brian, but in a purely artificial language, with southern and even Kentish forms and peculiarities; and so is B. For the identification of the scribe of the Kingis Quair, see Mr Geo. Neilson in the Athenæum of 16th December 1899, and Mr A. H. Millar in that of 21st December. Rossetti's ballad, The King's Tragedy (1881), on James's fate is as admirable as Galt's novel The Spaewife is poor. P. HUME BROWN. Blind Harry, or HENRY THE MINSTREL, is thus spoken of by John Major in his Latin History of Greater Britain (translated for the Scottish History Society by Constable, 1892): 'There was one Henry, blind from his birth, who in the time of my childhood fabricated a whole book about William Wallace, and therein he wrote down in our native rhymes and this was a kind of composition in which he had much skill-all that passed current amongst the people in his day. I, however, can give but a partial credence to such writings as these. This Henry used to recite his tales in the households of the nobles, and thereby got the food and clothing that he earned.' Major was born in 1469, and Blind Harry may be said to have 'flourished' on a modest scale about 1470. But it is hardly credible that Major can have had authority for saying the Minstrel was blind from birth; and his work proves that he was by no means so unlettered as is commonly assumed. Payments made to him by the king's command cease-presumably at his death-in 1492. In his Wallace Harry claims that it was founded on a narrative of the life of Wallace, written in Latin by Arnold Blair, chaplain to the Scottish hero; but the chief materials have evidently been the traditionary stories told about Wallace in the minstrel's own time, more than a century and a half after Wallace--the Wallace is even less of a historical document than Barbour's Bruce. Perhaps too much has been made of the Minstrel's patriotic hatred of the English, in contrast to Barbour's less marked partisanship, and of his fierce thirst for revenge on his own and his country's oppressors. But Harry's Wallace is a merciless champion, for ever hewing down the English with his strong arm and terrible sword, and rejoicing in the sufferings of his enemies. Both with Barbour and Blind Harry it is fatal to measure literary value by historical accuracy. Some of the incidents in Harry's narrative are so palpably absurd (such as the siege of York; the visit of the Queen of England, when queen there was none, to Wallace's camp with an offer of £3000 in gold; and the combats of Wallace with the French champions and the lion) that they could hardly have been intended to be accepted as history. The only manuscript of the work which exists is dated 1488, and was written by that careful scribe, John Ramsay of Lochmalonie, in Kilmany, who also transcribed Barbour's Bruce. The blind Minstrel was therefore alive four years after the date of Ramsay's manuscript, as we know from the treasurer's books of the reign of James IV. ; and Ramsay had doubtless the author's help-perhaps took it down from his own recitation. Few copies would blame unlearned knows-inspired ... be made of a poem extending to 11,858 lines. In 1897 Professor Skeat drew attention to the fact that Blind Harry in some score of cases betrays the influence of Chaucer in his rhythms, in expressions, in occasional half-lines, and even in his grammatical forms; and Mr Craigie has pointed out that the peroration or epilogue at the end of the Wallace contains part of the substance of the prologue to the Franklin's tale. Blind Harry writes: Go nobil buk, fulfillyt of gud sentens Suppos thou baran be of eloquens I yow besek, off your beneuolence, Quha will nocht low, lak nocht my eloquence; loveIt is well knawin I am a burel man, For her is said as gudly as I can : My spreit felis na termis asperans. Chaucer's Franklin had made a similar apology: But sires by-cause I am a burel man At my bigynnyng first I yow biseche, Have me excused of my rudé speche. . . My spirit feeleth noght of swich mateere. The Wallace is in ten-syllable lines of heroic verse, and is pithy and graphic rather than poetical. It is usual to place Harry far below Barbour as a poet; but Mr Craigie has sought to reverse this historic verdict by insisting on Harry's conciseness in contrast to Barbour's undisputed prolixity, his greater variety of incident, his more vivid descriptions and more pregnant single lines, his keener passion for liberty, and his avoidance of a kind of padding not unusual in the Bruce. A paraphrase of the Wallace into modern Scotch, by William Hamilton of Gilbertfield (1722), was long a favourite with Scottish country-folks; of it, and of a rhymed chap-book on Hannibal, Burns said: 'They were the first books I read in private, and gave me more pleasure than any two books I ever read since. . . . The story of Wallace poured a Scottish prejudice into my veins, which will boil along there till the floodgates of life shut in eternal rest'-a notable testimony to Harry's influence on Scottish thought and literature. The poem opens thus : hold business whole bypast Our antecessowris, that we suld of reide, So on a tym he desyrit to play Till Erewyn wattir fysche to tak he went; To leide his net, a child furth with him geid: went ere noon 6 6 1, 2 3 too charity more when we depart He bad his child, Gyff thaim of our waithyng,' 6 sorry apparently, a pole with a net till 7 neck With that the rest The scherand suerd glaid to the colar bane. Ane othir on the arme he hitt so hardely, thrust glided V of our court her at the wattir baid, Quha menys it maist, the dewyll of hell him droun; bemoans uncle 8 harm 1 V, five. 2 Gay green. 3 St Martin was universally associated with feasting and good cheer. 4 Spoils of the chase. 5 Whom do you familiarly address with "thou" Scot? You deserve a blow.' 6 Can here is 'gan' in the sense of did; couth for its past tense is a confusion with the other can, 'is able.' 7 Furrow's-breadth. 8 Very nearly went out of his mind.-Wallace was staying at the time with his uncle, Sir Richard Wallace of Riccarton. Fawdon's Ghost. I approached 2 At the Gask woode full fayne he wald haiff beyne ; rising ground neck-did take 3 leapt cause of delay With his gud suerd, and strak the hed him fra. Also 4 If lose lodging 5 6 bided In the Gask hall thair lugyng haif thai tayne; 7 left where that that 9 10 leapt-house did fare II ugly fellow Rycht weill he trowit that was no spreit of man; Sum wikkit spreit agayne for him present; I can nocht spek of sic diuinite, To clerkis I will lat all sic materis be: Bot of Wallace, furth I will yow tell. 12 Believe ye creed escaped did he make Prayed-Creator Hade he plesd God, he trowit it mycht nocht be above prove suffer (to fall) drove (From Book v.) 1 Sleuth-hound. 2 Strong-sojourned, worked. 3 Crashed heavily to the ground quite dead. 4 Had gone or walked but little. 5 Prepared-cook. 6 Heard horns blow loudly on high. 7 But the loud blowing went on. 8 He (Fawdon) hurled in the head. 9 Knew no choice, possibility. 10 Boards reft in twain. 11 Peeped round to see what appearance. 12 Lost-ill-omened apparition. An edition of Blind Harry's Wallace was printed in 1570, and no old Scottish work was so often reprinted down to the eighteenth century. That by Dr Jamieson was the first critical edition (1820); the best text is that edited by Moir for the Scottish Text Society (1885-86). Hamilton's paraphrase (1722) was reprinted more than a dozen times, and superseded the original in popular use. Chaucer's influence on Blind Harry, see Skeat in The Modern Language Quarterly, Nov. 1897; and for Mr Craigie's comparison of 'Barbour and Blind Harry as Literature,' see the Scottish Review, July 1893. Prose. For Scottish Fifteenth-Century Scottish prose literature, vigorous in the sixteenth century, had hardly made a beginning in the fifteenth. There has been preserved Ane Schort Memoriale of the Scottis Croniklis from the reigns of James II. and James III., dating from about 1460 (printed 1820). There are translations about 1450-90 by Sir Gilbert Hay of the Buke of Battailis and Buke of the Order of Knyghthede from the French, the Buke of the Governaunce of Princes from the Latin, and the Buke of the Conqueror Alexander the Great from the French (the latter over 20,000 lines of verse). Laing edited the second-named— also translated by Caxton-in 1847; the Scottish Text Society undertook an edition of the first three. And The Craft of Dying and other religious pieces printed for the Early English Text Society (1870) seem to belong to the end of the century. There is a Scots letter or grant dated 1412, and written by James I. while he was a prisoner in England, From the end of the previous century we have one of the very oldest and most interesting Lowland Scots letters extant-that from the Earl of March to Henry IV. of England announcing his grievances at the hands of the unhappy Duke of Rothesay, counting kin with the king after a highly Scottish fashion, and pleading for Henry's support. It must have been written before Rothesay's marriage with the daughter of Douglas (February 1400), and represents the 'Englis' current north of the Tweed at that date; the writer's style is as clear as he wished his 'entent' to be, and the fact is interesting that at this date Norman French was not necessarily familiar to the higher nobility of Scotland. The Earl of March rebelled against Robert III., threw himself into the arms of Henry IV., served him with distinction at the battle of Shrewsbury, and even took part in English raids into Scotland. The letter is reproduced in facsimile in vol. ii. of the National Manuscripts of Scotland (1870): Excellent mychty and noble Prynce: likis yhour Realte to wit that I am gretly wrangit be the Duc of Rothesay the quhilk spousit my douchter and now agayn his oblising to me made be hys lettre and his seal and agaynes the law of halikirc spouses ane other wif as it ys said, of the quhilk wrangis and defowle to me and my douchter in swilk manere done, I, as ane of yhour poer kyn, gif it likis yhow requere yhow of help and suppowell fore swilk honest seruice as I may do efter my power to yhour noble lordship and to yhour lande, Fore tretee of the quhilk matere will yhe dedeyn to charge the lord the Fournivalle, ore the Erle of Westmerland at yhour likyng to the Marche, with swilk gudely haste as yhow likis, qware that I may haue spekyng with quhilk of thaim that yhe will send, and schew hym clerly myne entent, the quhilk I darre nocht discouer to nane other bot tyll ane of thaim be cause of kyn and the grete lewtee that I traist in thaim, and as I suppose yhe traist in thaim on the tother part, Alsa noble Prynce will yhe dedeyn to graunt and to send me, your sauf conduyt endurand quhill the fest of the natiuite of Seint John the Baptist fore a hundredth knichtis and squiers and seruantz gudes hors and hernais as well within wallit Town as with owt, ore in qwat other resonable manere that yhow likis fore trauaillyng and dwelryg within yhour land gif I hafe myster, And excell Prynce syn that I clayme to be of kyn tyll yhow, a it peraventure nocht knawen on yhour parte, I schew to your lordschip be this my lettre that gif dame A: the Bewmount was yhour graunde dame, dame Maa Comyne hyrre full sister was my graunde dame on tother syde, sa that I am bot of the feirde degre of tyll yhow, the quhilk in alde tyme was callit neire, and syn I am in swilk degre tyll yhow I requere yhow as be way of tendirness thare of, and for my seruice in manere as I hafe before writyn, that yhe will vouchesauf tyll help me and suppowell me tyll gete amendes of the wrangis and the defowle that ys done me, sendand tyll me gif yhow likis yhour answere of this, With all gudely haste, And noble Prynce mervaile yhe nocht that I write my lettres in englis, fore that ys mare clere to myne vnderstandyng than latyne ore Fraunche, Excellent mychty and noble prynce the haly Trinite hafe yhow euermare in kepyng, Writyn at my castell of Dunbarr the xviij day of Feuerer, LE COUNT DE LA MARCHE DESCOCE. Au tresexcellent trespuissant et tresnoble Prince le Roy Dengleterre. Likis yhour Realte, if it please your Royalty; oblising, obligation; halikire, holy church; defowle, dishonour; suppowell, sup port; qware, where; lewtee (leauté), loyalty; quhill, till; myster, need; feirde, fourth. ་ Robert Henryson (1430?-1506?) has been called by Mr Henley Chaucer's aptest and brightest scholar,' and was doubtless the most Chaucerian of the Scottish Chaucerians; not a mere imitator, but with a rich and varied poetic gift of his own. He has keen observation, humour, singular skill in rhyme and rhythm, and an artistic feeling and culture which prove that the spirit of the early Renaissance had at least one accomplished representative in the fierce, faction-torn Scotland of the reign of James III. Even his allegories have a marked flavour of realism. Henryson seems to have been born about 1425, and was doubtless educated at some foreign university. He was schoolmaster of Dunfermline, apparently in clerical orders-perhaps, as Lord Hailes suggests, preceptor in the Benedictine convent there-and he was admitted a member of the University of Glasgow in 1462, being described as the 'Venerable Master Robert Henrysone, licentiate in arts, and bachelor in decrees.' He also practised as a notary public, and may have lived into the early years of the sixteenth century. The principal works of Henryson are Moral Fables of Esop, thirteen in number, with two prologues; Orpheus and Eurydice, describing the experiences of Orpheus in Hades, and his futile efforts to bring thence his wife ; The Testament of Cresseide, a sequel to Chaucer's Troilus and Cressida, which contains some admirable descriptive writing, and is in general both vigorous and poetic in feeling; and Robene and Makyne, which is not merely the first pastoral in the Scottish vernacular, but is really the earliest pastoral in the English tongue. The conjunct names of Robin and May may have been suggested by some of the forms of the Robin Hood and Maid Marian, commonly played in Scotland, or by the celebrated pastoral, Robin et Marion, of the great French trouvère, Adam de la Halle of Arras (c.1220-88). Li Gicus de Robin et de Marion takes a conspicuous place in the history of comedy and of opera; but though hero and heroine are shepherd and shepherdess, and there is some allusion to sheep, the plan is totally dif ferent from Henryson's pastoral. In the French one the course of true love, ultimately triumphant, is deferred by the importunate lovemaking of chevaliers, to which Marion (or Mariotte) turns a deaf ear, preferring coarse cheese with Robin to a palfrey and luxurious living elsewhere. The king appears, and there are numerous interlocutors. Henryson's poem is a love dialogue between a shepherd and shepherdess. The stock properties -the pipe and crook, the hanging grapes, spreading beech, and celestial purity of the golden age-find no place in the northern pastoral. Henryson's Robin is ungallantly insensible to the advances of Makyne: Robene fat on gud grene hill, My dule in dern bot gif thow dill, have pity 2 3 The Bludy Serk is a ballad of a knight who rescued a king's daughter from the dungeon of a foul and loathly giant, but, wounded to death in the encounter, bequeathed to the lady the garment wet with his life's blood. According to the 'moralitas,' this is to be understood of the human soul, Lucifer, and the Redeemer. The Prais of Aige proves that 'the moyr of aige the nerar hevynnis bliss;' though in Aige and Yowth, Youth defends a contrary thesis. The introduction to The Testament of Cresseid is ingenious and entertaining. Ane doolie fefoun to ane cairfull dyte doleful season he says, and so chose to write on a bitter cold, clear night, in time of frost, with winds 'quhisling loud and schill' from the Arctic Pole; so that he was driven from the windows of his study to the fireside, where he seems to have made himself most comfortable before beginning to write his melancholy tale : I mend the fyre and beikit me about, Than tuik ane drink my spreitis to comfort, warmed book Henryson's fables are bright, entertaining, witty, and dramatic. Even the extracts will show how much liker the Freir, Wait-skaith the Wolf, and Lowrie the Tod (Laurence the Fox) are the animals in Reynard the Fox (some of the early French recensions of which Henryson may have seen) than to the talking beasts of the Greek fabulist. Witty and satirical comment on potentates, courts, lawyers, and functionaries, on sensuality, falsehood, and other human weaknesses in the guise of the animals, is the substratum of the whole, and the dramatic presentation is equal to Reynard at its best. Of Henryson's two Prologues to the fables, the second begins thus: In middis of June, that joly fweit feafoun, Quhen that fair Phebus, with his bemis bricht, 1 Boughs broad bloomed above. 2 Greater for that reason. 3 Could make, did make. The Uplandis Mous and the Burges Mous, to which editors have thought Sir Thomas Wyatt may have been indebted for the idea of one of his satires, tells the tale of two sister mice, of whom the elder lived a luxurious life in a town-‘a Burrowis toun;' while the younger, the 'rurall' sister, in winter had hunger, cauld, and tholit great distres.' The town mouse, wishing to hear of her sister's welfare, resolved to pay her a visit, and fared forth as a pilgrim, barefoot, with pikestaff in hand: Furth mony wilfum wayis can scho walk, wild, lonely—did Throw moffe and muir, throw bankis, bufk and breir Scho ranne cryand quhill scho cam till ane balk : 'Cum furth to me, my awin fifter deir ; I dwelling moss and fera poor shelter As I hard fay, it was ane fober wane, Of fog and fairn full febillie wes maid, Ane fillie fcheill under ane fteidfast stane--and gives her of her best. This the luxurious town mouse could hardly accept with becoming gratitude; she nibbles feebly at the 'rude dyet,' but frankly explains that she is accustomed to much better living: 'Till tender meit my ftomok is ay ufit; Thir widderit peis and nuttis or thai be bord ere-bored Will brek my teith and mak my wame full sklender Quhilk wes befoir ufit to meittis tender;' and winds up with an invitation to her house in town-an invitation cheerfully accepted by the country mouse. They straightway set out, and, after some alarming adventures, arrive, and are comfortably established at table in the town house : With fair tretie yit fcho gart hir upryse, 1, 2 And to the burde thay went and togidder fat, board, table |