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378
[September
THE POET-KING OF SCOTLAND.
HE tragic fate of David, Duke of
Rotliesay, eldest son of Robert
III. of Scotland, is known to every
reader of Scott, as it forms perhaps
the most startling incident in The
Fair Maid of Perth. The youthful
prince, like many other heirs ap
parent, and the more that he had a
feeble and doting father, yielded
himself without restraint to the
impulses of youthful blood, and
rioted in all manner of insolence
and debauchery. He and Jack
Falstaff’s Prince Hal were simul
taneously pursuing similar courses.
Displeasing as this was to the
State at large, it was emphati
cally so to the haughty Earl of
Douglas, whose daughter Marjory
was the prince’s wife, and who na
turally resented the dishonour done
to his blood. Here, then, was one
powerful and dangerous enemy.
But an enemy more powerful and
more dangerous still was his uncle,
the Duke of Albany, a man cruel,
crafty, unscrupulous, and ambitious,
who had set his heart on the throne
for himself and his family. Rothe
say being entrusted by the feeble
king to his artful brother, as old
Boece says, ‘ to leir him honest and
civill maneris,’ was brought to
Falkland and thrown into a dun
geon without meat or drink. He
was subjected to that most tedious,
terrible, and revolting of all violent
deaths—starvation ; and we need
not wonder that round such a
‘ strange eventful history ’ much
circumstantial romance should have
gathered. For instance, a woman
moved with compassion for the un
happy prince is said to have let
meal fall down through the loft of
the tower, by which his life was pro
longed several days ; but her action
having been discovered she was put
to death. Another supplied him
with milk from her own bosom,
through a long reed, and as soon
T
as it was known ‘ she was slain
with great cruelty.’ At length the
captive was reduced to such straits
that he devoured the filth of his
dungeon, and gnawed his own fin
gers. A death so tragic necessarily
had miraculous consequences; and
his body having been buried at Lindores, miracles were performed there
for many years after; until, indeed,
his brother, James I., began to pu
nish his slayers, ‘ and fra that time
furth,’ says the chronicler, ‘ the
miraclis ceissit.’ There can be
little doubt in the mind of the
competent enquirer that both Al
bany and Douglas, the prince’s
brother-in-law, were, as the Scot
tish law-phrase has it, ‘ art and
part ’ in this foul murder, though
probably not to an equal degree, for
in the Remission that they after
wards received at the hands of the
feeble monarch their condonation
was in terms as ample as if they had
been the actual murderers.
Robert was advised to provide for
the safety of his remaining son James
by sending him for education and
protection to his ally the King of
France. The prince, then only
eleven years of age, sailed from the
Bass with his tutor, the Earl of Ork
ney, and a suitable attendance, in
March 1405. In direct violation of
a truce then existing between the
two kingdoms, an English ship of
war captured the Scottish vessel off
Flamborough Head, on the 12th of
April. To argue in such a case
would have been unavailing: besides,
it was known to the English that Al
bany would not be displeased that
his nephew and hisattendants should
be treated as prisoners of war; and in
fact it is surmised that he gave hints
for the capture, that the only remain
ing obstacle between himself and the
throne might be in a fair way of being
altogether removed. James’s own ac
count of the capture is as follows:
�;1874]
The Poet-King of S&itlaml.
Upon the wevis weltering to and fro,
So infortunate was we that fremyt day,
That maugre plainly quethir we wold or no,
With strong hand by forse sehortly to
say, .
Of inymyis taken and led away,
We weren all, and brought in thaire
contree,
Fortune it schupe non othir wayis to be.
For nineteen years he was the
prisoner first of Henry IV., and
then of his son Henry V.
In the treatment of ‘ his captive
guest,’ says John Hill Burton,
Henry V. showed a nature in which jea
lousies and crooked policy had no place.
Had he desired to train an able statesman
to support his own throne, he could not have
better accomplished his end. The King of
Scots had everything that England could
give to store his naturally active intellect
with learning and accomplishments ; and he
had opportunities of seeing the practice of
English politics, and of observing and dis
coursing with the great statesmen of the
day, both in England and in France, where
Henry had also a court. He would bo sent
back all the abler governor of his own
people, and more formidable foe to her
enemies, for his sojourn at the Court of
England.
It may be so ; but though there
is an over-ruling Providence
From seeming evil still educing good,
it is a spurious liberality that credits
violence and breach of faith with
happy results that were certainly
not contemplated. It has often
been asked why Henry IV. captured
and detained the youthful prince,
and above all why he was kept in
captivity so long. If Albany had
been the instigator, why was James
detained nearly five years after his
uncle’s death ? and if, as it has been
said, James was detained because
there was a refugee monk at Stir
ling believed to be Richard the
Second of England, who had escaped
from Pontefract, why was he not
liberated on the death of that per
sonage, whoever he was, which
occurred in 1419, when there .was
no longer the shadow of a claimant
to the English throne ? These
questions are more easily asked
VOL. X.—NO. LVII.
NEW SERIES.
379
than answered. A royal captive
was too tempting a prize to be
lightly parted with: and it was
natural that England should not
restore the sovereign of her trouble
some neighbour till she had taken
what precautions she could to
secure amity between the twTo
nations. In this case the fetters
of love strengthened the bands of
policy. A marriage with the blood
royal of England was the most ob
vious expedient, and James had
already lost his heart to the nearest
choice, Jane Beaufort, daughter of
the Earl of Somerset, and cousingerman of the English king.
Romance and policy went hand in
hand, and the aspirations of the
royal lover were in unison with the
wishes and the plans of politicians.
The story of his love is told with
singular sweetness and beauty in
‘ The King’s Quair ’(i.e. Quire,—
Book), to which we now turn with
out prosecuting the narrative of his
subsequent busy, energetic, and use
ful life.
This beautiful and graceful poem,
one of the bright consummate
flowers of romance, and therefore
singular as the production of one
whose whole after life, instead of
being a romantic dream, was a sage,
practical, far-sighted, stern reality,
was inspired by his passion for the
‘lady of his love,’ the beautiful
granddaughter of ‘ Old John of
Gaunt, time-honoured Lancaster.’
The royal captive, an adept in all
knightly accomplishments, a musi
cian, a scholar, a philosopher, and a
poet, in the heyday of his blood,
found himself, contrary to all the
dictates of justice and hospitality,
‘ in strait ward and in strong
prison ’ in a strange land. For
nearly eighteen years he had be
wailed a ‘ deadly life,’ or a living
death, contrasting his own wretched
fate with the freedom that each had
in his kind,
The bird, the beast, the fish eke in the sea.
D D
�380
The Poet-King of Scotland.
He was tempted to question the
Divine goodness, seeing that he
more than others had had hard
measure dealt him, and thus days
and nights were spent in unavailing
lamentation. As a solace amid his
woes, it was his wont to rise early
as day and indulge in exercise, by
which he found joy out of torment.
Looking from his chamber window
in a tower of Windsor Castle, out
on a small flower-garden, occupying
the site of what had once been the
moat, he saw walking beneath—
The fairest or the freschest young floure
That ever I saw, methought, before that
houre—-
a vision of loveliness. The solitary
prisoner, with a poet’s eye and a
poet’s heart, looking out on a
garden fair and an arbour green,
musical in the May morning with
the notes of the nightingale, ‘ now
soft now loud among,’ was in the
mood to invest any comely daughter
of Eve with the attributes of a god
dess. When night is darkest the
light is near; and when the heart of
James was at the saddest the light of
his life was about to dawn on him.
Jane Beaufort, attended by two of
her maidens, entered the garden to
make her morning orisons, and the
captive of the Tower was so over
come with pleasure and delight,
that 4 suddenly his heart became
her thrall.’
Than gan I studye in myself and seyne,
All! suete are ye a warldly creature,
Or hevingly thing in likenesse of Nature ?
Or ar ye god Cupidis owin princesse ?
And cumyn are to loose me out of band,
Or are ye veray Nature the goddesse ?
That have depayntit with your hevinly
band
This gardyn full of flouris, as they stand ?
Quhat sail I think, allace.' quhat rever
ence
Sall I mester unto your excellence ?
He says she has—
Beauty enough to make a world to dote.
4 The King’s Quair ’ would have
been inevitably lost had it not been
[September
for the preservation of a single
manuscript, which once belonged
to Selden, and is now in the Bod
leian Library at Oxford. That
James was the author of several
poems is a fact noted by all who
have written of his life; but as
printing was not introduced into
Britain for a century after his age,
it can scarcely be matter of sur
prise that most of these should
have been lost. As Mair, Dempster,
and Tanner, Bishop of St. Asaph, all
mentioned particularly James’s
poem 4 upon his future wife,’ and as
reference was made to its being
among the Seldenian manuscripts
in the Bodleian, Mr. Tytler, of
Woodhouselee, engaged an Oxford
student to search for it; and this
search having been successful, he
further engaged him to make an
accurate copy. Mr. Tytler pub
lished it in 1783, prefixing a his
torical and critical Dissertation on
the Life of James I., and adding a
Dissertation on Scottish Music.
The text was illustrated by valu
able philological and explanatory
notes.
4 Christis Kirk of the
Grene ’ was also included by Mr.
Tytler in his publication, but we
reserve what we have to say of this
most humorous poem for the close
of our paper. The title of the
Seldenian manuscript above refer
red to is 4 The Quair, maid be King
James of Scotland the First, callit
The King’s Quair. Maid qn. his
Ma. was in England and at the
end there is the colophon—4 Quod
King James I.’ The transcript is
said to be a very indifferent one,
and contains not a few errors.
George Chalmers published in 1824
The Poetic Remains of some of
the Scottish Kings, in which what
is defective in Tytler’s exemplar of
4 The Quair ’ has not been remedied.
As James was taken to England
when a mere boy, and wrote Ins
poem there, and as he was a dili
gent student of Gower and Chaucer,
it is more than probable that it was
�1874]
The Poet-King of Scotland.
originally written in Southern or
East-Midland English. The exist
ing manuscript is not, however, in
that dialect, but in the Northern
English used in the Lowlands of
Scotland; therefore it is probable
that we have not got the first form,
but that which it took at the hands
of native scribes across the Tweed.
For the ease of the reader Mr.
Tytler divided the poem into six
cantos, according to the various
episodes contained in it. After the
taste of the age, it is allegorical, a
style of poetic composition probably
derived from the Provencal writers,
and continued in Britain to the end
of the reign of Elizabeth. To us of
the present day it is wearily, and
perhaps drearily, prolix; but it ac
corded well with an age of stately
decorum and stilted compliment,
and has all the elements of cum
brous magnificence. Congruity was
not aimed at by the allegorical
poets, and in ‘ The Quair ’ there is
an unseemly admixture of Chris
tian and Pagan mythology. This
cannot be ascribed to a want of
knowledge, but it is to be set down
to a defect of taste; for, except in
the case of the very highest poets,
who wrote entirely from inspira
tion, and had no recourse to models,
taste is a quality of culture, and the
child of criticism. It may exist in a
high degree with a mediocrity of
genius, and be sought for in vain
in the compositions of rich, original,
inventive bards. James did not
rise above the taste of his age, nor
furnish a purer and more chastened
model to his successors. But leav
ing out of view the structure of his
work, in individual passages he
soars to an elevation, and revels in
a sweet beauty, exceeded by none
of his contemporaries, and admired
even in this highly critical age,
familiar with the chastened grace
of Tennyson, by all possessed of
catholic sympathies.
Awaking from sleep in his prison,
he consoles himself by reading
381
Boethius, and this suggests to him
the instability of human affairs, and
the misfortunes and calamities of
his own unhappy life. Hearing the
bell ring to matins, he rose from his
couch, but could not divest himself
of the idea that the bell was vocal,
and was urging him to write his
own chequered history. Our read
ers will remember how often Charles
Dickens avails himself of a similar
fancy. James, therefore, ‘ took con
clusion some new thing to write,’
and invoked, as was the custom,
the Muses to his aid. He recounts
the details of his capture and cap
tivity ; at last his eye is delighted
with the garden and its bowers,
and his ear charmed with the song
of the nightingale, of whose sweet
harmony this was the text:
Worshippe, ye that lovers been, this May,
For of your bliss the Kalends are begun,
And sing with us, Away, winter, away!
Come, summer, come, the sweet season
and sun ;
Awake, for shame ; that have your
heavens won,
And amorously lift up your heades all;
Thank Love that list you to his mercy call.
He now speculates on the nature
of Love, to which he had hitherto
been a stranger, and prays that he
might enter his service, and ever
more be one of those who serve
him truly in weal and woe. His
prayer is answered sooner than he
expected, for in the garden appeared
his future queen, as has been men
tioned above, and falling under the
dominion of love, suddenly —
My wit and countenance,
My heart, my will, my nature, and my
mind,
Was changed clean right in ane other kind.
The personal beauty of the royal
maiden was enhanced by all the
art of the time :
Off liir array the form gif I sal write,
Toward hir golden haire and rich atyre,
In fretwise couchit with perlis quhite,
And grete balas lemyng as the fyre,
With mony ane emerant and faire
saphire,
D D 2
�382
The Poet-King of Scotland.
And on hir liede a chaplet fresch of hewe,
Of plumys partit rede, and quhite, and
blewe.
To this tricolour, the chosen em
blem of liberty, the royal youth
succumbed in a willing bondage.
About her neck, fair as the white
enamel, was a goodly chain of
gold, by which there hung a ruby
shaped like a heart; it seemed
burning wantonly on her white
throat like a spark of love. But better
and beyond all these were youth,
beauty, humble port, bounty, and
womanly feature—all sweet gifts
and graces to such extent that
Nature could ‘ no more her child
advance.’ He is now under the
law of Venus, and calls on the
nightingale to resume her song.
With that anon right she toke up a sang
Where come anon mo birdis and alight;
Bot than to here the mirth was tham amang,
Ouer that to see the suete sicht
Of hyr ymage, my spirit was so light,
Methought 1 flawe for joy without arest,
So were my wittis bound in all to fest.
And to the nottis of the philomene,
Quhilkis she sang the dittee there I maid
Direct to hir that was my hertis quene,
Withoutin quhom no songis may me
glade,
And to that sand walking in the schade,
My bedis thus with humble hert entire
Di'votly I said on this manere.
There is an infinite delicacy in
James’s expression of his love and
hopes, which his seclusion may have
fostered but could not have created,
proving how pure and noble and
knightly, in the highest sense—
how ‘ tender and true ’ was this ex
patriated flower of Scottish chivalry.
His ‘hertis quene’ became his lovely,
loving, and beloved wife : and when
the daggers of the assassins drank
his heart’s blood in the Dominican
Monastery at Perth, she was twice
stabbed in her frantic efforts to
defend and save him.
The chief interest of the poem
gathers round James himself and
his future queen. His pure heart,
his ingenuousness, his sincerity, his
brilliant fancy, his scholarly accom
[September
plishments, his deep and devoted
love, win irresistibly our admiration,
and make us forget the king and
the captive in the loyal-hearted and
warm-blooded man.
His transportation to the Sphere
of Love, and then to the Palace of
Minerva, and his subsequent journey
in quest of fortune, are very fanciful,
and in the purest contemporary style
of allegory. But to us, save in in
dividual passages, they are of no
great interest. Evidently these
portions of his work were composed
to conform to a conventional but
objectionable ideal. His discussion
of the vexed questions of Fate and
Free-will might seem to moderns to
be dragged in neck and heels to
exhibit his proficiency in scholastic
philosophy, but it is simply a com
pliance with the vicious practice of
the age. Gower and Chaucer were
his ‘ masters dear; ’ and, though
it would be heresy to place him
on a level with Chaucer, one of
those world-poets who mark an era,
he exhibits a reverential delicacy in
his description of the Lady of the
Garden which is wanting to Chaucer
in his enumeration of the charms of
Rosial in his ‘ Court of Love.’ Mr.
Ellis, however, one of the acutest of
our critics, is more daring than we
incline to be, for in his Specimens of
the BaflgBiiglish Poets he says with
out qualification that ‘“The King’s
Quair ” is full of simplicity and
feeling, and not inferior in poetical
merit to any similar production of
Chaucer.’
Before proceeding to describe and
criticise ‘Christis Kirk of the Grene,’
‘ a remarkable specimen of genuine
humour and pleasantry,’ we will
first attempt to establish the claim
of the First James to its authorship,
as this has been challenged in
favour of his descendant James the
Fifth. Mr. Paterson, in his Gudeman of Ballamgeich, is the latest
propounder and defender of this
latter opinion, and as he has stated
his case intelligently and fully, we
�1874]
The Poet-King of Scotland.
will examine his arguments in detail.
Meanwhile we will indicate, by way
of preface, what we believe gave
origin to the prevalent notion that
the Fifth James alone could have
produced such a graphic and
humorous picture of peasant life,
and we will do so in the words of
Mr. Burton, than whom there is no
higher authority on everything per
taining to ancient Scotland:
James V. was affectionately remembered
by his people as ‘ the King of the Commons.’
History told that he had been no friend to
the nobles, and tradition mixed him up with
many tales of adventure among the pea
santry, who not less enjoyed their memory
that they were not always creditable to him.
It was, perhaps, from these specialties of
his popularity, that he long held a place
in literary renown as the People’s Poet.
‘ Christ’s Kirk of the Green' and ‘ The
Gaberlunzie Man ’ are rhymed pictures of
Scottish peasant-life; so full of lively de
scription, and broad, vigorous, national
humour, that in popular esteem they could
only be the works of ‘the King of the
Commons ; ’ but this traditional belief lacks
solid support.
The first who may be regarded
as attributing this poem to James V.
is Dempster; for in his Ecclesiastical
History of the Nation of the Scots,
published in 162 7, two years after his
death, he says that of the poems
left by James V. testifying to his
most delightful genius, he had seen
only the vernacular epos ‘ On the
Rustic Dances at Falkirk.’ Here
there are two gross blunders—the
poem is described as an epos, an
heroic poem, such as the Greek and
Latin poets rendered in hexameters,
and English and Scottish poets in
pentameters ; and he had seen it.
No metric system is more opposed
to what is known as the epic than
that of the poem in question. Again,
the dances are referred to Falkirk in
stead of to Christ’s Kirk. These are
damaging particulars, and the more
so when we consider that Dempster
is the most untrustworthy of his
torians: Archbishop Ussher asserted
that he would believe nothing on
his evidence, unless he had himself
383
seen it. Though he could have
had no critical or partisan object in
assigning it to the one James more
than to the other, yet when a legiti
mate question of criticism and
authorship arises, Dempster’s tes
timony either way must simply be
eliminated. If this finding be cor
rect it nearly settles the dispute, for
Gibson, Tanner, and Ruddiman are
merely Dempster’s echoes.
In 1691, Edmund Gibson, after
wards the Bishop of London,
published at Oxford a very in
accurate edition, and introduced the
poem as one ‘ composed, as is sup
posed, by King James the Fifth.’ He
gives no authority for his supposition,
it being almost certain that he is
relying on the testimony of Demp
ster. The learned Ruddiman, in
the preface to his edition of Gavin
Douglas’s translation of Virgil’s
fEneis, published in 1710 (Mr.
Paterson says 1720), ascribes
‘Christ’s Kirk’ to James V., avow
edly on the authority of the Oxford
editor, and so does Tanner, Bishop
of St. Asaph, in his Bibliotheca
Britannico Hibernica, published in
1748. Thus four authorities that
have been much relied on dwindle
on examination to one, and that
one no authority at all on any
matter that admits of dispute.
Bishops Gibson and Tanner are in
this case foreigners, and their
‘ opinions,’ if their testimony de
serves even this title, are those of
persons whose ‘ opinions ’ carry no
weight. The only piece of disin
genuousness we have observed in
Mr. Paterson’s advocacy, and it is
surely a mere inadvertence, occurs,
in reference to Watson’s ChoiceCollection of Scots Poems. In the
first edition, published in 1706,
Watson attributed the poem to
James V. ; but Mr. Paterson does
not add that in the second edition,
published seven years later, he
ascribed it to James I. For our
selves we hold this change of
opinion on the part of Watson as
�384
The Poet-King of Scotland.
of almost infinitesimal value in the
settlement of the question. Neither
do we attach much importance to
the adhesion of the Earl of Orford,
Percy, Warton, Ritson, and others
to the vague recollection of Demp
ster, and to the unauthoritative
supposition of Bishop Gibson. Ab
solutely there is no external evi
dence in favour of the claims of
the later James, ‘ the King of the
Commons; ’ the whole external
evidence—and it is not great—is in
favour of his illustrious ancestor,
as we shall now attempt to prove.
In the latter part of 1568, George
Bannatyne, a man of intelligence
and some poetic power, made that
invaluable transcript of Scottish
poetry known as the Bannatyne
manuscript, now in the Advocates’
Library. At the close of his copy of
‘ Christ’s Kirk ’ he adds the affida
vit, q.,i.e. quoth, KingJames the First.
This is not perfectly conclusive, but
at any rate it counts for evidence,
and far outweighs the presumption
of Bishop Gibson and his followers.
It is, in fact, the only external
evidence we have to guide us in
forming a conclusion. An attempt
has been made to invalidate Bannatyne’s authority, because in the
next poem but one he has written
King James V. instead of King
James IV. But that was a poem
of no great mark—‘The Dregy of
Dunbar maid to King James, being
in Strivilling,’ of which Bannatyne
could not but know that James IV.,
and not his son, was the object,
and consequently the inference that
his blunder was a mere lapsus pennee
is not only probable, but necessary
and inevitable. The presumption
of a similar lapse in the case of
‘ Christ’s Kirk ’ is untenable. Had
James V. been the author of a
poem of so much humour and mark,
it is incredible that in a MS.
written only twenty-six years after
his death by one who was almost a
contemporary, it should have been
ascribed to a king who had died a
[September
hundred and thirty-two years
earlier. James V. had been too
popular and too unfortunate to be
lightly robbed of any credit to
which he was justly entitled; on
the contrary, it was long the
custom to give him credit for much
that was not his own.
It is the internal evidence that
is weak, and on it alone we could
scarcely be justified in building any
conclusion. If James I. wrote it,
the language has undergone a
modernisation. It is less antique
than Henryson’s, and it ought not
to be. But on the other hand, as
a popular poem in every sense of
the word, it was just the sort of
piece to undergo a soft succession
of living changes. This has been
the case with the ancient ballads of
Scotland especially. Had it been
a closet poem, so to speak, it might
have remained untouched. But
how could it live on from age to
age, except by a process of uncon
scious transformation ? ‘ If there
is not sufficient evidence,’ says Dr.
Irving, ‘ for referring it to James I.,
there is no evidence whatsoever for
referring it to James V.’ Irving,
no doubt, was a dogmatic man, of
strong prejudices; but he was
specially wTell-informed, and meant
to do justice to all. If the intimate
knowledge of the peasantry dis
played in the poem is held as
pointing to the royal ‘ Gaberlunzie
Man,’ we must remember that his
more illustrious ancestor occasion
ally mingled with the lower orders
too, and that in a fashion after the
Beggar-man’s own heart; so that
tlie Second Charles owed as much
of his roving disposition to the
blood of the Stuarts in his veins,
as to the modicum he held of that
of Margaret Tudor, and of that of
Henri Quatre. We think Mr.
Paterson stultifies himself when,
after attempting to discredit the
authority of the Bannatyne MS.,
because the transcriber bad written
Fifth for Fourth, he adds, ‘ Now,
�1874]
The Poet-King of Scotland.
this occurred in the reign of Queen
Mary, daughter of James V. It is
strange, therefore, that his memory
should have been so treacherous in
reference to the queen’s father or
grandfather. We must conclude
that the inaccuracies described were
not the result of ignorance, but merely
slips of the pen.’ We must con
clude so too, and therefore the only
external authority for the author
ship, authority in the proper sense
of the term, that can be discovered
is fully vindicated. We have not
noticed; Pebles to the Play, ’ for about
the authorship of this we think
there is small room for dispute.
Mair or Major quotes the first two
words of it as belonging to a poem of
the First James, and Lord Hailes’s
objection to it in connection with
the 70th statute of James II. has,
we think, been satisfactorily dis
posed of.
‘ Christis Kirk of the Grene,’ to the
subject and treatment of which we
now turn, is, says Lord Kames, ‘ a
ludicrous poem, representing low
manners with no less propriety than
spriglitliness.’ Its popularity had
crossed the Border, and Pope no
tices, sportively, that ‘ a Scot will
fight for it.’ We question if an
Englishman would fight for .any
national poem. Being a native of
a richer and more cosmopolitan
country, he has greater self-com
placency, and would scarcely stickle
for what he might deem a trifle.
The ‘ Kirk ’ is said to have been a
village in the parish of Lesly, in
Aberdeenshire. The best introduc
tion to the poem is to quote the
first two stanzas, and we beg our
readers to note the frequent and
systematic use of alliteration, a
poetic characteristic of the humor
ous poetry of the age :
Wes nevir in Scotland hard nor sene
Sec dancing nor deray,
Nouthir at Falkland on the Grene,
Ner Pebillis at the Play ;
As wes of wowaris, as I wene,
At Christis Kirk on ane day :
385
Thair came our Kitties, weshen clene,
In thair new kirtillis of gray,
Full gay,
At Christis Kirk of the Grene that day.
To dans thir damysellis thame dicht,
Thir lasses licht of laitis,
Thair gluvis war of the raffel rycht,
Thair sliune wer of the straitis,
Thair kirtillis were of Lynkome licht,
Weil prest with monny plaitis,
Thay wer sa nyss quhen men thame nicht,
Thay squelit lyke ony gaitis,
Sa loud,
At Christis Kirk of the Grene that day.
There are in all twenty-three
stanzas, filled ‘ with a succession of
highly ludicrous objects, and con
taining many characteristic lines.’
‘ Whoever reads the poem,’ says
Mr. Tytler, ‘ simply as a piece of
wit and humour, comes very far
short, I imagine, of the patriotic
design and intention of its author.’
And this he endeavours to illustrate.
We confess we read it simply for
its wit and humour, though on the
supposition that it is James the
First’s, the patriotic intention is
highly intelligible, and affords strong
internal evidence of his being the
author.
From the description of the rustic
coquette Gillie, and Jock whom
‘ scho scornit,’ we find the same
reference to, and preference for,
yellow hair that the ancient poems
testify—
Fow zellow zcllow wes hir lieid.
Tam Lutar was the village min
strel ; Steven was a famous dancer
who ‘ lap quhill he lay on his lendis
and the quarrel was at last com
menced by Kobin Itoy and Towny,
but the laws of the ring were un
known, for—
God wait gif hair was ruggit
Bethix thame,
At Christis Kirk of the Grene that day.
The patriotic purpose referred to
by Tytler now appears, viz. to force
the Scots to practise archery, by
ridiculing their ineptitude. Their
defeats by the English were in
variably due to their deficiency in
�386
The Poet-King of Scotland.
this arm. When the one of the
combatants referred to had bent a
bow, he thought to have pierced
his antagonist’s buttocks, but ‘by
an acre-braid it cam’ not near him! ’
The weapons were also defective,
for a friend’s bow flew in flinders
when he had drawn it furiously to
aid him. Harij and Lowry fared no
better, for the arrow of the latter
aimed at the breast hit the belly ;
but so far from piercing burnished
mail, like the cloth-yard shafts of
England, the arrow rebounded like
a bladder from the leathern doublet.
The stricken man was, however, so
stunned that he ‘ dusht doun to the
eard,’ and his adversary, thinking
him dead, fled from the town. The
wives, coming forth, found life in
the loun, and ‘ with three rowts up
they reft him,’ and cured him of
his swoon. A young man aiming at
the breast sent his arrow over the
byre, and being told that he had
slain a priest a mile off, also fled
from the town. The fight becomes
general, and the women cry and
clap, as usual on such occasions.
The exploits of Hutchen, the Town
Soutar, the Miller, and the Herds
men, are described with inimitable
humour; and the action of Dick, who,
when all was done, came forth with
an axe ‘ to fell a fuddir,’ or heap,
gave both his wife and Meg, his
mother, their paiks, is described
with genuine Scotch pawkiness
—keen observation and gift of
satire hid under a seeming sim
plicity. In a word, whoever may
be the author of ‘ Christ’s Kirk,’ he
stands in the foremost rank of
Scottish humorous poets. If our
hypothesis is correct, the captive of
the Tower and the chronicler of
the sports of Christ’s Kirk was a
man of no common versatility, and
could touch many strings of the
harp, ranging at will from the
deepest tenderness to the highest
humour, from Allegory to Farce.
Our sketch would be imperfect
were we not to notice, however
[September
briefly, the singularly tragic end of
this royal and most gifted child of
song. Several causes led to it, for
to no one in particular can it be
clearly traced. His wise and strin
gent laws protected property, fos
tered industry, and emancipated the
humbler classes from the tyranny of
the great feudal lords. With the
former, therefore, he was popular,
while his searching enquiry into the
titles of the latter to their estates
had greatly frightened them. Se
veral forfeitures that had been made,
thoughin strict accord with the laws,
intensified theirfears, and Sir Robert
Graham, the prime motive power in
the tragedy that had been planned,
is said to have openly denounced
Janies in Parliament as a tyrant,
and to have made no secret of his
conviction that he deserved death
at the hand of the first who met
him. The portents of superstition
were likewise brought into play,
and a Highland witch warned
James of his coming doom. But
threats and warnings lie despised
alike, and his jests oil the last were
long remembered. He had spent
the Christmas of 1436 in the Black
Friars’ Monastery in Perth, and was
still there on the twentieth of the
following February. On the even
ing of that day he was conversing
gaily with the queen and her ladies
before retiring to rest, when three
hundred of Graham’s Highlanders
broke into the monastery. Escape
by door or window was impossible,
but the king raising a board of the
flooring leapt into a vault below. A
lady of the Douglas family thrust
her arm through the staples to serve
as a bolt, but it was soon crushed
by the violence of the assassins. He
might have escaped by an opening
to the sewer, but three days before
he had himself caused it to be built
up, because the tennis balls entered
it when he was playing in the gar
den. Though at fault at first, the
conspirators at last found his hiding
place, and after a heroic and most
�1874]
The Poet-King of Scotland.
desperate resistance lie was des
patched with sixteen dagger stabs.
The conspirators were pursued and
captured, and expiated their bloody
crime by almost unimaginable tor
tures.
Since the time of CEdipus no
royal line has equalled that of the
Stuarts in its calamities. The First
James, adorned with the graces
of poetry and chivalry, a wise
legislator, a sagacious and resolute
king, perished, as we have seen, in
his forty-fourth year. His son, the
Second James, was killed in his
thirtieth year at the siege of Rox
burgh Castle, by the bursting of a
cannon. The Third James, after the
battle of Saucliieburn, in which his
rebellious subjects were counte
nanced and aided by his own son,
was stabbed, in his thirty-sixth
year, beneath a humble roof by a
pretended priest. That son, the
chivalrous madman of Flodden,
compassed his own death and that
of the flower of his kingdom, while
only forty years of age, by a piece
of foolish knight-errantry. At an
age ten years younger his only son,
James the Fifth, died of a broken
heart. Over the sufferings and
follies, if we may not say crimes,
387
and over the mournful and unwar
rantable doom of the beauteous
Mary, the world will never cease
to debate.
Her grandson ex
piated at Whitehall, by a bloody
death, the errors induced by his
self-will and his pernicious educa
tion. The Second Charles, the
Merry Monarch, had a fate as sad
as any of his ancestors ; for though
he died in his bed, his life was that
of a heartless voluptuary, who had
found in his years of seeming pros
perity neither truth in man nor
fidelity in woman. His brother, the
bigot James, lost three kingdoms,
and disinherited his dynasty, for his
blind adherence to a faith that failed
to regulate his life. The Old Preten
der was a cipher, and the Young
Pretender, after a. youthful flash of
promise, passed a useless life, and
ended it as a drunken dotard. The
last of the race, Henry, Cardinal
York, died in 1804, a spiritless old
man, and a pensioner of that House
of Hanover against which his father
and brother had waged war with
no advantage to themselves, and
with the forfeiture of life and lands,
of liberty and country, to many of
the noblest and most chivalrous in
habitants of our island.
W. G.
�
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Title
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Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Pamphlet
Dublin Core
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Title
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The Poet-King of Scotland
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [s.l.]
Collation: p. 378-387 ; 22 cm.
Notes: From Fraser's Magazine 10 (September 1874). Printed in double columns. Fraser's Magazine for Town and Country was a general and literary journal published in London from 1830 to 1882, which initially took a strong Tory line in politics. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Article signed W.G.
Publisher
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[s.n.]
Date
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1874
Identifier
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CT34
Subject
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Poetry
Scotland
Monarchy
Creator
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W.G.
Rights
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (The Poet-King of Scotland), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
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English
Conway Tracts
English Poetry
James I of Scotland
Scotland