{"id":42,"date":"2013-12-25T13:49:16","date_gmt":"2013-12-25T13:49:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scottishliterature.wordpress.com\/?page_id=42"},"modified":"2014-01-24T09:06:28","modified_gmt":"2014-01-24T09:06:28","slug":"2-two-mediaeval-makars","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/scottishlit.com\/?page_id=42","title":{"rendered":"2: Two Mediaeval Makars"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Joan<\/a>

Joan Beaufort and James I<\/p><\/div>\n

In the century after John Barbour\u2019s Brus<\/i> (1375), <\/i>there is more and more evidence of literature written in Scots. Notable examples include an extended love poem, The Kingis Quair <\/i>(\u2018The King\u2019s Book\u2019) attributed to James I of Scotland. The poem appears to be an idealised account of the young king\u2019s capture and imprisonment by the English, between 1406 and 1424. While imprisoned, James met Joan Beaufort, the daughter of the Earl of Somerset, and pressure from her family ultimately secured his release. James and Joan were married, and she acted as Queen Regent of Scotland on his untimely death.<\/p>\n

Although the lovers are not directly named, and although the poem is allegorical, complete with a dream vision of fortune\u2019s wheel, The Kingis Quair <\/i>follows the general story of James I and Joan Beaufort, in that it tells of a young man who falls in love with a beautiful woman, seen from his prison window. The Kingis Quair <\/i>is one of the earliest surviving Scottish poems to be influenced by The Consolation of Philosophy, <\/i>a work written the late Roman philosopher, Boethius (480-524\/5).<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>

The Wheel of Fortune, from L\u2019Hortus_Deliciarum<\/p><\/div>\n

The Consolation of Philosophy <\/i>also has a prison theme \u2013 Boethius reflects on the variable nature of fate, which had brought him from the position of senator to condemned convict. Boethius\u2019 moral \u2013 his consolation \u2013 was for individuals to resign themselves to providence, and to accept the way in which fortune\u2019s wheel either raises or lowers them. The variability of fortune was to prove a powerful and recurring theme in the literature of the turbulent mediaeval period.<\/p>\n

The later fifteenth century also saw the composition of Blind Hary\u2019s Wallace, <\/i>or more properly The Actes and Deidis of the Illustre and Vallyeant Campioun Schir William Wallace <\/i>(1477). <\/i>This bloodthirsty epic is often seen as a later companion piece to Barbour\u2019s Brus<\/i> (not least because the earliest manuscripts of both poems are in the hand of the same scribe, John Ramsay); it has been adapted and updated several times over the centuries and can be considered the main source material for the screenplay for the Hollywood film, Braveheart <\/i>(1995), which was scripted by Randall Wallace.<\/p>\n

Other types of writing in Scots begin to appear in this century too: Sir Gilbert Hay was a poet and a translator of treatises on military topics, the rules of knighthood, and the characteristics of good government. And \u2013 significantly \u2013 the Acts of the Parliament of Scotland and the Burgh Laws were now being recorded not in Latin, but in what we now would call Scots. The writers themselves still generally called their language \u2018Inglis,\u2019 when they wished to distinguish it from \u2018Erse\u2019 (\u2018Irish\u2019, that is, Gaelic). Towards the end of the 15th<\/sup> century there arose amongst some, at least, that what was increasingly becoming the national written language of Scotland was different from that of the neighbouring kingdom to the south, and the term \u2018Scottis\u2019 begins to appear.<\/p>\n

The two poets or \u2018makars\u2019, to use the mediaeval term, whose work forms the focus of this chapter, belong to the end of the fifteenth century and the early years of the sixteenth. They are considered to be amongst the finest European poets of their period, and their poetry serves to point up the range and contrasts in Scottish literature of the time. The main, interconnected centres of literacy were the court, the church and the university. Many courtiers could read and write, and the court also employed clerics in both religious and administrative roles.<\/p>\n

At court there was also an appetite for entertainment, and those who were literate and gifted in poetry and song hoped to find an appreciative audience, and generous patrons. Even beyond the strict confines of the court, noble families might commission a writer to produce a fine translation or an original text \u2013 or they might patronise a writer who dedicated work to them. William Dunbar (c.1459-c.1525), who was probably a graduate of the University of St Andrews, served as a cleric at the court of James IV, and the bulk of his poetry is connected with either religion or court life. Indeed many of his poems have an \u2018occasional\u2019 quality, in that their topics are suggested by particular court events, such as the marriage of James IV to Margaret Tudor, daughter of Henry VIII, in 1503, or by the failure of a fraudulent Italian alchemist to fly from Stirling Castle battlements, all the way to Paris, in 1507.<\/p>\n

Most of all, however, it is the stylistic range of Dunbar\u2019s writing that still has the power to amaze. Dunbar was able to turn his hand from poems of religious praise, echoing and extending the very early Latin and Gaelic traditions that we mentioned in Chapter 1, to ribald sexual satire, as in his Tretis of the Tua Mariit Wemen and the Wedo <\/i>(\u2018Treatise of the Two Married Women and the Widow\u2019). His \u2018Ane Ballat of Our Lady\u2019 show how the Latin tradition of praising the Virgin Mary has seeped into the very vocabulary of written Scots:<\/p>\n

\"Statue<\/a>

Statue of Our Lady of the Isles<\/p><\/div>\n

Hale, sterne superne<\/i>, hale in eterne<\/i>,<\/p>\n

In Godis sicht to schyne,<\/p>\n

Lucerne<\/i>\u00a0 in derne for to discerne\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/i><\/p>\n

Be glory and grace devyne,<\/p>\n

Hodiern, modern, sempitern,\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/i><\/p>\n

Angelicall regyne,<\/i><\/p>\n

Our tern inferne<\/i>\u00a0 for to dispern\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/i><\/p>\n

Help, rialest rosyne.<\/i><\/p>\n

Ave Maria gracia plena.<\/i><\/p>\n

Haile, fresche floure femynyne<\/i>,<\/p>\n

Yerne us guberne<\/i>,\u00a0 virgin<\/i> matern<\/i>,<\/p>\n

Of reuth baith rute and ryne.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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