Part 1

Transcriber's Note

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SCOTTISH POETRY OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

_Published by_

WILLIAM HODGE & CO., Glasgow

WILLIAMS & NORGATE, London and Edinburgh

_Abbotsford Series_ of the _Scottish Poets_

Edited by GEORGE EYRE-TODD

SCOTTISH POETRY OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

SIR DAVID LYNDSAY JOHN BELLENDEN KING JAMES THE FIFTH SIR RICHARD MAITLAND ALEXANDER SCOT ALEXANDER MONTGOMERIE

GLASGOW: WILLIAM HODGE & CO 1892

NOTE.

Many of the best editions of the Scottish poets, even of recent date, increase the difficulties of archaic language by such unnecessary stumbling-blocks as the use of the old straight _s_, and of Anglo-Saxon symbols for certain letters. Some even appear in the added obscurity of Old English type. And when these hindrances are not present, an irritating punctuation too often remains a barrier to all enjoyment. To these obstacles, as much, perhaps, as to the actual scarcity and costliness of the works, is to be attributed the popular neglect of a noble heritage in recent years. In the present volume, as in the previous volumes of this series, an effort has been made, while preserving the text intact in its original form, to improve in these respects upon the readableness of previous editions. A running glossary has, for the same object, been furnished in the margin of each page. For practical perusal of the text, as poetry, it is believed that this arrangement, translating obsolete words, as it does, without a break in the reading, is better than footnotes, or a glossary at the end of the volume. Few now-a-days, it is to be feared, save the most ardent students, can afford the time necessary for the elucidation by means of a dictionary even of so short a poem as “Chrystis Kirk on the Grene.”

While avoiding a burden of distracting comment, all necessary information, it is hoped, has been included in the separate introductions.

All the poems not otherwise indicated are here printed entire; and in particular it may be pointed out that the four pieces attributed to King James the Fifth are now reproduced complete and together for the first time since 1786.

CONTENTS.

PAGE

SCOTTISH POETRY OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY, 1

SIR DAVID LYNDSAY, 9 The Dreme, 29 The Testament and Complaynt of our Soverane Lordis Papyngo, 40 The Justing Betuix James Watsoun and Jhone Barbour, 64 Kitteis Confessioun, 67 Squyer Meldrumis Justyng, 72 The Squyeris Adew, 84 Ane Pleasant Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis, 85 Daybreak in May, 102

JOHN BELLENDEN, 105 Virtew and Vyce, 115 Nobilnes, 129 Address to Bellona and King James V., 132 The Excusation of the Prentar, 134 Anno Domini, 136

KING JAMES THE FIFTH, 139 Peblis to the Play, 159 Chrystis Kirk on the Grene, 168 The Gaberlunzieman, 176 The Jolly Beggar, 180

SIR RICHARD MAITLAND, 183 Satire on the Age, 195 Satire on the Toun Ladyes, 199 Na Kyndnes at Court without Siller, 204 On the Folye of ane Auld Manis Maryand ane Young Woman, 206 Aganis the Theivis of Liddisdaill, 208 Advyce to Lesom Mirriness, 212

ALEXANDER SCOT, 215 The Justing and Debait vp at the Dram betuix William Adamsone and Johine Sym, 221 Hence, Hairt, 229 Oppressit Hairt Indure, 231 To Luve Vnluvit, 234 Lo, Quhat it is to Lufe, 236

ALEXANDER MONTGOMERIE, 237 The Cherrie and the Slae, 245 The Night is Neir Gone, 263 An Admonitioun to Young Lassis, 266 To His Maistres, 267 To His Maistres, 268 To Thé for Me, 269

SCOTTISH POETRY OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.

Flodden Field, that long slope looking north-ward by the “deep and dark and sullen Till,” where on a September afternoon in 1513 the flower of Scotland fell round James the Fourth, stands darkly marked on the page of history both of the Scottish nation and of Scottish poetry. It was for the North the burial-place of one era and the birth-place of another. The English billmen who on Flodden closed round the last desperate ring of Scottish spears hewed down with their ghastly weapons not only James himself and his nobles, but the feudal system in church and state, with all that sprang from it, the civilization and poetry of the Middle Ages in Scotland. The national spirit which had burst into leaf at Bannockburn was touched now as by an autumn frost, and a time of storm and darkness must ensue before the country could feel the re-awakening influences of a new spring. The mediæval world, with its charm and its chivalry, its splendour, cruelty, and power, was passing away, while the modern world was in the throes of being born.

Had James IV. lived he would doubtless have continued, firm-handed as he was, to hold in check both churchmen and nobles, and the reforms which were in the air might have taken effect like leaven, and not, as they did, like gunpowder. They might have been grafted upon the existing stem, as in England, instead of overturning it. But during the long minority of James V. the abuses of the feudal system, political and ecclesiastical, attained too rank a growth to be pruned by the hand of that king when he came of age, notwithstanding his energy and good intentions. The system, as Macaulay has pointed out, had served its purpose in the Middle Ages as perhaps no more modern system could have done. In the feudal castles and monasteries had been preserved certain lights of chivalry and learning which, without such shelter, must, amid the storms of these centuries, have flickered and disappeared. These lights were now, however, burning more and more dimly. The corruptions of the clergy and the rapacity of the nobles outran all bounds, and between the two no man’s life was safe and no woman’s honour. Like other human institutions, therefore, which have outlived their usefulness, feudalism was doomed.

Renaissance was to come, not from within, but from without, and in the north the new influence took the form of a militant religious enthusiasm. Already in James the Fourth’s time the war-horns of the Reformation sounded on the Continent had made their echoes heard in Scotland; and during the reign of his successor these were taken up and resounded at home with tremendous effect by the iconoclast trio, Lyndsay, Buchanan, and Knox. The new era was to be one of strife and tempest, in which the root of poesy was little likely to bring to perfection its rarest blossoms.

Goethe has said that the Reformation cost Europe three centuries’ growth of civilization. So far as poetry is concerned the statement must be taken as true in Scotland to a modified extent. No one would be so foolish as to deny the immense advantages, in the purification of morals and the setting up of new perfervid ideals, which the Reformation brought to the north. But it is too frequently forgotten that the era of Scotland’s highest achievement in arms and in poetry was not the era of Knox and Buchanan, but the era of Bishop Lamberton, Archdeacon Barbour,[1] and the preaching friar Dunbar. Against the unquestionable benefits of the Reformation in Scotland must be set the fact that it not only broke the stem of the existing feudal civilization, but itself, intent only upon things of a future life, and modelled overmuch upon Judaic ideals, gave scant encouragement to the carnal arts of this world.

[1] Respectively the friend and the historian of the Bruce.

There is strong reason to believe that Scottish character, so far as social qualities go, suffered a certain withering change in the sixteenth century. Under feudalism, with all its faults, the country had been characterized by a generous joyousness which may be read between the lines of its contemporary history and poetry. Bruce, in the intervals of his heroic undertaking, could recite long romances of chivalry. The accomplishments of James I. as musician, poet, and player at all games and sports, are too well known to need repetition. Blind Harry was only one of the wandering minstrels who everywhere earned feast and bed by their entertainments. And the madcap court of James IV. lives in the poems of William Dunbar and the letters of the Spanish ambassador, Pedro de Ayala. All this was changed at the Reformation, and there seems to have been imposed then upon the life of the people a certain ascetic seriousness which has left its traces on the national character to the present day. Mirth and entertainment of all sorts not strictly religious were severely discountenanced by the Reformers, as tending to render this life too attractive, and to withdraw attention from the great object of existence, preparation for the tomb. The attitude of the new rulers towards poetical composition in particular may be judged from two instances. In 1576, in the first book printed in Gaelic--Knox’s _Forms of Prayer and Catechism_--Bishop Carswell, the translator, in his preface condemns with pious severity the Highlanders’ enjoyment of songs and histories “concerning warriors and champions, and Fingal the son of Comhal, with his heroes.” And the title-page of that curious collection, _The Gude and Godlie Ballates_, published in 1578,[2] bears that the contents consist in great part of pious compositions “changed out of prophaine Sangis, for avoyding of sinne and harlotrie.” So strongly, indeed, burned the ardour of the Reformers that for a considerable period nothing was printed in the Scottish press but what was tinged with religion in the strictest sense; and the effect of the condemnation of “profane” literature at that time is to be traced in the prejudice with which novel-reading has been regarded in Scotland almost to the present day.

[2] Included in Dalzell’s _Scotish Poems of the XVIth Century_, Edin. 1801, and reprinted in 1868. The following opening lines afford a specimen of the adaptation of a “prophaine sang”:--

Quho is at my windo? who? who? Goe from my windo; goe, goe: Quha calles there, so like ane stranger? Goe from my windo, goe.

Lord, I am heir, ane wratched mortall That for thy mercie dois crie and call Vnto thee, my Lord Celestiall. See who is at my window, who.

There was in the air, besides, another depressing influence which must not be overlooked.

Simultaneously with the dawn of the Reformation the Scottish language began to decay. The causes of this decay are sufficiently ascertained.[3] For the first forty years of the Reformation movement there was no translation of the Scriptures into the northern dialect. The copies used were obtained from England. Carried everywhere by the popular wave, the English book, as it was called, must by itself have done much to change the tongue of the country. Further, as the Catholic party in Scotland naturally looked for support to the ancient alliance with Catholic France, the adherents of Protestantism were forced into intimate relations and constant communication with Protestant England. In the works of Sir David Lyndsay, the earliest poet of the new period, the influence of this connection is seen taking effect, English forms of words, like _go_, _also_, and _one_, constantly taking the place of the mediæval Scottish. John Knox was a greater innovator than Lyndsay in this respect; and the deterioration went steadily on until, shortly after the close of the century, the _coup de grâce_ was given to the tongue by the transference of James VI. and his court to England. Upon that event Lowland Scottish went out of favour, and practically ceased to be a literary language.[4]

[3] The influences which went to fashion and to disintegrate the speech of the North are very clearly and systematically traced in Dr. J. A. H. Murray’s introduction to his _Dialect of the Southern Counties of Scotland_, London, 1873.

[4] Dr. Murray in a note (p. 71) upon the dialect of Scottish poets of the modern period remarks, “‘Scots wha hae’ is _fancy_ Scotch--that is, it is merely the English ‘Scots who have,’ spelled as Scotch. Barbour would have written ‘Scottis at hes’; Dunbar or Douglas, ‘Scottis quhilkis hes’; and even Henry Charteris, in the end of the sixteenth century, ‘Scottis quha hes.’”

In face of these adverse influences--the decay of the language, religious disfavour, and the overturn of the ancient social system--a brilliant poetic era was not to be looked for in Scotland in the sixteenth century. The marvel is that so much was produced that had vigour, humour, and tenderness. Justice has hardly yet been done to a period which, opening with the iconoclast thunders of Sir David Lyndsay, included the compositions of the gallant James V., of “the Scottish Anacreon” Alexander Scot, and of the author of “The Cherrie and the Slae.” These Scottish singers have their own place and charm, and it has to be remembered that their work was composed while the strange silence of more than a hundred years which followed the death of Chaucer south of the Tweed was still all but unbroken.

The early period of Scottish poetry, corresponding to the heroic era of the national history, had been one of geste, chronicle, and patriotic epic, and remains illustrious with the names of Thomas the Rhymer, Barbour, Wyntoun, and Henry the Minstrel. The mediæval period, that in which the temper of the nation changed from one of strenuous, single-hearted purpose to one of conscious reflection, individual assertion, and restless personal desire, had been the period in which, lit anew by the torch of Chaucer, and fed by the genius of James I., Henryson, Dunbar, and Douglas, Scottish poetry shot forth its most splendid flame. The sixteenth century, no less clearly marked, was a period of change. With Flodden Field and the Reformation the old order of things passed away. As the feudalism of the Middle Ages passed out of church and state the mediæval spirit passed out of the national poetry, and amid the strife of new ideals the last songs were sung in the national language of Scotland. Before the close of the century a new light had risen in the south, the brilliant Elizabethan constellation was flashing into fire, and under its influence the singers of the north were to make a new departure, and, like their kings who were seated on the English throne, were to adopt the accents of the southern tongue.

SIR DAVID LYNDSAY.

For more than two hundred years, until the appearance of Robert Burns, the most popular of all the Scottish poets was Sir David Lyndsay of the Mount. During that time more than twenty editions of his works were published; next to the Bible they were perhaps the most familiar reading of the people; and in any question of phraseology, “Ye’ll no fin’ that in Davie Lyndsay” was a common condemnation against which there was no appeal. Popularity is not always a sign of worth; but in Lyndsay’s case its justice must be admitted. The qualities which made him popular also make him great. No more honest, fearless, and admirable figure stands out from the page of Scottish history than that of this clear-sighted and true-hearted poet, who in a corrupt age filled so many parts without question and without stain. If effects are to be considered in judgment, a great place must be accorded the man who began by moulding the mind of a prince and ended by reforming that of a nation.

The Juvenal of Scotland was descended from a younger branch of the Lyndsays of the Byres in Haddingtonshire, and is believed to have been born in 1490 either at The Mount, near Cupar-Fife, or at Garleton, then Garmylton, in East Lothian. From the former small estate the poet’s father and himself in succession took their title, but the latter was apparently the chief residence of the family. There were grammar schools then established both in Haddington and in Cupar; and at one of these, it is probable, the poet received his early education. All that is definitely known of his early years, however, has been gathered from the fact that his name appears in 1508 or 1509 among the _Incorporati_ or fourth-year students of St. Salvator’s College, St. Andrews. He must therefore have matriculated there in 1505, the year of John Knox’s birth. Next Lyndsay’s name in the register follows that of David Beaton, afterwards archbishop and cardinal, and the most formidable opponent of the Reformation in Scotland. It has been inferred from two references in his poems[5] that upon leaving college Lyndsay visited the Continent and travelled as far as Italy. But information on the subject remains uncertain.

[5] From an eye-witnesslike allusion to the walking-length of Italian ladies’ dresses in his “Contemptioun of Syde Taillis,” and from the Courteour’s speech in “The Monarche” (line 5417) alluding apparently to the Pope’s presence at the siege of Mirandola in 1511.

“I saw Pape Julius manfullye Passe to the feild tryumphantlye With ane rycht aufull ordinance Contrar Lowis, the kyng of France.”

The next definite notice shows him attached to the royal court, and taking part in the amusements which were there in vogue. It is an entry in the treasurer’s accounts on 12th October, 1511, of £3 4s. for blue and yellow taffeties “to be a play coat to David Lyndsay for the play playit in the king and queen’s presence in the Abbey of Holyrood.” In the same year appear the first quarterly payments of an annual salary of £40, which he received henceforth for his duties at court. The exact position which he at first filled is uncertain, but on the birth of Prince James, afterwards James V., on 12th April, 1512, Lyndsay was appointed chief page or usher to the infant. The description of his services in this capacity makes a delightful picture in the “Epistil to the Kingis Grace” prefixed to “The Dreme,” and again in the “Complaynt” of 1529. The lines of the latter may be quoted--

I tak the Quenis Grace, thy mother, My Lord Chancelare, and mony uther, Thy Nowreis, and thy auld Maistres, I tak thame all to beir wytnes; Auld Willie Dillie, wer he on lyve, My lyfe full weill he could discryve: Quhow, as ane chapman beris his pak, I bure thy Grace upon my bak, And sumtymes, strydlingis on my nek, Dansand with mony bend and bek. The first sillabis that thow did mute Was PA, DA LYN,[6] upon the lute; Than playit I twenty spryngis, perqueir, Quhilk wes gret piete for to heir. Fra play thow leit me never rest, Bot Gynkartoun[7] thow lufit ay best; And ay, quhen thow come frome the scule Than I behuffit to play the fule; As I at lenth, in-to my Dreme My sindry servyce did expreme. Thocht it bene better, as sayis the wyse, Hape to the court nor gude servyce, I wate thow luffit me better, than, Nor, now, sum wyfe dois hir gude-man. Than men tyll uther did recorde, Said Lyndesay wald be maid ane lord: Thow hes maid lordis, Schir, be Sanct Geill, Of sum that hes nocht servit so weill.

[6] Play, Davie Lyndsay.

[7] An old Scottish tune.

Whatever may have been the severity of character which in other matters James sometimes considered it his duty to show, there remains as testimony to the real nature of “the King of the Commons” that he never forgot these early services of his faithful attendant.

When the prince was a year old, that is, in 1513, just before Flodden, Lyndsay was witness to that strange scene in the Church of St. Michael in Linlithgow which is related upon his authority both by Pitscottie and Buchanan, and which is popularly known through Sir Walter Scott’s version in _Marmion_. On the eve of setting forth upon his fatal campaign James IV., according to Pitscottie, was with his nobles attending prayers in the church at Linlithgow when a tall man came in, roughly clad in a blue gown and bare-headed, with a great pikestaff in his hand, “cryand and spearand for the King.” He advanced to James, and with small reverence laid his arm on the royal praying-desk. “Sir King,” he said, “my mother has sent me to you desiring you not to passe, at this time, where thou art purposed; for if thou does thou wilt not fair well in thy journey, nor none that passeth with thee. Further, she bade ye melle with no woman, nor use their counsell, nor let them touch thy body, nor thou theirs; for, and thou do it, thou wilt be confounded and brought to shame.” “Be this man,” proceeds the chronicler, “had spoken thir words unto the King’s Grace, the Even-song was neere doone, and the King paused on thir words, studying to give him an answer; but in the mean time, before the King’s eyes, and in presence of all the Lords that were about him for the time, this man vanished away, and could no wayes be seene nor comprehended, but vanished away as he had beene ane blink of the sunne, or ane whiss of the whirlwind, and could no more be seene.”

It has been suggested that the episode might be an effort of Queen Margaret to dissuade her husband from the campaign by working upon his superstition, and that Lyndsay, through whose hands the apparition “vanished away,” probably knew more of the affair than he cared to confess. The whole matter, however, is wrapped up in mystery.

After the death of James IV. at Flodden, Lyndsay appears to have remained in constant attendance upon the young king, sometimes being styled “the Kingis maister usher,” sometimes “the Kingis maister of houshald.” It was probably in the course of these duties that he made the acquaintance of the lady who became his wife. Whether she was related to the great historic house is unknown, but her name was Janet Douglas, and from numerous entries in the treasurer’s accounts she appears, notwithstanding her marriage, to have held the post of sempstress to the king till the end of his reign. The union took place about the year 1522.

In 1524 affairs in Scotland took a turn which for a time deprived Lyndsay of his office. On 20th May in that year the Regent Albany finally retired to France, and the reins of government were assumed by Queen Margaret, who, to strengthen her position against her divorced husband, the powerful Earl of Angus, withdrew the young prince from his tutors, and placed the sceptre nominally in his hand. Angus, however, prevailed, and getting possession of the person of James, ruled Scotland in the Douglas interest for four years. Lyndsay’s opinion of the effect of this proceeding may be gathered from the lines of his “Complaynt”--