Medieval Scottish poetry

In the title “Medieval Scottish Poetry,” “poetry” is by far the least contentious term. The other two may each be defined in many different and incompatible ways, and together they pose different challenges. “Scottish” may refer to the geography, rather than to one specific language, while “medieval” can extend in Scottish contexts further into the 16th century than is usual in British or English accounts. This article will focus primarily on poetry written in Older Scots, between 1350 and 1513, but it will also gesture toward Scottish poetry in other languages, primarily Gaelic, and poetry written or transmitted before or after those dates. Most evidence for this poetry comes from the southeastern half of the country: poets can be associated with Moray, Aberdeen, Fife, Edinburgh and the Borders, and Ayrshire. Although some material is associated with the court, at least as much is associated with noble families. It is rare to find contemporary manuscripts for the poetry, for the main witnesses for many texts are 16th-century prints and miscellanies, such as the Asloan and Bannatyne Manuscripts. This suggests that the poetry retained its cultural value well into the early modern period and beyond. The earliest Older Scots poem surviving is John Barbour’s the Bruce, dated c. 1375, It narrates the exploits of Robert I and James Douglas during the First War of Independence (1295– 1314) for the benefit of the heroes’ descendants, Robert II and Archibald Douglas. Its length, sophistication, and manipulations of tropes and stories indicates that the Bruce had antecedents, certainly in French and in English, and possibly in an earlier form of Scots—indeed, it preserves a version of a quatrain, beginning “Quhen Alexander oure king was dead,” sometimes identified as the earliest surviving Scottish poem, although it only survives embedded in other works. The Bruce first articulates some recurrent themes in medieval Scottish poetry: kingship, national identity, and self-government. These also appear in the latest text to be considered here, Gavin Douglas’s Eneados, the first translation of the Aeneid into any variety of English. Completed in July 1513, this immense work points forward to the next historical period.


Introduction
In the title "Medieval Scottish Poetry," "poetry" is by far the least contentious term. The other two may each be defined in many different and incompatible ways, and together they pose different challenges. "Scottish" may refer to the geography, rather than to one specific language, while "medieval" can extend in Scottish contexts further into the 16th century than is usual in British or English accounts. This article will focus primarily on poetry written in Older Scots, between 1350 and 1513, but it will also gesture toward Scottish poetry in other languages, primarily Gaelic, and poetry written or transmitted before or after those dates. Most evidence for this poetry comes from the southeastern half of the country: poets can be associated with Moray, Aberdeen, Fife, Edinburgh and the Borders, and Ayrshire. Although some material is associated with the court, at least as much is associated with noble families. It is rare to find contemporary manuscripts for the poetry, for the main witnesses for many texts are 16th-century prints and miscellanies, such as the Asloan and Bannatyne Manuscripts. This suggests that the poetry retained its cultural value well into the early modern period and beyond. The earliest Older Scots poem surviving is John Barbour's the Bruce, dated c. 1375, It narrates the exploits of Robert I and James Douglas during the First War of Independence (1295)(1296)(1297)(1298)(1299)(1300)(1301)(1302)(1303)(1304)(1305)(1306)(1307)(1308)(1309)(1310)(1311)(1312)(1313)(1314) for the benefit of the heroes' descendants, Robert II and Archibald Douglas. Its length, sophistication, and manipulations of tropes and stories indicates that the Bruce had antecedents, certainly in French and in English, and possibly in an earlier form of Scots-indeed, it preserves a version of a quatrain, beginning "Quhen Alexander oure king was dead," sometimes identified as the earliest surviving Scottish poem, although it only survives embedded in other works. The Bruce first articulates some recurrent themes in medieval Scottish poetry: kingship, national identity, and self-government. These also appear in the latest text to be considered here, Gavin Douglas's Eneados, the first translation of the Aeneid into any variety of English. Completed in July 1513, this immense work points forward to the next historical period.
This collection offers a reasonable selection of poetry, organized in themes rather than chronologically. This provides an opportunity to see medieval Scottish poetry in juxtaposition with writing from other periods, but not always with the glossing and contextualization to support a full reading.

Critical Approaches
More focused book-length studies on particular aspects of medieval Scottish poetry are not numerous, although they are becoming more common. Nearly all of them take a diachronic approach, looking at a variety of texts from a particular critical perspective with an eye to specific political and cultural contexts. Extended discussions of Older Scots poetry therefore often employ historicist or generic structures to locate their discussion of unfamiliar and anonymous texts. Martin 2008 and Wingfield 2014 take thematic approaches. Martin 2008 considers the use of the depiction of love as a means of discussing power, from The Kingis Quair to Lyndsay, while Wingfield 2014 considers the Troy myth as used in the 15th and early 16th centuries. Other accounts focus on the relationships between medieval Scottish poetry and European literatures. French poetry is one immediate influence: associations are first explored in Smith 1934, and more recently in Calin 2014. Although Italian connections are more obvious in the 16th century, Jack 1972 also addresses the possibility of earlier links. Work on German, Dutch, and Burgundian influences is rather more piecemeal, and is associated with individual authors. The relationship between Scottish and English writing has often been cast as one-way, notably if controversially encapsulated in the term "Scottish Hasler's work considers the Scottish and English courts and sites of power in tandem, rather than looking for influences across the border. His Scottish foci are Dunbar, Douglas, and Sir David Lyndsay. By this approach, he highlights common themes in conjunction with different articulations and experiences, and opens up different models of literary culture. Jack, R. D. S. The Italian Influence on Scottish Literature. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1972.
Jack takes seriously the interaction of Italian and Scottish literatures from the 15th century onward. Although he is more successful in demonstrating direct influence in the later 16th century and beyond than in the 15th, since the earlier material evidence is hard to find, this volume nevertheless includes thoughtful engagement with Older Scots as a European poetic medium.
Kratzmann, Gregory. Anglo-Scottish Literary Relations, 1430-1550. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1980 One of the few books to focus on the interactions between Scottish and English cultures, Anglo-Scottish Literary Relations argues for reciprocal influences across the border rather than simply from the south to the north. Kratzmann also demonstrates the complexities of the responses, and the ways in which material is reworked and challenged over time. Martin, Joanna. Kingship and Love in Scottish Poetry, 1424-1540. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2008 This volume is concerned with the ways in which discussions of love can articulate ideas of responsible kingship and government, both of the self and of the realm. It covers a broad range of material, including such rarely discussed poems as The Quare of Jelusy, The Thre Prestis of Peblis, and King Hart. Smith, Janet M. The French Background of Middle Scots Literature. Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1934. While this is an older volume, Smith's account is nevertheless thorough and offers a slightly different approach from Calin 2014.
The Trojan myth cycle, and its development in Geoffrey of Monmouth's narrative of Britain, posed particular problems in Scottish discourse, around Scottish sovereignty and separation from English authority. Wingfield's account explores the ways in which this dominant myth of European culture is articulated in Scots poetry, both the familiar, such as Henryson's Orpheus and Eurydice, and the less accessible, such as the Scottish Troy Book.

Essay Collections
Essay collections are a common form of critical publication in the field of Older Scots writing generally, including poetry. Of primary significance are collections of papers from the triennial International Conference on Medieval and Renaissance Scottish Language and Literature (ICMRSLL). The first of these, Aitken, et al. 1977, contains still essential papers: Aitken's "How to Pronounce Older Scots" remains definitive, whereas Denton Fox's "Manuscripts and Prints of Scots Poetry in the Sixteenth Century" articulates a systematic account of the kinds of witnesses for medieval Scots poetry. Subsequent volumes have benchmarked the state and the range of the discipline every three years or so, and many essays in them have had significant impact on the development of the discipline, notably  Medieval andRenaissance, held in Edinburgh, Sept. 10-16, 1975. Glasgow: University of Glasgow Press, 1977. In addition to key articles by Aitken and Fox, this collection also contains several important essays on Henryson and Dunbar, and it outlines early concerns of the discipline.
Bruce, Mark, and Katherine Terrell, eds. The Anglo-Scottish Border and the Shaping of Identity 1300-1600. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.
As the title suggests, this volume is primarily concerned with representations of Scottish and English identities, and how the two interact. Of the twelve essays, seven are largely concerned with poetry, including essays on Rauf Coilyear (Schiff), poetic form (Goldstein) This collection is particularly wide-ranging in its topics, including essays by contemporary poets as well as more conventional academic discussions. It is notable for its inclusion of essays on less well-known texts, including The Freiris of Berwick (Goldstein)  This collection has a greater focus on the earlier material than some of the other collections, again with a good deal of material on Henryson and Dunbar, but also including a rare essay on The Colkelbie Sow (Jeffrey).

Genres
Many Older Scots poems survive without any attribution at all, and some have accrued attributions that are now in doubt. These include at least one dream vision, The Quare of Jelusy, a number of romances, moral and religious works, and some comic works. Their anonymity may have contributed to their comparative lack of critical attention, as may their preservation in late witnesses and the challenges in dating that arise from that. Nevertheless, many of them are fascinating pieces, and their study underlines the richness and complexity of the literatures of late medieval Scotland.

Dream Vision
Dream vision is a familiar genre in medieval poetry, and is also a feature of medieval Scottish poetry. While The Kingis Quair and The Palice of Honoure are well known, as is Henryson's dream vision in The Fables, the anonymous Quare of Jelusy is less familiar, but equally representative of the genre. It appears in the same manuscript as The Kingis Quair, and similarly engages with Chaucerian and Lydgatian concerns. It combines five-stress couplets with nine-line and seven-line stanzas, to develop different aspects of its theme. Martin's discussion is the most extensive focusing on the poem, and discusses it with reference to the other material in the manuscript witness, as well as its other literary influences. See pp. 19-39.

Comic Poems
Appreciating the humor of a different period can be a challenging task, and that is true of some medieval Scottish poems, where insults in particular do not accord with modern sensibilities. The comic poetry that survives is various. Dunbar has many comic lyrics, satirizing fellow courtiers and mocking himself, as well his longer alliterative poem, "Apon the Midsummer Ewin," also known as The Tretis of the Tua Mariit Wemen and the Wedo (B3), while Henryson's "Robene and Makyne" mocks both Robene and the pastourelle. There are also comic narratives, notably the fabliaux The Freiris of Berwik and Colkelbie Sow and the eldritch The Gyre Carling. These texts are often ribald, but narratively clever, and they are what is most often meant by comic poems. This essay looks at the legal culture and records associated with pigs, and also with disorder, and how these are used for comic effect in the poem. Kratzmann's brief discussion of these poems can be found in his chapter on Dunbar and Skelton (pp. 157-167). This anchors them to known poets without direct attribution.

Romances
The romances encompass a variety of forms, from four-stress and five-stress couplets to alliterative stanzas. They also offer interesting comparisons to the Bruce and the Wallace, which evoke romance style without necessarily being straightforward romance texts. There are two Arthurian romances, Golagros and Gawane and Lancelot of the Laik; Scottish prose accounts of Arthurian material can be found in chronicles and are not always favorable to the British king. The Alexander cycle has two long Scottish redactions, the Buik of Alexander (in This collection addresses the peculiarities of the Scottish engagement with Arthur, both a chivalric hero and an illegitimate English oppressor. Five of the ten essays are concerned specifically with poetry, including Tony Hunt's discussion of the Roman de Fergus, a French romance set in Scotland. This essay discusses the contents of the collection's prologue, and locates it in contemporary theological and literary concerns, particularly around acedia, "idleness." In so doing, it indicates the sophistication of the collection and its intended audience, and argues for closer attention to the collection and its presentation.

Individual Writers and Works
Although there are many anonymous poems from medieval Scotland, there are also some identifiable poets to whom important works can be safely attributed. In some cases, notably Hary, very little is known for certain about the poet, although it is sometimes possible to identify the particular context of a poem's composition, whether through named patrons or evidence of circulation. In other cases, such as Gavin Douglas and John Barbour, much more is known about the poet's life outside of his poetry. Attention to contexts both of writing and of circulation is a marked feature of the criticism of Older Scots poetry, partly a result of the discipline's proximity to Scottish history. Recent developments have included greater engagement with transmission and book history, as well as re-editing key works.

John Barbour, The Bruce
John Barbour appears to have been a client of Robert Stewart, who became Robert II in 1371. He was appointed archdeacon of Aberdeen in 1356, and held that appointment until his death in 1395. The Bruce is his only surviving piece of work, and it is the first surviving substantial piece of writing in Scots. The poem recounts the struggles of Robert Bruce and his chief supporter, James Douglas, from 1306 until his death as Robert I in 1329. Among its memorable episodes are the murder of John Comyn, the Douglas Larder, Bannockburn, and the Soulis Conspiracy. It is written in four-stress meter and negotiates a fine line between romance, epic, biography, and history.

Editions
The Bruce is a challenging read, not least because of its length. Duncan 1997 is a good introduction, as it is accompanied by a facing-page translation and notes on the historical events described. Duncan is a leading historian of medieval Scotland, and his edition for Canongate addresses key historical questions about the accuracy of Barbour's narrative and about the context in which it was written (about three-quarters of a century after the events it describes). He also provides a facing-page translation, and while discussing some textual issues, relies mostly on the readings provided by McDiarmid and Stevenson.
McDiarmid, M. P., and J. A. C. Stevenson, eds. Barbour's Bruce. 3 vols. By John Barbour. Scottish Text Society 4th Series, 12, 13, 15. Edinburgh: Scottish Text Society, 1980. This is the most recent scholarly edition, with full collation, notes, and glossary. The editors favor the text preserved in National Library of Scotland Advocates MS 19.2.2, on linguistic grounds, but this has been criticized. The edition itself can be hard to navigate, as the text does not have running heads, but the text and the notes are clearly presented.

Studies
Because the Bruce is an important source for the life of Robert I, many studies of the poem are concerned with its historical veracity, its reflection of Barbour's immediate political context, and its role in defining Scottish national identity. The collection Boardman and Foran 2015 contains a wide range of approaches and the most current summary of research. Ebin 1972 and McKim 1981 focus attention on particular aspects of Barbour's attitude to key themes, notably loyalty and nobility; Goldstein 1993 points up Barbour's identification of "Scottishness" with being a Bruce supporter, and the way in which that affects the representation of people and events. This interdisciplinary collection brings together a variety of approaches to the text. These range from medieval historiography and lifewriting (Given-Wilson and Tyson) to Scottish readership (Boardman, Brown, van Heijnsbergen), to questions about romance (Purdie). As a whole, the collection displays the challenges of understanding a text like the Bruce.
Ebin, Lois. "John Barbour's Bruce: Poetry, History, and Propaganda." Studies in Scottish Literature 9 (1972): 218-247. This article draws attention to the episodic way in which the Bruce is structured, and how that reinforces the themes of loyalty, freedom, and commitment. It discusses the ways in which Barbour manipulates historical events to support his presentation and how this relates to the circumstances in which he was writing. The Palice of Honoure (c. 1501), is a dream vision, in which the dreamer makes his way to the Palice of Honoure with the support of Calliope. Although carefully crafted in complex stanza forms, the overall narrative is interrupted by various set pieces told in exceptional detail, displaying Douglas's gift for the ornate. His other work is the Eneados (1513), which is the first full translation of the whole of Virgil's Aeneid into any variety of English. Douglas discusses his efforts both to be faithful to Virgil and to re-present this pagan text for a Christian audience in the prologues to each of the books; he also includes a translation of Maffeo Vegio's Book 13. Critical interest in Douglas has discussed his humanism, his representations of Dido and Aeneas (possibly the most contentious element), and his language, including his descriptions of nature.

Editions
Two works by Douglas survive: The Palice of Honoure and The Eneados. Other works have been attributed to him previously; these are included in Bawcutt 2003. This edition also discusses the different witnesses to The Palice, presenting parallel texts. Parkinson 1992 presents a critical text edition, intended primarily for student use. Although parts of the Eneados can be found in anthologies, the best edition of the complete work is Coldwell 1956-1960. Bawcutt, Priscilla, ed. The Shorter Poems of Gavin Douglas. Rev. ed. Scottish Text Society 5.2. Edinburgh: Scottish Text Society, 2003 This is a revised version of Bawcutt's previous Scottish Text Society edition (Series 4.3, 1967), including an updated bibliography. As The Palice of Honoure has two print witnesses, neither with significantly better authority, Bawcutt presents the text from each in a facing-page edition. The edition also contains King Hart and Conscience, poems previously attributed to Douglas. This volume is magisterial in its range and detail, and remains essential reading, both for those new to Douglas and those more familiar with his work. Ghosh considers Douglas's translation of Vegio's Book 13, an addition to Virgil's text composed in the 15th century to confirm Aeneas's place as a successful colonist in Italy. The book was recognized as unnecessary by most 16th-century readers, as shown by the "fift Hary, The Wallace Although commonly known as Blind Hary, the evidence of his surviving work, the Wallace, suggests that he was probably not blind from birth. Written in the 1470s, the Wallace is an account of William Wallace and his role in the First War of Independence. Ostensibly a historical account, the poem draws on Chaucerian models and Scottish material (notably the Bruce) to present a heroic figure of the lower nobility deeply opposed to English sovereignty over Scotland. Wallace is chosen for his mission by the Virgin Mary and St. Andrew; he seeks justice for the English murder of his family and his wife, and by his actions he shows Robert Bruce and other powerful magnates to be wanting. Hary manages this narrative in five-stress couplets, arranged in twelve books, and he borrows Chaucerian patterns to show Wallace in love, as well as episodes in Barbour to show Wallace's fighting force against the English. As Goldstein discusses, Hary's most striking motif is that of blood-how it is shed, and to whom it belongs: it is the image of blood, for instance, that causes Bruce to leave the English side for the Scottish cause. Despite its undeniable violence, from the evidence of printing and revisions, the poem has been regularly re-read in subsequent centuries, most recently as a base text (in its 18th-century revision) for the movie Braveheart (1995). Criticism is likewise focused on Hary's depictions of national identity.

Editions
The Wallace is a long and complex text, drawing its influences from many literary and historical sources, including Chaucer. Editing it, therefore, is a commensurately difficult proposition. The most recent scholarly edition of the Wallace is McDiarmid 1968McDiarmid -1969, and this is usually the edition cited in criticism. McKim's editions (McKim 2003a, McKim 2003b are directed more toward new and general readers.
McDiarmid, M. P., ed. Hary's Wallace. Scottish Text Society 4th Series 4, 5. Edinburgh: Scottish Text Society, 1968-1969 This is the standard edition of the text. McDiarmid offers a detailed discussion of Hary's sources, dismissing the poem's claim to be based on a now-lost Latin account. He discusses the more troublesome aspects of Hary's poem, including the direct engagement in the horrors of war as a feature of experience. His claims, however, that Golagros and Gawane and Rauf Coilyer should also be attributed to Hary have not been substantiated. This edition selects episodes from the Wallace appropriate for classroom study. There are on-page glosses and contextualizing notes. Available online.

Studies
Despite its "re-discovery" after the release of Braveheart in 1995, there has not been a significant increase in scholarly critique of the poem. Much of the criticism discusses the poem in comparison with Barbour's the Bruce-that is true of Wilson 1990 and also Goldstein 1993, although Goldstein identifies key differences in the poems' views of Scottishness. Moll 2002 is concerned only with the Wallace and the ways in which the poem presents one national identity.
Goldstein, R. James. The Matter of Scotland: Historical Narrative in Medieval Scotland. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1993.
Goldstein brings a theoretical-critical eye to the Wallace, and considers in particular his use of blood as a motif to understand the way in which Hary figures national identity.