H- SCS STcS! ULf Cbc Scottish Ccct Society THE POEMS OF ROBERT HENRYSON -K -H THE POEMS OF ROBERT HENRYSON EDITED BY G. GREGORY SMITH VOL. I. INTRODUCTION APPENDIX, NOTES INDEX OF WORDS AND GLOSSARY GENERAL INDEX IPrmteti for t^e Socfetg bg WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS EDINBURGH AND LONDON I914 sltt Rights reserved Volume I. printed in 1914. Volume II. printed in 1906. Volume III. printed in 1908. PREFACE. Half-A-CENTURY ago David Laing printed for the first time the collected poems of Robert Henryson. The reputation won by that pioneer effort in a difficult task remains secure; and such shortcomings as give a later editor his excuse for a fresh survey must in justice be charged to the scholarly fashion of that age. Laing was too good an antiquary to be indifferent to his authorities, but he pieced the texts together with some freedom, to the pious end of showing his author at his best, and he did not always, or with clearness, disclose whence he had drawn or how he had patched his lines. Henryson, as he has come down to us, does not lend himself readily to treatment of this sort. There is no single text, manu- script or printed, containing all the poems which have been ascribed to him ; and though we may sometimes feel that the dovetailing of passages gives us what we should like to think he wrote, the good things and the less good are so scattered throughout the extant copies that it is impossible to make choice of one text, either for its own sake or as a working basis for the record of variants or occasional emendations. It is not the duty VI PREFACE. of the Editor, nor has it been a temptation to him, to offer a reconstruction, which, even if the venture were more promising, would be challenged as a fiction of his own. For these reasons, therefore, all the early texts have been faithfully printed in the second and third volumes. Editorial suggestions have been reserved for this volume, the first in order, but, by intention, the last to appear. This volume contains an Introduction, an Appendix dealing with the Kinaston version of the Testament of Cresseid (now printed for the first time) and the 1574 edition of The Fables, Notes to the texts, a full Index of Words and Glossary, and a General Index to the prolegomena and annotations in the three volumes. The separation of these from the reprint of the poems may be found by some to be a convenient arrangement for refer- ence during reading; by others an easement from a bulky book and unwelcome commentary. \Zth October 1914. The Editor desires to thank Professor Saintsbury, Dr IV. A. Craigie, and Mr Nichol Smith for their kindness in reading the final proof of portions of this volume. Their generous aid in revision gives thetn no share in the Editor's responsibility for opinions expressed and "errors escaped? CONTENTS OF VOLUME I PAGE PREFACE v INTRODUCTION— I. The Poet ..... xiii II. Biographical Fragments— henryson’s date ; HIS association with DUNFERMLINE ; SCHOOLMASTER THERE; NO EVIDENCE OF LITERARY CAREER . xix III. The Poems : Canon and Sources . xxvii THE FABLES ..... xxix THE TESTAMENT OF CRESSE1D . xlv ORPHEUS AND EUkYDICE . xlix ROBENE AND MAKYNE . Iv THE BLUDY SEEK .... Iviii THE GARMONT OF GUD LADE/S . Ixiv THE PRAIS OF AIGE . Ixv THE RESSONING BETUIX AIGE AND ^OWTH Ixvi OBEY AND THANK THY GOD OF ALL or THE ABBAY WALK . Ixvii THE RESSONING BETWIXT DETH AND MAN Ixxi AGANIS HAISTY CREDENCE OF TIT LARIS . Ixxi THE ANNUNCIATION .... Ixxii SUM PRACTYSIS OF MEDECYNE . Ixxiii THE THRE DE1D POLLIS . Ixxv Vlll CONTENTS. ANE PRAYER FOR THE PEST . Ixxvi THE WANT OP WYSE MEN . Ixxvi Lost Poem: Other Poems ascribed to Henryson Ixxviii IV. The Language of the Texts . Ixxix V. Prosody . 1 . Ixxxiii VI. Henryson’s Historical Place and Influence Ixxxix APPENDIX— I. The Kinaston Manuscript . xcvii The Latin Version of the Testament of Creseide cv Annotationes in Triste Creseida Testamentum . cxlvii Supplementary Notes A, B, and C . clxi II. The Fables, Englished in 1574 and Printed in 1577 . clxiii NOTES TO THE TEXTS in Volumes II. and III. 1 Explanation of References ... 2 THE FABLES— 1. Prolog ...... 3 II. The Cok and the lasp .... 4 III. The Uponlandis Mous and the Burges Mous . 5 IV. Schir Chantecleir and the Foxe . IO V. How this foirsaid Tod maid his Confessioun to Freir Wolf Waitskaith . 13 VI. Of the Sone and A ir of the foirsaid Foxe, callit Father- wer: alswa the Parliament of fourfuttit Beistis haldin be the Lyoun . 15 VII. The Scheip and the Doig . 20 VIII. The Lyoun and the Mous . 23 ix. The Preiching of the Swallow . 25 x. Of the Uolf that gat the Nekhering throw the Wrinkis of the Foxe that begylit the Cadgear . 30 XI. Of the Foxe that begylit the Uolf in the Schadow of the Mone • • • • • 33 XII. Of the Uolf and the Uedder . 36 XIII. Of the Uolf and the Lamb . 37 XIV. Of the Paddok and the Mous ... 40 CONTENTS. ix THE TESTAMENT OF CRESSE/D ... 44 ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE . -53 ROBENE AND MAKYNE .... 59 THE BLUDY SEEK ..... 6l THE GARMONT OF GUD LADEIS ... 63 THE PRA/S OF AIGE ..... 64 THE RESSONING BETUIX AIGE AND ^OWTH . 64 OBEY AND THANK THY GOD OF ALL or THE ABBAY WALK ..... 68 THE RESSONING BETWIXT DETH AND MAN . 69 AGANIS HAISTY CREDENCE OF TITLARIS . 70 THE ANNUNCIATION . 70 SUM PRACTYSIS OF MEDECYNE . 72 THE THRE DEID POLLIS . 75 ANE PRAYER FOR THE PEST . 77 THE WANT OF WYSE MEN . 78 INDEX OF WORDS AND GLOSSARY (Volumes II. AND HI.) 83 Explanation of Abbreviations, &c., in the Index of Words and Glossary ... 84 GENERAL INDEX of Names and Matters in the Introduction, Appendix, and Notes in the First Volume, and in the Prefatory Notes in the Second and Third Volumes . 177 INTRODUCTION INTRODUCTION. I. Henryson is perhaps a forgotten poet. Now and then, since Allan Ramsay’s day, it has been an act of piety to the Scottish Muse to remind the general of his Robene and Makyne, his Fables, and his tale of Cresseid. He is secure in our text-books as our first maker of pastoral, because he wrote this Robene and Maky?ie, which so few read, or have tried to read—it being an excuse for indifference to the poet that he used a dialect “distressingly quaint and crabbed.”1 For this reason it may be that he has become the special care of the antiquary of language and the historian, and has been treated as the proper companion of the dullards of the fifteenth century. And it may be, too, that mainly for some such reason he now wins the goodwill of a learned society which has conducted for over thirty years an editorial mission to the lapsed of our national literature. To follow, under these auspices, the work of Laing, who first collected the scattered remains, is to confess that our 1 So W. E. Henley ; but more amiably than in Russell Lowell’s complaint about such Middle Scots spellings as ‘quhissill.’ XIV INTRODUCTION. first duty is to the text, and that we shall not be less careful of the historical and philological interests of an old and difficult body of verse. But in offering to the reader of these volumes what may not be denied to the Scottish Text Society, we must crave for the poet, and in the name of that Society too, the literary place which is his due, apart from all accidents of speech and setting. For a moment therefore, before we buckle to the task of text and exposition, we turn to Henryson’s claim as a literary artist; and at the close, by way of epilogue, we shall glance at the historical aspect of his work, his position in the perspective of Scottish literature and his influence. We imply therefore that Henryson should not be a forgotten poet, and, more positively, that he possesses qualities which not only mark him off from the Lydgate- coteries of his century, but show that he has the stuff of poetry in him. It is easy for any one who merely skims the poems in these volumes, and brings with him preju- dices derived from his reading of the English Chaucerians, to say that Henryson is no better than his neighbours, that he is a tedious moralist, and by habit, as by title, plain schoolmaster. Better acquaintance with his work will reveal, without risk of exaggeration, that on three main grounds he not only stands out among his fellows, but is of some account in the general company of poets. In the first place, Henryson has the poet’s ‘sympathy,’ if we take the term in its broadest sense, as we apply it to Chaucer, and find in no English poet before the early Elizabethans: that ‘ sympathy ’ which is something more than intelligence or keenness of eye and ear in dealing with Nature. Of his alertness in observation and in the INTRODUCTION. XV use of his facts in the making of a picture there can never be any doubt, even in those passages where he is com- pelled to make free use of traditional artifice. There is no mistaking his frogs and mice; his May morning is by no means a bookish convention ; his description, among other things, of the spinner’s craft is as ‘scientific’ as the programme of a Technical Institute. But in his treat- ment of character and episode he discloses an intimacy of a deeper sort.