"Men sould tak voyage at the larkis sang, And nocht at evin quhen passit is the day; Quhen that his hair is turnit lyart gray." From the specimens quoted, it will be seen that Maitland was a thoroughly competent and dexterous versifier, and the same inference is suggested by his more formal poetry, such as the verses On the Quenis Maryage to the Dolphin of France, or those On the Quenis arryvale in Scotland. He indulges in alliteration, and in pieces of this nature his vocabulary tends to be "aureate." "O Royell Roy! thy realme ay rewll by rycht" is one enthusiastic line from a loyal address to King James VI. His use of the Banks of Helicon, or the Cherrie and the Slae, metre is not perhaps so successful, but the scheme of Redemption from the Creation downwards is perhaps an unpromising one for treatment in that elaborate and fluent stanza. He displays, however, a good deal of ingenuity in a poem of eight lines called Gude Counsals, which possesses the singular merit that "ye may begin at ony nuke ye will and reid backward or forward, and ye sall fynd the lyk sentence and meter." He transmitted his talents to his son Sir John, to whom, at all events, is ascribed a poem, Aganis Sklanderous Tungis, more difficult to interpret than many earlier pieces, and perhaps worth quoting to the extent of a couple of stanzas : "Gif ye be blythe, your lychtnes thai will lak; Gif ye be grave, your gravite is clekit; Gif ye lyk musik, mirthe, or myrrie mak, Thai sweir ye feill ane string and bownis to brek it; And all your sairris callit secret swnyeis ; Gif ye be wyis, and weill in vertu versit, Cwnning thai call uncwmlie for your kynd, To cloik the crafte quhairte ye ar inclynd; Gif ye be meik, yit thai mistak your mynd, Whatever may be our estimate of Maitland's poetical gifts, he deserves to be kept in perpetual remembrance for his invaluable services in preserving for posterity much of old Scots poetry which might otherwise have perished. The Maitland MSS.2 were compiled by him, or rather under his direction, between 1555 and 1586; and the collection is only rivalled in interest and importance by that of George Bannatyne (circ. 1545-circ. 1608), a native of Newtyle and a prosperous business man in Edinburgh, who compiled the anthology which bears his honoured name in 1568, during a visitation of the plague.3 Bannatyne was a better judge of poetry in others than he was a poet, and such of his original verse as we have is full of conceits and of the battered clichés of the "aureate" school of poetry. The reader may, however, be interested to see the concluding stanzas of a piece in honour of his lady love, though we cannot tell whether this was the relict of Bailie Nisbet whom he married in middle life : "Nocht ellis thairfoir I wryt to zow, my sweit, But with meik hairt, and quaking pen and hand, Prostratis my seruice law doun at zour feit, Bot nycht and day quhill I may gang or stand; To plant in zow ane petifull hairt and mynd, Both now and ay, and so I mak ane end. Aganis Sklanderous Tungis in Satirical Poems of the Reformation, ed. Cranstoun, ut sup. i. p. 254, and in Maitland's Poems, ut sup., App., p. 121. 2 For a bibliographical account of the MS. collections see Gregory Smith, Specimens of Middle Scots, ut sup., pp. lxvi. et seq. 3 See the Memorials of George Bannatyne (Bannatyne Club, 1829), to which Scott contributed a characteristic and delightful sketch of Bannatyne's life, Go to my deir with hummill reuerence, Thow bony bill, both rude and imperfyte, My name quha list to knaw let him tak tent, It is to the pious industry and taste of this excellent man that we owe the preservation (along with much else that could ill be spared) of the poetical works of Alexander Scott, "the Anacreon," as Pinkerton calls him, or, as we might say, the Tom Moore, "of old Scottish poetry." Of Scott's carcer nothing certain is known, though we may infer from an allusion in his younger rival Montgomerie that he was a feckless enough person, and given to spending most of his time in "daffing." It would appear, too, that he was unfortunate in love. His wife played him false, and he avenged himself in the fearless old fashion by violent and scurrilous invectives against the whole female sex. Thus he is too often conspicuous even among the old "makaris," who were far from being mealymouthed, by the unbridled license of his language. The Ballad maid to the Derisioun and Scorne of Wantoun Wemen has little to draw attention to it except an extreme coarseness; while, in another vein, the Justing and Debait up at the Drum betuix Wa Adamsone and Johine Sym (in a double stanza of eights and sixes plus a bob wheel) merely carries on the not very diverting or edifying tradition of horseplay and buffoonery. But Scott's inspiration was sometimes happier than this. His metrical versions of a couple of psalms may be nothing 1 Memorials of George Bannatyne (Bannatyne Club, 1829), App. iv. p. 120. Abacuck Bysset (infra, p. 250) indulges in a similar jest on his name at the end of his prologue (Specimens of Middle Scots, p. 241). * Poems, ed. Cranstoun, S. T. S., 1896. very great, but no one can ignore his New Zeir Gift to the Quene Mary (1562). Laboured, no doubt it is, and the alliteration is more obtrusive than agreeable. The last stanza, indeed, which begins "Fresch, fulgent, flurist, fragrant flour famois' is a miracle of what Mr. Cranstoun happily calls "elaborate trifling." But the rest of the poem is not so fantastic, and, though the material is by this time familiar to us, it is well presented. The clergy of the old ecclesiastical order are attacked for their faults, but so also are the Protestants, who may be seen at church "Singand Sanct Dauid's psalter on thair buiks"; but in their private walk and conversation are no better than they should be "Backbytand nychtbouris, noyand thame in nuikis ; Covetousness and greed have stepped in to the places occupied before by the typical vices of the Churchmen, and the effect of the revolution upon the rural population is vividly sketched in the following stanza : "Pure folk are famist with thir fassionis new, God gife thee grace aganis this gude new zeir." 2 An even superior performance to this far from despicable poem is that entitled the Lament of the Master of Erskyn, the Cf. "Haif hairt in hairt, ye hairt of hairtis hail" (also Scott's), and Montgomerie's "Tak tyme in tym, or tym will not be tane." New Zeir Gift to the Quene Mary, ll. 137-144. |