with a variety of themes dear to the popular mind, such as love, satire, fun, and drink. The two most famous poems of this class, Christ's Kirk on the Green and Peebles to the Play, describe with great spirit the merriment and wild horseplay of a Scottish village festival. Both are written in a ten-lined rhyming alliterative stanza, and both have been assigned at different times to James I, and to James V, of Scotland. It has been claimed that their language indicates a later authorship than that of the first monarch; but this argument has not been stated with sufficient force to deprive him of the poems, and tradition is all in favour of his keeping them. Two other poems, Rauf Coilyear and John the Reeve, which have been discussed in an earlier chapter, represent a recurrent theme of popular verse, the entertainment of a king by a doughty man of the people, who is ignorant of his identity, and subsequently visits the Court and finds his guest. A kindred aspiration of the people is satisfied in the third part of that very curious production, Colkelby's Sow, in the raising of the stalwart peasant, Flammislie, to the earldom of Flanders. The first part of the poem describes the 'feill ferlifull deidis' with which the Sow discomfits those who had assembled to kill and cook her. Sir John Rowll's Cursing of the stealers of his fowls has been voted dull by some; but there is a certain humour, Rabelaisian through its amassment of detail no less than through its coarseness, in the terrific lists of torments intended for the miscreants. Sym and his Brother makes fun of two St. Andrews palmers goodhumouredly, yet in a way which seems to indicate that the more venomous satire against church abuses which was to follow in the work of Lyndsay, had for long had a basis in popular feeling. Lyndsay's moralizing tendency finds its counterpart in The Three Priests of Peebles, a sequence of tales which, despite their didacticism, are by no means dull. Bacchanalian poetry is well represented by the Ballad of Allan o' Maut, with its effective refrain, Why sould not Allan honorit be?' The duel of sex, so often a theme of fun in the popular domestic ballad, is comically handled in The Wife of Auchtermuchty and The Dumb Wife. In both of these the husband is discomfited, in the first case because he has attempted to play housewife, in the second because he has foolishly made his dumb wife speak with the aid of magic. A very curious kind of poem is that which flings together at haphazard marvels of fairy lore or popular superstition. Such a poem is Lichtoun's Dream: another fragment tells of the great king of Babylon, Berdok, That dwelt in summer until ane bowkill1 stok, He dwelt for cauld intil a cokkil shell. A third poem tells many quaint wonders of the Gryre-Carling, 1 Cabbage. or Scotch Mother-Witch. The theme of love is treated humorously in Jock and Jinny, which foreshadows, Allan Gray; and with a pathos worthy of Henryson himself, in The Mourning Maiden. Though these popular songs and tales do not often reward the seeker for pure poetry, it is they, and not the more exquisite Chaucerian verse, which prepare the way for such national singers as Ramsay, Fergusson, and Burns. In capacity for pure poetry, Sir David Lyndsay (1490?- Lyndsay. 1555 ?) is certainly inferior to all of the four great Scottish poets discussed earlier in this chapter, yet he had much of the vigour and satiric power which we have recognized in at least three of them; and his early work shows that, like them, he had felt the spell of Chaucer. Yet, in the great body of his writings, Chaucer's influence plays but little part, and his most considerable production, the Satire of the Three Estates, owes its formal characteristics not to him but to the example of the early drama. Furthermore, the satire which was his main strength is not Chaucer's satire. This had been devoted almost entirely to enhancing interest of story or character: Lyndsay's was primarily didactic and political, and had for its chief object the welfare of Scotland. This political obsession appears strongly even in his earliest The work, The Dreme, though this is strongly coloured by the influ- Dreme. ence of Chaucer, transmitted through Dunbar and Gavin Douglas. In this poem, the poet makes a progress of the universe under the guidance of Dame Remembrance, who in her grace and benevolence differs notably from the caustic nymph of The Palace of Honour. She takes him through heaven, hell, and all the spheres, gives him a survey of earth and a succinct list of its chief countries, and transports him to the Earthly Paradise, and hence, by a rather abrupt transition, to sixteenth-century Scotland. Arrived there, the poet inveighs against the abuses of his country through several pages of rime royal, sheeting the responsibility home to Scotland's rulers, and ending with a solemn appeal to the youthful James V to govern righteously. In the charming prologue to this poem, Lyndsay describes his ingenious methods of entertaining the monarch during his attendance on him in his babyhood. In the Complaint to the King's Grace he warns James solemnly against corruption, and, especially, ecclesiastical corruption; and he concludes with a brightly expressed but quite serious aspiration, that the king will advance his mentor's welfare. The inveterate scorn which Lyndsay always felt, or professed to feel, for ecclesiastical wrong-doers, appears once more in the Testament and Complaint of our Sovereign Lord's Papyngo, in which the king's parrot, being on the point of death, delivers itself concerning the abuses of the realm. The first part of this poem staggers under a heavy load of didacticism, but the second contains some pleasing The Satire of the Three Estates. Minor passages, notably the dialogue between the papyngo and those unwelcome ecclesiastics, the magpie, the raven and the hawk, who pretend to shrive it, and finally rend and bear away its half-cold body. A more pretentious and less readable production is A Dialogue between Experience and a Courtier, which extends to six thousand lines of octosyllabic couplet, and describes the whole history, religious and secular, of the universe, from the Creation to the Day of Doom. Lyndsay put the couplet to far better use in the History of Squire Meldrum, in which he describes his neighbour's adventures in love and war with spirit, charm, and occasional strokes of friendly fun. The Satire of the Three Estates is a political morality play, and as has been frequently noticed, it is in some sense a counterpart to the English political moralities of John Bale. Nominally its chief character is Rex Humanitas, whose favour is sought, after approved 'morality' fashion, by such competing vices and virtues as Sensuality and Deceit, Chastity and Good Counsel. Much more interesting, however, and evidently much more near to Lyndsay's heart, is John the Commonweal, who symbolizes Scotland, and makes his complaint against the two temporal estates and the single ecclesiastical one. It is significant of Lyndsay's point of view that whereas the temporal estates repent and amend their ways, 'Spirituality' declines to do this, and justifies her general conduct in a passage containing some of the poet's keenest and most ironical wit. The interest of the play lies partly in such strokes as this, partly in its interludes, which contain vivid pictures of Scottish peasant life, and are lit both with humour and with a saeva indignatio against the clerical oppressors of the poor. The Satire numbers some five thousand lines, and, as we are informed by the proclamation made on its performance at Cupar-Fife, it began at seven in the morning and continued throughout the whole day. Lyndsay's strong anti-clerical bias appears again in Kitty's Confession, a lively diatribe against the auricular confession of women by priests, and in The Tragedy of the Cardinal, written shortly after the death of Beaton, whom it savagely attacks. The Answer to the King's Flyting is Lyndsay's contribution to a poetical jousting between himself and the Guidman of Ballengeich', on whose gallantries it throws a curious light. The king's poem has been lost. Chief among Lyndsay's remaining minor poems are the Deploration of Queen Magdalene, an elegy on the death of James's first queen, and The Petition of Bagsche, an amusingly conceived sermon delivered by an old sinner of a hound to several younger dogs. Lyndsay, in a well-known passage of the Complaint of the Papyngo, mentions several contemporary poets, including Sir James Inglis, Stewart of Lorne, Kyd, and Bellenden. Many of their poems appear in the Maitland and Bannatyne MSS., but few are of any value. Somewhat more important is the verse of Sir Richard Maitland (1496-1586), who compiled the Though the work of Alexander Montgomerie (1556 ?-1610 ?) Montfalls somewhat outside our period, he may conveniently be gomerie. noticed here, as he has much in common with the older 'makars'. His best-known poem is The Cherry and the Slae, a lengthy allegory which hovers somewhat disconcertingly between romantic love and moral edification. Its best part is its commencement, in which the conventional pictures of Nature, which Montgomerie took over from preceding allegories, are freshly revived by a skilful hand. There is great charm in the description of the river foaming over crags into its deep ' lyn', with the lowly and bitter sloe beside it, and, overhead, the sweet red cherries of the poet's desire. The latter part of the poem is overcrowded with abstractions, and tends to become wearisome. The quatorzain in which it is written has a seductive wheel and chime, and owes much of its effect to the cunning internal rhymes of the concluding quatrain. This metre, which may possibly be of Montgomerie's invention, was afterwards used consummately by Burns. Montgomerie wrote a good deal of miscellaneous verse, including seventy sonnets, a coarsely abusive Flyting, of the conventional type, directed against Sir Patrick Hume of Polwarth, and one particularly charming lyric with an effective refrain,The nicht is near gone.' D CHAPTER VIII BALLADS AND LYRICS Origins of It will be seen from the last chapter that during the fifthe Ballad teenth century, official poetry—if this term may be applied thecom- to poetry of definite authorship-seldom reached a high munal standard; but for this there is a definite alleviation in the theory. rare beauty of the anonymous lyric and ballad poetry of the 6 period. The early history of the English ballad is obscure and vast; the controversy concerning it shares the nature of infinity. It is certain that the ballad in Western Europe was originally composed in order to be sung with recitative and chorus as an adjunct to dancing. It is therefore lyrical in its origin, and is closely connected with the carole or French round dance. The proper form of the ballads is that of the carole with narrative substance added.' 1 To this connexion are due the refrain which still survives in many ballads, and doubtless also the incremental repetitions', or variations of the same statement, in successive stanzas. Attempts have been made, chiefly by certain American writers, to assume that because the authors of ballads are unknown, they are to be regarded not as professional singers but as obscure members of the village community on whom the gift of song suddenly descended during the dance, much as the gift of prayer descends on Salvationists at a revival meeting. They are not professional poets or minstrels,' says Professor Gummere, 'but members of the folk.' Professor Kittredge goes further, and claims that the process of improvisation is not a solitary act' but one in which the audience participate after some mysterious fashion which gives them a kind of share in the poetic act'. The Professor adds, after further speculation: 'Thus we have arrived at a state of things which is in effect scarcely to be distinguished from the supposedly inconceivable phenomenon of a numerous throng composing poetry with one voice.' 6 This conclusion, which is an extreme expression of the communal theory' of the ballad's origin, seems to the present writer to be based on mere conjecture, unsupported by any weight of evidence or probability. The actual facts concerning the birth of ballads are so scanty that it is as difficult to marshal them for the refutation of this theory as for its demonstration; but the burden of proof certainly lies with those who advance a conjecture so utterly out of keeping with all the known facts of literary composition, and that burden so far has never been satisfactorily shouldered. Most folk who know and love poetry would surely rebel at the idea that Glasgerion and The Wife of Usher's Well, with their exquisite, 1 W. P. Ker, English Mediaeval Literature. |