
tion must rest on the Flyting rather than on the other pieces,
which are conventional and dull; and there only because of the
antiquarian interest of his 'billingsgate' and his Celtic sym-
pathies. With Kennedy may be named Quintyne Schaw, who
wrote an Advyce to a Courtier.
In a general retrospect of this Chaucerian school it is not
difficult to note that the discipleship, though sincere, was by no
means blind. If the Scottish poets imitated well, and often
caught the sentiment with remarkable felicity, it was because
they were not painful devotees. In what they did they showed an
appreciation beyond the faculty of Chaucer's southern admirers ;
and, though the artistic sense implied in this appreciation was
dulled by the century's craving for a ‘moral' to every fancy, their
a
individuality saved them from the fate which befel their neigh-
bours. Good as the Testament of Cresseid is, its chief interest
to the historical student is that it was written, that Henryson
dared to find a sequel to the master's well-rounded story. Douglas's
protest in the general prologue to his Aeneid, though it fail to prove
to us that Vergil was much more to him than Chaucer was, shows
an audacity which only an intelligent intimacy with the English
poet could allow. The vitality of such appreciation, far from
undoing the Chaucerian tradition, gave it a fresh lease of life
before it yielded, inevitably, to the newer fashion.
1 For the non-Chaucerian elements see next chapter,
See Chapter iv.
## p. 267 (#285) ############################################
CHAPTER XI
THE MIDDLE SCOTS ANTHOLOGIES: ANONYMOUS
VERSE AND EARLY PROSE
STRONG as was the Chaucerian influence on the Scottish poets
during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, it by no means sup-
pressed or transformed what may be called the native habit of
Scottish verse. That influence came, as has been shown, from the
courtly side; it was a fashion first set by the author of The
Kingis Quair—in its treatment of the language and in its literary
mannerisms, a deliberate co-operation with the general European
effort to dignify the vernaculars. It did much, but it came late;
and, being perhaps too artificial, it yielded, in due course, to another
southern influence, more powerful and permanent. Were the
Chaucerian makars of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and
their successors in the seventeenth century to be taken as the sole
representatives of northern literature, it would be hard to account
for the remarkable outburst of national verse amid the conven-
tionalities of the eighteenth. Chaucer and the Elizabethans do
not explain Ramsay' and Fergusson and Burns : and these writers
are not a sudden dialectal sport in the literary development. It
is the object of this chapter to show that the native sentiment
which has its fullest expression in these 'modern' poets was always
active, and that the evidence of its existence and of its methods is
clear, even during that period when the higher literary genius of
the country was most strongly affected by foreign models. The
vitality of this popular habit has been shown in the most courtly
and 'aureate' verse of the so-called 'golden age. ' Even in those
passages in which the poets may be suspected of burlesquing this
habit-whether by direct satire or in half-conscious repetition of
Chaucer's dislike of 'rum ram ruf'-the acknowledgment is
significant. The thesis of this chapter is, therefore, to supplement
what has been said parenthetically of this non-Chaucerian 'matter. '
It deals with those pieces which lie outside the work of the
1 See Chapter 1v, p. 95, note.
## p. 268 (#286) ############################################
268 Anonymous and Popular Scottish Verse
*Chaucerians,' for the most part with those anonymous poems
which have been preserved in the greater anthologies of the
sixteenth century. The interest of this body of literature is
complex-in sentiment, in choice of subject, and, not least, in
verse technique.
No literature has been better served than Scottish has been by
the industry of early anthologists. The all-important Cancioneros
have not done more for Spanish ; and they lack the exclusive
and exhaustive value of the Scottish collections. For the latter
preserve not only all that is known of the work of some of the
greatest poets, but, also, a large body of minor verse, without which
we should have formed but a poor estimate of contemporary
taste, and without which we should have lost the perspective of
later literature. These anthologies are representative in the
truest sense. They were written out by men who were, first and
foremost, collectors and antiquaries, who show no critical obsession,
no desire to select and honour what may have appealed most to
their individual taste. Their books are historical documents, which
must be interpreted by historical methods! .
The importance of this fugitive 'popular' literature is made
clear in the references by the more academic' writers. Dunbar's
Lament for the Makaris derives part of its bibliographical value
from its record of poets who owed little or nothing to 'noble
Chaucer, of makaris flour. ' Though Gavin Douglas, in his Palice
of Honour, names but Kennedie, Dunbar, and Quintine (Schaw]
as the Scottish companions of the world's poets, yet in the 'lang
catbalogue of nobyll men and wemen,' he tells us-
I saw Raf Coilzear with the thrawin brow,
Craibit Johne the Reif, and auld Cowkewyis sow;
And how the wran came out of Ailssay;
And Peirs Plowman that maid his workmen fow;
Greit Gowmakmorne and Fyn Makcoul, and how
Thay suld be goddis in Ireland as they say;
Thair saw I Maitland vpon auld Beird Gray,
Robene Hude, and Gilbert with the quhite hand,
How Hay of Nauchtoun flew in Madin land.
The list of tales, 'sum in prose and sum in verse,' and popular
songs in the oft-quoted passage in the Complaynt of Scotlande,
is—though a mere list, and, as it were, the table of con-
tents to a more elaborate Asloan or Bannatyne MS-evidence
of the highest value. Nor is the ascription of this wide taste
in literature to a band of merrymaking shepherds—however
1 For an account of these collections, see bibliography.
## p. 269 (#287) ############################################
The Native Elements 269
'academic' these pastoralists may be—without significance.
Further interest is derived from the fact that the timbre, colour,
idiosyncrasy (whatever we may call it), which constitutes the
internal interest of this material, is represented in the works of
the 'Chaucerian' poets. The evidence of this, to which we have
already referred", is not less instructive whether the poetic inten-
tion be to burlesque courtly fashions or to escape for a time from
the ceremonies of the aureate muse.
To the reader of this miscellaneous verse there are but few
rewards of literary' pleasure. It is easy to agree with Pinkerton's
caustic note on the last lines of Rowllis Cursing-
This tragedy is callit, but dreid,
Rowlis cursing, quba will it reid-
‘he might have put a point of interrogation at the close? ' We are
here less concerned with aesthetic and individual merits than with
the historical importance of the whole body. At the same time, it
may be maintained that, but for the accident of anonymity, some
of the pieces might well take their place in the works of Dunbar
or Scott and do them no dishonour. We excuse Henryson's
Practysis of Medecyne less as a lapse of genius than as an
illustration of the dues which the best of Chaucerians had to pay
at times to rough popular taste.
It is difficult to classify this miscellaneous verse and prose—the
foundlings of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries—according to
the traditional scheme of types, and in dull analogy with the
groups into which contemporary southern literature may be con-
veniently divided. Not only are the 'kinds'-lyrical, satirical, alle-
gorical and the like-merged into each other in a perplexing way,
but their differentiation may tempt us to overlook that Scottish
idiosyncrasy in which the entire critical interest of the matter may
be said to rest 8. Further, when we apply the term 'popular'
to this body of literature, we must guard against using it
in the sense familiar in the controversy on the origins of the
ballads. It is to be understood, in the main, as 'native, in
opposition to the more affected style of the makars; but, at the
same time, with 'artifice' and 'literary tradition' of its own. Its
appeal to us is the appeal of Allan Ramsay and his greater succes-
sors—the protest of vernacular habit against alien literary fashion.
i See Chapter X.
· The Hunterian Club text has taken the suggestion seriously.
& There are, of course, 'non-Chaucerian' contributions to the miscellanies which
are not goottish. The Bannatyne MS, for example, contains verses by John Heywood.
## p. 270 (#288) ############################################
270 Anonymous and Popular Scottish Verse
As in these later writers, the prevailing sentiment is that of the
farm and burgh 'wynd'-a sentiment always robust and un-
reserved, finding expression in the revel of country fairs and
city taverns, and carrying from both, to our modern sense, the
mingled odours of the field and kennel. The two best known
examples of this 'rustic' muse are Peblis to the Play and Christis
Kirk on the Grene. These are, in theme and form, companion-
pieces, and might well be, according to a persistent tradition, by
the same author. Reference has been made to the claims set up
in behalf of James I? . Some would ascribe the poems to James V
because their popular character suits better the character of the
'Gudeman of Ballengeich' than of the author of The Kingis Quair.
It has been shown that the assumption of inappropriateness in
style is invalid as an argument against authorship by James I,
and that there are certain difficulties of date which stand in the
way of the claim for his successor. That James I may have been
the author is an allowance of some importance in studying the
entwined relationship of the Chaucerian and the 'popular' verse
during the period.
The theme of these poems is the rough fun of a village festival
or 'wappinshaw, such as has been made familiar by Geikie's
pencil. The main impression is that of wild spirits : there is
plenty of movement, but no story, or coherence in the effects.
Incidentally, there are passages which, for descriptive direct-
ness, rank with the best in the 'Dutch' manner, but their success
comes from the sheer verve of composition rather than from
cunning in the treatment of detail.
To dans thir damysellis thame dicht? ,
Thir lassis licht of laitis 3;
Thair gluvis wer of the raffell 4 rycht,
Thair schone wes of the straitis 5;
Thair kirtillis wer of lynkome 6 licht,
Weill prest with mony plaitis.
Thay wer so nys? quhen men thame nichts,
Thay squeilit lyk ony gaittis,
So lowd,
At Chrystis kirk of the grene that day.
In exact parallel with this are the opening stanzas of Peblis to
the Play, describing the morning fuss among the country wenches;
but with this additional touch-
'Evir, allace! ' than said scho,
‘Am I nocht cleirlie tyntº?
i See Chapter 2.
2 made ready.
3 manner, behaviour.
4 roe-skin.
5 ? coarse cloth (woollen).
6 Lincoln.
7 nico. '
• lost, undone.
1
8
came near.
## p. 271 (#289) ############################################
Peblis to the Play; ChristisKirk on the Grene 271
I dar nocht cum zon mercat to,
I am so evvil sone brint.
Amang zon merchandis Maj-drest so?
manship, the poem excels its later and more elaborate analogue
The Nut Brown Maid. The older and simpler language, and
the ballad timbre (which runs throughout many of Henryson's
minor poems) place Robene and Makyne almost entirely outside
Chaucerian influence. This is even more obvious in Sum Prac-
tysis of Medecyne; and, for this reason, some have doubted
Henryson's authorship. The divergence is, however, no evidence
against the ascription. Taken with the pieces of the same type
which are known to be by his contemporaries, it gives us an
earlier link in the chain of popular alliterative (or neo-alliterative)
verse which resisted the Chaucerian infusion and was destined to
exert a strong influence upon later Scottish poetry. These bur-
lesque pieces in Henryson, Dunbar and Douglas and, later, in
Lyndsay (in each case a single and disconnected effort) appear
to have been of the nature of experiments or exercises in whim-
sicality, perhaps as a relief from the seriousness or more orderly
humour of the muse. The roughness in tone resembles that of
## p. 250 (#268) ############################################
250
The Scottish Chaucerians
the 'flytings,' in which it is intentional, and, in many cases,
without parallel in English literature. The persistence of this
form throughout the century, and in places least expected, may
supply an argument for James I's authorship of Peblis to the
Play and Christis Kirk on the Grene. At least, the dissimi-
larity between these and the Kingis Quair would not, did other
reasons not intervene, disprove that they came from the same pen? .
William Dunbar has held the place of honour among the Scottish
'makars. ' It may be that his reputation has been exaggerated at
the expense of his contemporaries, who (for reasons now less valid)
have not received like critical attention. Scott's statement that
he is ‘unrivalled by any which Scotland ever produced' strikes
the highest note of praise, and is, perhaps, responsible for much of
the unvaried appreciation which has followed. Russell Lowell's
criticism has arrested attention because it is exceptional, and
because it is a singular example of extravagant deprecia-
tion. It has, however, the indirect value that it prompts us to
test our judgments again, and weigh the value of such popular
epithets as 'the Scottish Chaucer' and 'the Scottish Skelton. '
There is generally a modicum of truth in easy titles of this
kind, though the essence of the epithet is too often forgotten
or misunderstood.
Of the personal history of William Dunbar, we have only a few
facts; and of the dates of his writings or of their sequence we
know too little to convince us that any account of his literary
life is more than ingenious speculation. As Dunbar appears to
have graduated bachelor of arts at St Andrews in 1477, his birth
may be dated about 1460. Internal evidence, for the most part
indirect, points to his having survived the national disaster at
Flodden, perhaps till 1520. Like Kennedy, his poetic rival in the
Flyting, Gavin Douglas and Lyndsay, and, indeed, like all the
greater poets from James I, with the exception of the school-
master of Dunfermline, he was connected with the court and,
like most of them, was of noble kin. These facts must be
kept in mind in a general estimate of the courtly school of
Scottish verse, in explaining its artificialities and in under-
standing the separation in sentiment and technique from the
more popular literature which it superseded for a time. This
consideration supplies, among other things, part of the answer
to the problem why the national or patriotic note, which is
1 See Chapter u.
## p. 251 (#269) ############################################
William Dunbar
251
strongly characteristic of later writers, is wanting at a period
when it might be expected to be prominent. In preceding
work, with the exception, perhaps, of Wallace, the appeal to
history is in very general terms; during the golden age,' when
political forces were active and Border memories might have
stirred the imagination, the poets are wholly absorbed in the
literary traditions of romance, or in the fun and the disappoint-
ments of life at court; only in the mid-sixteenth century, and,
first, most unmistakably in the French-made Complaynt of
Scotlande, do we find that perfervid Scotticism which glows in later
literature
Dunbar's kinship with the house of Dunbar did not bring him
wealth or place. After his college course he became a novice,
subject to the strict rule of the Observantines of the Franciscan
order. He appears, however, to have fretted under the restraint
of his ascetic calling. In a poem entitled How Dumbar wes
desyrd to be ane freir he makes frank confession of his diffi-
culties, and more suo describes the exhortation to him to 'refuse
the world' as the work of the devil.
This freir that did Sanct Francis thair appeir,
Ane feind he wes in liknes of ane freir;
He vaneist away with stynk and fyrie smowk;
With him me thocht all the houshend he towk,
And I awoik as wy? that wes in weir 8.
He found some relief in the roving life of a friar, and he appears
to have spent a few years in Picardy and other parts of France,
where he certainly was in 1491 with Bothwell's mission to the
French court for a bride for the young James IV. There, among
the many Scots then haunting Paris, he may have met Gavin
Douglas, Elphinstone, bishop of Aberdeen, Hector Boece and John
Major; but the Sorbonne, where they were to be found, had,
probably, few attractions for him. It is tempting to speculate that
the wild life of the faubourgs and the talent of Bohemians like
François Villon (whose poems had just been printed posthumously,
in 1489) had the strongest claims upon the restless friar. It has
been assumed, not without some plausibility, that there are traces
in the Scot's poems of direct French influence, in other and
deeper ways than in the choice of subjects which Villon had
made his own. By 1500, he was back in Scotland, no longer an
Observantine, but a priest at court, pensioned by the king, and
moving about as a minor official in royal business. The title
See also Chapter IL
• fear (doubt).
man.
## p. 252 (#270) ############################################
252
The Scottish Chaucerians
‘rhymer of Scotland,' in the English privy council accounts
during the sojourn in London of the Scottish embassy for the
hand of Margaret Tudor, has been taken by some to mean that,
beyond his being the poetical member of the company who
praised London in verse", he was recognised to some extent as
laureate. Of his literary life, which appears to have begun with
his association with the court in 1500, we know nothing beyond
what the poems tell us indirectly; but of the sentiment of his age,
as seen by a courtier, we have the fullest particulars.
Dunbar's poems fall into two main divisions—the allegorical
and occasional. Both show the strength of Chaucerian tradition,
the former in a more immediate way, the latter (with full allow-
ance for northern and personal characteristics) in the continuance
of the satirical, moral and religious themes of the shorter poems of
Chaucer's English followers. There is, however, a difference of
atmosphere. Dunbar's work is conditioned by the circumstance
that it was written by a courtier for the court Poetry had fallen,
as has been hinted, into close association with a small royal and
aristocratic coterie. But life at court, though it showed a political
and intellectual vigour which contrasts favourably with that
of earlier reigns, and had grown more picturesque in serving the
exuberant taste of the 'redoubted roye,' was circumscribed in
its literary interests, and, with all its alertness, added little or
nothing to the sum of poetic endeavour. The age may have been
'golden '; it was not ‘spacious. ' Literary consciousness, when it
existed, turned to the romantic past or to the old ritual of allegory,
or to the re-editing, for contemporary purposes, of plaints of empty
purses, of the fickleness of woman, of the vanity of the world and
of the lack of piety; or it was absorbed in the merely technical
task of illuminating or aureating the 'rude' vernacular? If,
however, the area was not enlarged, it was worked more fully.
From this experience, at the hands of writers of great talent,
much was gained for Scottish verse which has the appearance of
newness to the literary historian. What is, therefore, outstanding
in Dunbar, is not, as in Henryson, the creation of new genres
1 Beginning 'London, thou art of townes A per se,' and with London, thou art
the flour of Cities all,' as the burden of each stanza. The poem is, with all its con.
ventionality of phrase, of considerable historical interest.
Cf. the address to Chaucer, Gower and Lydgate in the well-known stanzas of
the Goldyn Targe (11. 253—270). There, the praise is of Chaucer's ‘anamalit termis
celicall,' and of the light which he brought to oure Inglisch' (i. e. Lowland Scots).
And the praise of Gower and Lydgate is that by their “sugarit lippis and tongis
aureate' and 'angel mouthis most mellifluate' they have illumined the language and
'our-gilt oure speche, that imperfyte stude. '
6
## p. 253 (#271) ############################################
Dunbar's Allegories 253
or fresh motives. Compared with Henryson, Dunbar shows
no advance in broad purpose and sheer originality. He is,
apart from all question of vocabulary, more artificial in the stricter
historical sense; and he might have deserved no better from
posterity than Lydgate and Occleve have deserved had he not
suppled the rhythms and added life and humour to the old matter.
Dunbar's debt to Chaucer is less intimate and spiritual than
Henryson's or king James's. He could not have given us the after-
tale of Cresseid, or caught so clearly the sentiment of the master
in a new Quair. Chaucer is, to him, the 'rose of rethoris all'
(as every poet of the century admitted), but he follows him at
a distance and, perhaps, with divided affection for the newer
French writers. Still, the Chaucerian influence is there, though the
evidence of direct drawing from the well of English is less clear.
The Goldyn Targe has the simple motif of the poet's appearance
(in a dream, on a conventional May morning) before the court of
Venus, where he endeavours to resist the arrows of dame Beauty
and her friends with the aid of Reason's 'scheld of gold so
schene. ' He is wounded near to death and taken prisoner. Then
he knows that the lady is 'lustiar of chere': when she de-
parts, he is delivered over to Heaviness. As she sails off, the
noise of the ship’s guns wake him to the enjoyment, once more, of
the May morning and the singing birds. The allegory is of the
simplest; the contemporary didacticism has hardly invaded it, and
the abstractions which the poet introduces are in closer kinship
with the persons of courtly allegory than with the personages
in the moralities of the period. A similar theme appears in
his well-known short poem, Sen that I am a presoneir (some-
times known as Beauty and the Prisoner); but there didactic
and personal elements have been added. It is probable that
criticism has been over busy in seeing references to the king,
to his liaison with Margaret Drummond and to her suspicious
death. In The Thrissil and the Rois, the intrusion of the
moralitas is at once obvious. The setting is heraldic: the
theme is the marriage of James IV and Margaret Tudor. The
familiar machinery of the dream-poem is here; but the general
effect is that of an elaborate prothalamium. It is an easy stage
from this poetic type to the pageant and masque ; but in the
single example of Dunbar's 'dramatic' endeavour-in the fragment
of The Interlude of the Droichis Part of the Play—the alle-
gory is used merely to enhance the whimsicality of the design.
In Chaucer's simpler narrative manner, we have the tale of
The Freiris of Berwik, dealing with the old theme of an untrue
## p. 254 (#272) ############################################
254
The Scottish Chaucerians
wife caught in her own wiles. The ascription of this piece to
Dunbar has been doubted, but there is nothing in it unworthy
of his metrical art or his satiric talent. The Tretis of the Tua
Mariit Wemen and the Wedo, which is certainly his, echoes the
gossip of the Wife of Bath, but it speaks with a freedom from
which Chaucer would have shrunk. Its antique line and allitera-
tion connect it formally with the popular poetry which Chaucer
parodied and undid ; yet the association is remote. For it is
essentially a literary exercise, perhaps a burlesque pastiche to
satisfy the romantic fashion of the court. The art of this remark-
able poem is always conscious. In the fierce thrusts of sarcasm,
in the warping of words, uncouth and strong, we seem to see the
personal satisfaction of the craftsman in his triumph of phrase
and line.
I have ane wallidrag, ane worme, ane auld wobat carle,
A waistit walroun, na worth bot wourdis to clatter;
Ane bumbart, ane dron bee, ane bag full of flewme,
Ane skabbit skarth, ane scorpioun—
So hurtle the words in this dialogue on matrimonial risks. In
some respects, it is difficult to differentiate this tour de force from
a 'flyting'; but the husbands are not present, and may not (if they
could) meet the torrents of abuse.
In considering the satirical and occasional poems of Dunbar,
which constitute at once the greater and more important portion
of his work, it is well, in the first place, to see how far the
Chaucerian influence holds. Here, at least, it is difficult to allow
the aptness of the title 'the Scottish Chaucer,' unless it mean
nothing more than that Dunbar, by analogical compliment, has the
first place in Early and Middle Scots, as Chaucer has in Middle
English. It cannot mean that he shows Chaucer's spirit and out-
look, as Henryson has shown ; nor that Dunbar is, in these satirical
and occasional pieces, on which his wider reputation rests, a
whole-hearted pupil in the craft of verse. The title would have
appeared more fitting in his own day, when his appeal to con-
temporaries (apart from any acknowledged debt to his forerunner)
was of the same technical kind which Chaucer had made to his;
but a comparison, nowadays, has to take account of other matters.
Both poets are richly endowed with humour: it is the outstanding
quality of each ; but in no respect do their differences appear
more clearly. Here, Dunbar is unlike Henryson in lacking the
gentler and more intimate fun of their master. He is a satirist in
a
the stronger sense ; more boisterous in his fun, and showing, in his
wildest frolics, an imaginative range which has no counterpart
## p. 255 (#273) ############################################
The Grotesque in Dunbar
255
in the southern poet. His satirical powers are best seen in his
Tidings from the Session, an attack on the law courts, and in his
Satire on Edinburgh, in which he denounces the filthy condition
of the capital; in his verses on his old friends the Franciscans,
and on the flying friar of Tungland who came to grief because he
had used hens' feathers; in his fiercer invectives of the General
Satire and The Epitaph on Donald Owre; and in the vision of
The Dance of the Sevin Deidlie Synnis. The last is one of the best
examples of Dunbar's realism and literary cunning in suiting the
word and line to the sense, as in the description of Sloth-
Syne Sueirnes, at the secound bidding,
Come lyk & sow out of a midding,
Full slepy wes his grunziel:
Mony sweir2 bumbarda belly-huddroun,
Mony slute daw and slepy duddroun5,
Him serwit ay with sounzie 6.
In all, but especially in the Dance, there is not a little of the
fantastic ingenuity which appears in his more purely comic
sketches. And these again, though mainly 'fooleries,' are not
without satirical intention, as in his Joustis of the Tailzeour and
the Sowtar and his Black Lady, where the fun is a covert attack
on the courtly craze for tourneys. Of all the pieces in this category,
his Ballad of Kynd Kittok best illustrates that elfin quality which
relieves his 'busteous' strain of ridicule. The waggish description
of the thirsty alewife, her journey on a snail, her arrival in
heaven and her sojourn there till, desiring a 'fresh drink,'
she wanders forth and is not allowed to return, her going back to
her ale-house and the poet's concluding request,
Frendis, I pray 30u hertfully,
Gif ze be thristy or dry,
Drink with my Guddame, as 30 ga by,
Anys for my saik-
strike a note, of which the echoes are to be often heard in later
northern verse? . There is more than an accidental likeness between
this roguish request to the reader and the close of Burns's Address
to the Deil and The Dying Words of Poor Mailie. The reach of
Dunbar's fancy is at its greatest in The Interlude. There, in
his description of Fyn, he writes-
He gat my grauntschir Gog Magog ;
Ay quhen he dansit, the warld wald schog 8;
Five thousand ellis zeid in his frog
9
Of Hieland pladdis, and mair.
i face (snout).
8 glutton. • dirty slut.
osloven.
care, attention.
7 See Chapter XI.
8 shake.
frook,' tunio.
a lazy.
## p. 256 (#274) ############################################
256
The Scottish Chaucerians
>
zit he was bot of tendir zouth;
Bot eftir he grewe mekle at fonthi,
Ellevyne myle wyde met was his mouth,
His teith was ten ell sqwair,
He wald apon his tais stand,
And tak the sternis doune with his hand
And set them in a gold garland
Above his wyfis hair.
This is a triumph of the grotesque on the grand scale which the
creator of Gargantua would have admired, and could not have
excelled. Something of the same quality is seen in his wild
picture of the birth of Antichrist in mid-air, in his Vision, which
opens with the customary dream-setting and gives no hint of
this turn in the poet's fancy.
Of lyrical, as of strictly dramatic, excellence, there is little
in Dunbar. His love poems are few and, taken as a whole,
undistinguished. His religious and moral verses, the one of the
hymn type, the other on the hackneyed themes of Good Counsel,
Vanitas vanitatum and (when he is cheery in mood) Blitheness,
deserve commendation for little beyond their metrical facility.
They are too short to be tedious to the modern reader. He uses
the old device of the 'testament' to good purpose in the comic
poem on the physician Andrew Kennedy; and, here again, his
imagination transforms the old convention. In all Goliardic
literature there is nothing to excel this stanza :
A barell bung ay at my bosum,
Of varldis gud I bad na mair;
Et corpus meum ebriosum
I leif onto the toune of Air;
In a draf mydding for ever and ay
Ut ibi sepeliri queam,
Quhar drink and draff may ilka day
Be cassyne super faciem meam.
In The Dance, already referred to, Dunbar works up the familiar
material of the Danse Macabre. In his Flyting of Dunbar and
Kennedie (his poetic rival Walter Kennedy) we have a Scottish
example of the widely-spread European genre in its extremest
form. It remains a masterpiece of scurrility. The purpose of
the combatants in this literary exercise was to outdo each other in
abuse, and yet not to quarrel. It is hard for the most catholic
modern to believe that they kept the peace, though Dunbar speaks
kindly of his 'friend' in his Lament. The indirect value of
The Flyting is great-linguistically, in its vocabulary of invective;
1 lit. "in fullness (fulth). '
9
post.
measure.
3
## p. 257 (#275) ############################################
Dunbar's Prosodic Range 257
6
biographically, for it tells us more of the poet than we derive
from any other source ; historically, in respect of its place in
the development of this favourite genre in Scots, and its testimony
to the antipathies of Celtic and Lowland civilisations in the early
sixteenth century? A like indirect interest attaches to The
Lament for the Makaris, which Dunbar wrote 'quhen he was
seik. ' It is a poem on the passing of human endeavour, a motif
which had served the purpose of scores of fifteenth century laments.
If it was written under the influence of Villon's master ballades,
praise must be allowed to Dunbar that he endenised the French-
man's art with some success. The solemn effect of the burden,
Timor mortis conturbat me, occasional happy turns, as
He takis the campioun in the stour,
The capitane closit in the tour,
The lady in bour full of bewte;
Timor Mortis conturbat me
and a sense of literary restraint give the piece distinction above
the average poem of this type. Much of its reputation nowadays
is as a historical document, which tells us nearly all that we
know of some of Dunbar's contemporaries. He names his greater
predecessors, and, properly, puts Chaucer first on the roll.
Dunbar, we have said, has been called the 'Scottish Skelton. '
There is some justice in the likening, but the reasons are not
consistent with those which give him the title of the 'Scottish
Chaucer. ' His allegiance to Chaucer is shown in literary reminis-
cence, whether of motif, or phrase, or stanza-a bookish reminis-
cence, which often helps us to distinguish the fundamental
differences in outlook. There is a spiritual antithesis ; but there
are textual bonds. With Skelton, on the other hand, who must
have been the borrower, had any contact been possible, he stands
in close analogy, in two important respects. In the first place,
both poets, in their unexpected turns of satire and in their
jugglery of words, anticipate the Rabelaisian humour in its intel-
lectual audacity and inexhaustible resource. Whether in wider
excursions of fancy, or in verbal orgies, such as in the Com-
plaint to the King-
Bot fowll, jow-jowrdane-hedit jevellis,
Cowkin-kenseis, and culroun kewellis;
Stuffettis, strekouris, and stafische strummellis;
Wyld haschbaldis, haggarbaldis, and hummellis;
Drunoartis, dysouris, dyvouris, drewellis,
Misgydit memberis of the dewellis; etc.
i See Chapter 1v.
E. L. II. CH. I.
17
<
## p. 258 (#276) ############################################
258
The Scottish Chaucerians
6
we are constantly reminded of the rector of Diss, and often of
the historian of Gargantua and his son Pantagruel. In the second
place, their metrical purposes have much in common. The
prosodic variety of both is always our first impression-of Dunbar,
without parallel in range and competence in any English writer
before his time. The interest of the matter in him, as in Skelton,
is that the variety is not the effect of mere literary restlessness,
but the outcome of experiment to extend the capabilities of
English verse in counterpart to what was being done by 'aurea-
tion' and other processes for poetic diction and style. If Dunbar's
prosodic cunning were less remarkable, and if Skelton's so-called
“doggerel' were even less palatable than it is to those who
take a narrow view of this problem of English, the endeavour
of both poets, and of the Scot in particular, would lose none of
its historical value. Dunbar borrows from all quarters, chiefly
from Chaucer, but also from older popular forms, and from
French models found in that other Bohemian genius, François
Villon. Yet he is not a mere copyist: his changes in the
grouping of the lines in the stanza, his varying the length
of the verses and his grafting of one form upon another,
are evidence of the literary artist at work. It is useless to
attempt to illustrate this by selection from the hundred and one
poems which are ascribed to him, for a selection cannot disclose
his kaleidoscopic ingenuity. The remarkable range and resource
of his technique and the vitality of his imagination must redeem
his work in the eyes of the most alien modern of the charges
which have been brought against the art of Lydgate and Occleve.
His was not the heavy-headed fancy of a moribund medievalism.
The explanation of the difference may be, after all, largely personal.
Only so far is he of the renascence. The chief interest to us lies in
the old things which he has chosen and recast, as genius may
do at any time, whether the age be 'dark' or 'new. '
If no serious effort has been made to claim Dunbar as a child of
the renascence, except in respect of his restlessness, in which
he shows something of the human and individual qualities asso-
ciated with that movement, his contemporary Gavin Douglas bas
been frequently described as the embodiment the fullest and
also the first among Scottish poets, of the principles of neo-
classicism. A critic of high consideration has recently said that
‘no poet, not even Dante himself, ever drank more deeply of the
spirit of Virgil than Gavin Douglas. ' Others who consent to this
## p. 259 (#277) ############################################
Gavin Douglas
259
6
have laid stress on the fact that Douglas was the first translator of
a great verse classic into the vernacular. If this conclusion were
as just as it is, at first sight, plausible, Douglas could have no
place, or only a very minor place in this chapter, which assumes
a fundamental homogeneity in medieval method, in most respects
incongruent with the literary intention of the new learning.
Like Dunbar, Douglas was of good family, and a cleric; but he
had influence and fortune which brought him a large measure of
worldly success. He had become a dignitary of the church when
the erst-friar was riming about the court and writing complaints
on his empty purse. Unlike Dunbar, he had no call to authorship.
His literary career, if we may so speak of the years when all
his work was written, is but a part of a busy life, the early
experience of a man destined to lose his leisure in the strife
of politics. He was the third son of Archibald, fifth earl of
Angus, the 'great earl,' better known as 'Bell-the-Cat. ' He was
born a 1475, and completed his early training in 1494, when
he graduated at St Andrews. In 1501, after spending some
time in cures in Aberdeenshire and the Lothians, he became
provost of the collegiate church of St Giles in Edinburgh,
his tenure of which partly synchronised with his father's civil
provostship of the capital. Between this date and 1513 (that
defining year in all Scottish biography of this period) he did all
his literary work, The Palice of Honour, King Hart, Conscience
and the translation of the Aeneid, begun early in 1512 and printed
in 1513. Other writings have been ascribed to him-a translation
of Ovid (though, in one place, he speaks of this work as a task
for another), plays on sacred subjects and sundry Aureae
orationes ; but none are extant, and we have his testimony in
the 'Conclusion of the Aeneid), which may be accepted as valid,
that he made Vergil his last literary task.
Thus vp my pen and instrumentis full zoyr
On Virgillis post I fix for evirmore,
Nevir, from thens, syk materis to discryve:
My muse sal now be cleyn contemplatyve,
And solitar, as doith the byrd in cage;
Sen fer byworn is all my childis age,
And of my dayis neir passyt the half dait
That natur suld me grantyn, weil I wait.
His later history is exclusively political, a record of promotions
and oustings. He was bishop of Dunkeld from 1516 to 1520, when
he was deprived of his see because he had gone to the English
court for aid in the Douglas-Albany quarrels. Two years later, he
17-2
## p. 260 (#278) ############################################
260
The Scottish Chaucerians
died of plague in London, in the house of his friend lord Dacre.
Just before his death, he had sent to another friend, Polydore
Vergil, material for the latter's History, by way of correction
of Major's account, which Vergil had proposed to use.
The Palice of Honour, Douglas's earliest work, is an example,
in every essential sense, of the later type of dream-poem, already
illustrated in the Goldyn Targe. It is, however, a more ambitious
work (extending to 2166 lines); and it shows more clearly the de-
cadence of the old method, partly by its over-elaboration, partly
by the inferior art of the verse, partly by the incongruous welding
of the pictorial and moral purposes. The poem is dedicated to
James IV, who was probably expected to read between the lines
and profit from the long lesson on the triumph of virtue. The
poem opens in a 'gardyne of plesance,' and in May-time, as
of yore. The poet falls asleep, and dreams of a desert place
‘amyd a forest by a hyddeous flude, with grysly fische. ' Queen
Sapience appears with her learned company. This is described
by the caitiffs Sinon and Achitophel, who wander in its wake.
Solomon, Aristotle, Diogenes, Melchisedech and all the others
are there and are duly catalogued. The company passes on to the
palace. Then follow Venus and her court with Cupid, 'the god
maist dissauabill.
' The musical powers of this company give the
poet an opportunity for learned discourse. We recall several
earlier passages of the kind, and especially Henryson's account in
the Orpheus. Douglas's remark,
Na mair I vnderstude thir numbers fine,
Be God, than dois a gukgol or a swine,
almost turns the likeness into a plagiarism from his predecessor.
The procession of lovers moves the poet to sing a 'ballet of in-
constant love,' which stops the court and brings about his arrest.
His pleas that ‘ladyis may be judges in na place' and that he
is a 'spiritual man' avail nothing; he is found guilty. Re-
flecting sorrowfully on what his punishment may be, he sees
another procession approach, that of the muses with their court
of poets. Calliope pleads for him, and he is released on condition
that he will sing in honour of Venus. Thereafter, the poet
proceeds to the palace, in companionship with a nymph, bestowed
by Calliope. They pass through all countries and by all historic
places, and stop for festivity at the well of the muses. Here
Ovid, Vergil and others, including Poggio and Valla, recite by
command before the company. The palace lies beyond on a
1 cuckoo.
## p. 261 (#279) ############################################
Douglas's Allegory
261
rock of 'slid hard marbell stone,' most difficult of ascent. On
the way up, the poet comes upon the purgatory of idle folk. The
nymph clutches him by the hair and carries him across this pit to
the top, 'as Abacuk was brocht in Babylone. ' Then he looks
down on the wretched world and sees the carvel of the State
of Grace struggling in the waters. After a homily from the nymph
on the need of grace, he turns to the palace, which is described
with full architectural detail. In it, he sees Venus on her throne;
and he looks in her mirror and beholds a large number of noble
men and women (fitly described in a late rubric as a 'lang catha-
a
logue'). Venus observes her former prisoner, and, bidding him
welcome, gives him a book to translate.
Tuichand this buik peragenture ze sall heir
Sum tyme eftir, quhen I have mair laseir.
So it would appear that Douglas had his Aeneid then in mind.
Sinon and Achitophel endeavour to gain an entrance. Cati-
line, pressing in at a window, is struck down by a book thrown by
Tully. Other vicious people fail in their attempts. Then follows a
description of the court of the prince of Honour and of secretary
Conscience, comptroller Discretion, ushers Humanity and True
Relation and many other retainers. The glories of the hall
overcome the poet, who falls down into a 'deidlie swoun. ' The
nymph ministers to him, and gives him a thirteen-stanza sermon
on virtue. Later, she suggests that they should take the air in
the palace garden. When following her over the tree-bridge
which leads to this spot, the poet falls 'out ouir the heid into
the stank adoun,' and (as the rime anticipates) 'is neir to droun. '
Then he discovers that all has been a dream. A ballad in com-
mendation of honour and virtue concludes the poem.
The inspiration of the poem is unmistakable; and it would
be easy to prove that not only does it carry on the Chaucerian
allegory, but that it is directly indebted to
Geffray Chauceir, as A per se sans peir
In his vulgare,
who appears with Gower, Lydgate, Kennedy, Dunbar and others
in the court of poets. There is nothing new in the machinery
to those who know the Rose sequence, The House of Fame
and The Court of Love. The whole interest of the poem is
retrospective. Even minor touches which appear to give some
allowance of individuality can be traced to predecessors. There
is absolutely nothing in motif or in style to cause us to suspect
the humanist. Douglas's interest in Vergil—if Venus's gift be
6
## p. 262 (#280) ############################################
262
The Scottish Chaucerians
a
rightly interpreted—is an undiscriminating interest which groups
the Mantuan, Boccaccio and Gower together, and awards like
praise to each. He introduces Ovid and Vergil at the feast by
the well of the muses, much as they had been introduced by
the English poets, though, perhaps, with some extension of their
'moral' usefulness, as was inevitable in the later type of allegory.
The Palice of Honour is a medieval document, differing from
the older as a pastiche must, not because the new spirit disturbs
its tenor.
Of King Hart, the same may be said, though it must be allowed
to be a better poem, better girded as an allegory, and surer in
its harmony of words. Its superiority comes from a fuller appre-
ciation of Chaucerian values : it cannot be explained, though some
have so considered it, as an effect of Vergilian study. There
is not the faintest trace of renascence habit in the story of
king Heart in his 'comlie castle strang' and of his five servitors
(the senses), queen Pleasance, Foresight and other abstractions.
The setting and sentiment recall the court of the prince of
Honour in the Palice of Honour; and that, again, repeats the
picture of the court of the palace in all the early continental
versions of the cours d'amour.
Conscience is a four-stanza conceit telling how the moral
sense has grown dull in men. 'Conscience' they had ; then they
clipped away the 'con,' and had 'science' and 'na mair. ' Then,
casting off 'sci,' they were left with 'ens,'
Quhilk in our language signifies that schrew
Riches and geir, that gart all grace go hens.
Douglas's translation of the twelve books of the Aeneid and
of the thirteenth by Mapheus Vegius is his most interesting work,
apart from the question how far his tone is Vergilian in the stricter
humanistic sense. In respect of the thirteen prologues and
supplementary verses of a more personal character, it may be
said to be more original than the so-called 'original' allegories.
Not all of these are introductory to the 'books' to which they
are attached; and those which are most pertinent are concerned
with the allegory of Vergil's poem. Some may be called academic
exercises, which may have been written at odd times, and, perhaps,
for other purposes. A picture of a Scottish winter, which has been
often quoted, introduces book vı; another, of May, book XII;
and another, of June, book XIII. The subjects may have been
suggested by the time of the year when the poet reached these
stages in translation ; if they were deliberately introduced for
1
6
## p. 263 (#281) ############################################
Douglas's Aeneid
263
pictorial relief, they are the nearest approach to renascence habit
in the whole work and in all Douglas's writings. A tour de force
in the popular alliterative stanza, not without suspicion of burlesque
intention, is offered as the appropriate preface to the eighth book!
Sum latit lattoun, but lay, lepis in laud lyte;
Sam penis furth a pan boddum to prent fals plakkis;
Sum goukis qubill the glas pyg grow full of gold zit,
Throw cury of the quentassens, thocht clay mugis crakis;
Sum warnour for this warldis wrak wendis by his wyt;
Sum trachour crynis the cunze, and kepis corn stakis;
Sum prig penny, sum pyk thank wyth privy promyt;
Sum garris wyth a ged staf to jag throw blak jakkis.
Quhat fynzeit fayr, quhat flattry, and quhat fals talis !
Quhat misery is now in land!
How mony crakyt cunnand!
For nowthir aiths, nor band,
Nor selis avalisl.
This audacious break in the web of the Aeneid may have served
some purpose of rest or refreshment, such as was given by the
incongruous farce within the tedious moralities of the age; but it
is not the devising of a humanist. The dialogue between the trans-
lator and Mapheus Vegius, in the thirteenth prologue, follows the
medieval fashion, which was familiar before Henryson conversed with
Aesop about his Fables. The first, or general, prologue is the most
important, and is frequently referred to for evidence of Douglas's
new outlook. The opening homage to Vergil is instructive.
Laude, honor, prasingis, thankis infynite
To the, and thi dulce ornate fresch endite,
Mast reverend Virgill, of Latyne poetis prince,
Gemme of ingine and fluide of eloquence,
Thow peirles perle, patroun of poetrie,
Rois, register, palme, laurer, and glory,
Chosin cherbukle, cheif flour and cedir tree,
Lanterne, leidsterne, mirrour, and A per se,
Master of masteris, sweit sours and springand well.
It is not difficult to underline the epithets which have done good
service in the Chaucerian ritual. Indeed, were we to read
'Chaucer' for 'Virgill' and 'English' for 'Latyne' in the third line,
we should have a straightforward 'Chaucerian' passage, true
in word and sentiment. But Chaucer is really not far away.
Douglas names him ere long, and loads him with the old honours,
though he places him second to Vergil. The reason for this is
1 Glossarial notes to this passage would be too numerous and too speculative for
this place. Those who are familiar with this genre know that strict verbal interpreta-
tion is hardly possible, and that any serious attempt towards it may disologe little but
a pedantio misunderstanding of the poet's intention,
## p. 264 (#282) ############################################
264
The Scottish Chaucerians
6
interesting. Chaucer, in telling the story of Dido in The Legend
of Good Women, had said,
I cond folwe, word for word, Virgyle,
But it wolde lasten al to long a whyle.
This, Douglas politely disputes, especially as Chaucer had said,
rather 'boldly,' that he followed Vergil in stating that 'Eneas
to Dido was forsworne. ' Douglas is careful to disprove this,
because it distorts Vergil's purpose to teach all kind of virtue
by the consistent goodness of his hero, and to point out (as
Henryson seems to have thought in his Cresseid) that Chaucer
was ever, God wait, wemenis frend. ' We are a long way
from Vergil here; as we are when the poet complains that
Caxton's translation does not do justice to what is hidden under
the cluddes of dirk poetry. ' Douglas makes a more plausible claim
to be a modern in a further objection that Caxton's translation
(taken from a French version) is bad, that it is out in its words
and its geography, and marred by omissions ; in quoting
Horace on the true method of rendering a foreign author;
and in urging the advantages to vernacular style from the
reading of the Latin poet. Yet, after all, his aim was to make
Vergil's book a literary bible, as Boccaccio's and Chaucer's were.
He desires to be thanked by schoolmasters and by 'onletterit'
folk, to whom he has given a new lesson”; he joins St Gregory's
opinion with Horace's; he sees a Christian purpose in his work,
and he prays for guidance to Mary and her Son, that heavenlie
Orpheus. ' His Vergil is, for the most part, the Vergil of the dark
ages, part prophet, part wizard, master of 'illusionis by devillich
werkis and coniurationis. ' These, he confesses, are now more rare
for 'the faith is now mair ferme'; but the circumstances should
have been allowed for by the dullard Caxton. When he returns
in the prologue to the sixth book to chide those who consider
that book but full of 'gaistis and elriche fantaseis ' and 'browneis
and bogillis,' he says of Vergil-
As tuiching hym, writis Ascencius :
Feill of his wordís bene lyk the appostillis sawis;
He is ane hie theolog sentencius,
And maist profound philosophour he hym schawis.
Thocht sum his writis frawart our faith part drawis,
Na wondir; he was na cristin man, per de;
He was a gentile, and leifit on payane lawis,
And zit he puttis ane God, Fadir maist hie.
So it would appear, only too clearly, from these interesting
1 Directioun and Exclamatioun.
## p. 265 (#283) ############################################
Douglas's Medievalism
265
prologues, that Douglas's literary attitude was not modern, and
that he is not even so much a Janus-poet as his position and
opportunities would warrant. When we separate him from his
literary neighbours, it must be as a dilettante.
Probably, the main interest of the translation, and of most
of Douglas's work, is philological. No Scot has built up such
a diction, drawn from all sources, full of forgotten tags of allitera-
tive romance, Chaucerian English, dialectal borrowings from
Scandinavian, French, Latin. No one is harder to interpret.
Literary merit is not wanting; yet, in those passages, and especially
in his Aeneid, which strike the reader most, by the vigorous,
often onomatopoeic force of the vocabulary, the pleasure is
not what he who knows his Vergil expects, and must demand.
The excellence of such a description as that of Acheron-
With holl bismel, and hiduus swelth wnrude,
Drumlie of mud, and scaldand as it wer wodą,
Poplands and bullerand* furth on athir hand
Onto Cochitus all his slik 5 and sand,
is not the excellence of the original. We are sometimes reminded
of Stanyhurst's later effort, in which, however much we may
admire the verbal briskness in the marshalling of his thunder
and storm passages, we feel that all ‘wanteth the trew decorum
of Vergilian sentiment. The archaic artifices, the metrical loose-
ness and the pedestrian tread, where Vergil is alert, destroy the
illusion. Still, if we may not give Douglas more than his due,
we must not give him less. His Aeneid is a remarkable effort,
and is gratefully remembered as the first translation of a great
classical poet into English, northern or southern.
Douglas's work, considered as a whole, expresses, in the amplest
way, the content of the later allegorical literature. He has lost
the secret of the older devices, and does not understand the new
which were about to usurp their place. He has not the artistic
sense of Henryson, or the resource of Dunbar. His pictorial
quality, on which so much stress has been laid by some who would
have him to be a modern, is not the pagan delight, nor is its use as
an interpretation of his mood after the fashion of the renascence.
Some passages which have been cited to prove the contrary are but
copies from Henryson and earlier work. In him, as in Hawes (to
quote a favourite metaphor of both) ‘the bell is rung to evensong. '
If Lyndsay and others in the next period still show Chaucerian
influence, with them it is a reminiscence, amid the turmoil of
the new day.
abysm. 3 mad, wild. "bubbling. ' roaring, "boiling. ' slime, wet mud.
## p. 266 (#284) ############################################
266
The Scottish Chaucerians
The minor contemporaries of Henryson, Dunbar and Douglas
add nothing to our sketch of Middle Scots poetry. What in-
formation we have of these forgotten writers is derived from
Dunbar's Lament for the Makaris, Douglas's Palice of Honour
and Lyndsay's Testament of the Papyngo. Historians have
probably exaggerated the extent and importance of this subor-
dinate literaturel. It is true we know little of the authors or of
their works, but what we do know shows that to speak of 'nests of
singing birds,' or to treat Dunbar as a kind of Shakespearean
eminence overtopping a great range of song, is amiable hyperbole.
What is extant of this 'Chaucerian' material lies in the lower
levels of Lydgate's and Occleve's work. The subjects are of the
familiar fifteenth century types, and, when not concerned with the
rougher popular matter, repeat the old plaints on the ways of
courts and women and on the vanity of life. Walter Kennedy,
Dunbar's rival in The Flyting, and the most eminent of these
minors, has left five poems, The Passioun of Christ, Ane Ballat
in praise of Our Lady, Pious Counsale, The Prais of Aige and
Ane agit Manis invective against Mouth-thankless. His reputa-
tion must rest on the Flyting rather than on the other pieces,
which are conventional and dull; and there only because of the
antiquarian interest of his 'billingsgate' and his Celtic sym-
pathies. With Kennedy may be named Quintyne Schaw, who
wrote an Advyce to a Courtier.
In a general retrospect of this Chaucerian school it is not
difficult to note that the discipleship, though sincere, was by no
means blind. If the Scottish poets imitated well, and often
caught the sentiment with remarkable felicity, it was because
they were not painful devotees. In what they did they showed an
appreciation beyond the faculty of Chaucer's southern admirers ;
and, though the artistic sense implied in this appreciation was
dulled by the century's craving for a ‘moral' to every fancy, their
a
individuality saved them from the fate which befel their neigh-
bours. Good as the Testament of Cresseid is, its chief interest
to the historical student is that it was written, that Henryson
dared to find a sequel to the master's well-rounded story. Douglas's
protest in the general prologue to his Aeneid, though it fail to prove
to us that Vergil was much more to him than Chaucer was, shows
an audacity which only an intelligent intimacy with the English
poet could allow. The vitality of such appreciation, far from
undoing the Chaucerian tradition, gave it a fresh lease of life
before it yielded, inevitably, to the newer fashion.
1 For the non-Chaucerian elements see next chapter,
See Chapter iv.
## p. 267 (#285) ############################################
CHAPTER XI
THE MIDDLE SCOTS ANTHOLOGIES: ANONYMOUS
VERSE AND EARLY PROSE
STRONG as was the Chaucerian influence on the Scottish poets
during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, it by no means sup-
pressed or transformed what may be called the native habit of
Scottish verse. That influence came, as has been shown, from the
courtly side; it was a fashion first set by the author of The
Kingis Quair—in its treatment of the language and in its literary
mannerisms, a deliberate co-operation with the general European
effort to dignify the vernaculars. It did much, but it came late;
and, being perhaps too artificial, it yielded, in due course, to another
southern influence, more powerful and permanent. Were the
Chaucerian makars of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and
their successors in the seventeenth century to be taken as the sole
representatives of northern literature, it would be hard to account
for the remarkable outburst of national verse amid the conven-
tionalities of the eighteenth. Chaucer and the Elizabethans do
not explain Ramsay' and Fergusson and Burns : and these writers
are not a sudden dialectal sport in the literary development. It
is the object of this chapter to show that the native sentiment
which has its fullest expression in these 'modern' poets was always
active, and that the evidence of its existence and of its methods is
clear, even during that period when the higher literary genius of
the country was most strongly affected by foreign models. The
vitality of this popular habit has been shown in the most courtly
and 'aureate' verse of the so-called 'golden age. ' Even in those
passages in which the poets may be suspected of burlesquing this
habit-whether by direct satire or in half-conscious repetition of
Chaucer's dislike of 'rum ram ruf'-the acknowledgment is
significant. The thesis of this chapter is, therefore, to supplement
what has been said parenthetically of this non-Chaucerian 'matter. '
It deals with those pieces which lie outside the work of the
1 See Chapter 1v, p. 95, note.
## p. 268 (#286) ############################################
268 Anonymous and Popular Scottish Verse
*Chaucerians,' for the most part with those anonymous poems
which have been preserved in the greater anthologies of the
sixteenth century. The interest of this body of literature is
complex-in sentiment, in choice of subject, and, not least, in
verse technique.
No literature has been better served than Scottish has been by
the industry of early anthologists. The all-important Cancioneros
have not done more for Spanish ; and they lack the exclusive
and exhaustive value of the Scottish collections. For the latter
preserve not only all that is known of the work of some of the
greatest poets, but, also, a large body of minor verse, without which
we should have formed but a poor estimate of contemporary
taste, and without which we should have lost the perspective of
later literature. These anthologies are representative in the
truest sense. They were written out by men who were, first and
foremost, collectors and antiquaries, who show no critical obsession,
no desire to select and honour what may have appealed most to
their individual taste. Their books are historical documents, which
must be interpreted by historical methods! .
The importance of this fugitive 'popular' literature is made
clear in the references by the more academic' writers. Dunbar's
Lament for the Makaris derives part of its bibliographical value
from its record of poets who owed little or nothing to 'noble
Chaucer, of makaris flour. ' Though Gavin Douglas, in his Palice
of Honour, names but Kennedie, Dunbar, and Quintine (Schaw]
as the Scottish companions of the world's poets, yet in the 'lang
catbalogue of nobyll men and wemen,' he tells us-
I saw Raf Coilzear with the thrawin brow,
Craibit Johne the Reif, and auld Cowkewyis sow;
And how the wran came out of Ailssay;
And Peirs Plowman that maid his workmen fow;
Greit Gowmakmorne and Fyn Makcoul, and how
Thay suld be goddis in Ireland as they say;
Thair saw I Maitland vpon auld Beird Gray,
Robene Hude, and Gilbert with the quhite hand,
How Hay of Nauchtoun flew in Madin land.
The list of tales, 'sum in prose and sum in verse,' and popular
songs in the oft-quoted passage in the Complaynt of Scotlande,
is—though a mere list, and, as it were, the table of con-
tents to a more elaborate Asloan or Bannatyne MS-evidence
of the highest value. Nor is the ascription of this wide taste
in literature to a band of merrymaking shepherds—however
1 For an account of these collections, see bibliography.
## p. 269 (#287) ############################################
The Native Elements 269
'academic' these pastoralists may be—without significance.
Further interest is derived from the fact that the timbre, colour,
idiosyncrasy (whatever we may call it), which constitutes the
internal interest of this material, is represented in the works of
the 'Chaucerian' poets. The evidence of this, to which we have
already referred", is not less instructive whether the poetic inten-
tion be to burlesque courtly fashions or to escape for a time from
the ceremonies of the aureate muse.
To the reader of this miscellaneous verse there are but few
rewards of literary' pleasure. It is easy to agree with Pinkerton's
caustic note on the last lines of Rowllis Cursing-
This tragedy is callit, but dreid,
Rowlis cursing, quba will it reid-
‘he might have put a point of interrogation at the close? ' We are
here less concerned with aesthetic and individual merits than with
the historical importance of the whole body. At the same time, it
may be maintained that, but for the accident of anonymity, some
of the pieces might well take their place in the works of Dunbar
or Scott and do them no dishonour. We excuse Henryson's
Practysis of Medecyne less as a lapse of genius than as an
illustration of the dues which the best of Chaucerians had to pay
at times to rough popular taste.
It is difficult to classify this miscellaneous verse and prose—the
foundlings of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries—according to
the traditional scheme of types, and in dull analogy with the
groups into which contemporary southern literature may be con-
veniently divided. Not only are the 'kinds'-lyrical, satirical, alle-
gorical and the like-merged into each other in a perplexing way,
but their differentiation may tempt us to overlook that Scottish
idiosyncrasy in which the entire critical interest of the matter may
be said to rest 8. Further, when we apply the term 'popular'
to this body of literature, we must guard against using it
in the sense familiar in the controversy on the origins of the
ballads. It is to be understood, in the main, as 'native, in
opposition to the more affected style of the makars; but, at the
same time, with 'artifice' and 'literary tradition' of its own. Its
appeal to us is the appeal of Allan Ramsay and his greater succes-
sors—the protest of vernacular habit against alien literary fashion.
i See Chapter X.
· The Hunterian Club text has taken the suggestion seriously.
& There are, of course, 'non-Chaucerian' contributions to the miscellanies which
are not goottish. The Bannatyne MS, for example, contains verses by John Heywood.
## p. 270 (#288) ############################################
270 Anonymous and Popular Scottish Verse
As in these later writers, the prevailing sentiment is that of the
farm and burgh 'wynd'-a sentiment always robust and un-
reserved, finding expression in the revel of country fairs and
city taverns, and carrying from both, to our modern sense, the
mingled odours of the field and kennel. The two best known
examples of this 'rustic' muse are Peblis to the Play and Christis
Kirk on the Grene. These are, in theme and form, companion-
pieces, and might well be, according to a persistent tradition, by
the same author. Reference has been made to the claims set up
in behalf of James I? . Some would ascribe the poems to James V
because their popular character suits better the character of the
'Gudeman of Ballengeich' than of the author of The Kingis Quair.
It has been shown that the assumption of inappropriateness in
style is invalid as an argument against authorship by James I,
and that there are certain difficulties of date which stand in the
way of the claim for his successor. That James I may have been
the author is an allowance of some importance in studying the
entwined relationship of the Chaucerian and the 'popular' verse
during the period.
The theme of these poems is the rough fun of a village festival
or 'wappinshaw, such as has been made familiar by Geikie's
pencil. The main impression is that of wild spirits : there is
plenty of movement, but no story, or coherence in the effects.
Incidentally, there are passages which, for descriptive direct-
ness, rank with the best in the 'Dutch' manner, but their success
comes from the sheer verve of composition rather than from
cunning in the treatment of detail.
To dans thir damysellis thame dicht? ,
Thir lassis licht of laitis 3;
Thair gluvis wer of the raffell 4 rycht,
Thair schone wes of the straitis 5;
Thair kirtillis wer of lynkome 6 licht,
Weill prest with mony plaitis.
Thay wer so nys? quhen men thame nichts,
Thay squeilit lyk ony gaittis,
So lowd,
At Chrystis kirk of the grene that day.
In exact parallel with this are the opening stanzas of Peblis to
the Play, describing the morning fuss among the country wenches;
but with this additional touch-
'Evir, allace! ' than said scho,
‘Am I nocht cleirlie tyntº?
i See Chapter 2.
2 made ready.
3 manner, behaviour.
4 roe-skin.
5 ? coarse cloth (woollen).
6 Lincoln.
7 nico. '
• lost, undone.
1
8
came near.
## p. 271 (#289) ############################################
Peblis to the Play; ChristisKirk on the Grene 271
I dar nocht cum zon mercat to,
I am so evvil sone brint.
Amang zon merchandis Maj-drest so?
