by the “deep and dark and sullen Till,” where on a September afternoon in 1513 the flower of Scotland fell round James the Fourth, stands darkly marked on the page of history both of the Scottish nation and of Scottish poetry. It was for the North the burial-place of one era and the birth-place of another. The English billmen who on Flodden closed round the last desperate ring of Scottish spears hewed down with their ghastly weapons not only James himself and his nobles, but the feudal system in church and state, with all that sprang from it, the civilization and poetry of the Middle Ages in Scotland. The national spirit which had burst into leaf at Bannockburn was touched now as by an autumn frost, and a time of storm and darkness must ensue before the country could feel the re-awakening influences of a new spring. The mediæval world, with its charm and its chivalry, its splendour, cruelty, and power, was passing away, while the modern world was in the throes of being born.
Had James IV. lived he would doubtless have continued, firm-handed as he was, to hold in check both churchmen and nobles, and the reforms which were in the air might have taken effect like leaven, and not, as they did, like gunpowder. They might have been grafted upon the existing stem, as in England, instead of overturning it. But during the long minority of James V. the abuses of the feudal system, political and ecclesiastical, attained too rank a growth to be pruned by the hand of that king when he came of age, notwithstanding his energy and good intentions. The system, as Macaulay has pointed out, had served its purpose in the Middle Ages as perhaps no more modern system could have done. In the feudal castles and monasteries had been preserved certain lights of chivalry and learning which, without such shelter, must, amid the storms of these centuries, have flickered and disappeared. These lights were now, however, burning more and more dimly. The corruptions of the clergy and the rapacity of the nobles outran all bounds, and between the two no man’s life was safe and no woman’s honour. Like other human institutions, therefore, which have outlived their usefulness, feudalism was doomed.
Renaissance was to come, not from within, but from without, and in the north the new influence took the form of a militant religious enthusiasm. Already in James the Fourth’s time the war-horns of the Reformation sounded on the Continent had made their echoes heard in Scotland; and during the reign of his successor these were taken up and resounded at home with tremendous effect by the iconoclast trio, Lyndsay, Buchanan, and Knox. The new era was to be one of strife and tempest, in which the root of poesy was little likely to bring to perfection its rarest blossoms.
Goethe has said that the Reformation cost Europe three centuries’ growth of civilization. So far as poetry is concerned the statement must be taken as true in Scotland to a modified extent. No one would be so foolish as to deny the immense advantages, in the purification of morals and the setting up of new perfervid ideals, which the Reformation brought to the north. But it is too frequently forgotten that the era of Scotland’s highest achievement in arms and in poetry was not the era of Knox and Buchanan, but the era of Bishop Lamberton, Archdeacon Barbour,[1] and the preaching friar Dunbar. Against the unquestionable benefits of the Reformation in Scotland must be set the fact that it not only broke the stem of the existing feudal civilization, but itself, intent only upon things of a future life, and modelled overmuch upon Judaic ideals, gave scant encouragement to the carnal arts of this world.
There is strong reason to believe that Scottish character, so far as social qualities go, suffered a certain withering change in the sixteenth century. Under feudalism, with all its faults, the country had been characterized by a generous joyousness which may be read between the lines of its contemporary history and poetry. Bruce, in the intervals of his heroic undertaking, could recite long romances of chivalry. The accomplishments of James I. as musician, poet, and player at all games and sports, are too well known to need repetition. Blind Harry was only one of the wandering minstrels who everywhere earned feast and bed by their entertainments. And the madcap court of James IV. lives in the poems of William Dunbar and the letters of the Spanish ambassador, Pedro de Ayala. All this was changed at the Reformation, and there seems to have been imposed then upon the life of the people a certain ascetic seriousness which has left its traces on the national character to the present day. Mirth and entertainment of all sorts not strictly religious were severely discountenanced by the Reformers, as tending to render this life too attractive, and to withdraw attention from the great object of existence, preparation for the tomb. The attitude of the new rulers towards poetical composition in particular may be judged from two instances. In 1576, in the first book printed in Gaelic—Knox’s Forms of Prayer and Catechism—Bishop Carswell, the translator, in his preface condemns with pious severity the Highlanders’ enjoyment of songs and histories “concerning warriors and champions, and Fingal the son of Comhal, with his heroes.” And the title-page of that curious collection, The Gude and Godlie Ballates, published in 1578,[2] bears that the contents consist in great part of pious compositions “changed out of prophaine Sangis, for avoyding of sinne and harlotrie.” So strongly, indeed, burned the ardour of the Reformers that for a considerable period nothing was printed in the Scottish press but what was tinged with religion in the strictest sense; and the effect of the condemnation of “profane” literature at that time is to be traced in the prejudice with which novel-reading has been regarded in Scotland almost to the present day.
There was in the air, besides, another depressing influence which must not be overlooked.
Simultaneously with the dawn of the Reformation the Scottish language began to decay. The causes of this decay are sufficiently ascertained.[3] For the first forty years of the Reformation movement there was no translation of the Scriptures into the northern dialect. The copies used were obtained from England. Carried everywhere by the popular wave, the English book, as it was called, must by itself have done much to change the tongue of the country. Further, as the Catholic party in Scotland naturally looked for support to the ancient alliance with Catholic France, the adherents of Protestantism were forced into intimate relations and constant communication with Protestant England. In the works of Sir David Lyndsay, the earliest poet of the new period, the influence of this connection is seen taking effect, English forms of words, like go, also, and one, constantly taking the place of the mediæval Scottish. John Knox was a greater innovator than Lyndsay in this respect; and the deterioration went steadily on until, shortly after the close of the century, the coup de grâce was given to the tongue by the transference of James VI. and his court to England. Upon that event Lowland Scottish went out of favour, and practically ceased to be a literary language.[4]
In face of these adverse influences—the decay of the language, religious disfavour, and the overturn of the ancient social system—a brilliant poetic era was not to be looked for in Scotland in the sixteenth century. The marvel is that so much was produced that had vigour, humour, and tenderness. Justice has hardly yet been done to a period which, opening with the iconoclast thunders of Sir David Lyndsay, included the compositions of the gallant James V., of “the Scottish Anacreon” Alexander Scot, and of the author of “The Cherrie and the Slae.” These Scottish singers have their own place and charm, and it has to be remembered that their work was composed while the strange silence of more than a hundred years which followed the death of Chaucer south of the Tweed was still all but unbroken.
The early period of Scottish poetry, corresponding to the heroic era of the national history, had been one of geste, chronicle, and patriotic epic, and remains illustrious with the names of Thomas the Rhymer, Barbour, Wyntoun, and Henry the Minstrel. The mediæval period, that in which the temper of the nation changed from one of strenuous, single-hearted purpose to one of conscious reflection, individual assertion, and restless personal desire, had been the period in which, lit anew by the torch of Chaucer, and fed by the genius of James I., Henryson, Dunbar, and Douglas, Scottish poetry shot forth its most splendid flame. The sixteenth century, no less clearly marked, was a period of change. With Flodden Field and the Reformation the old order of things passed away. As the feudalism of the Middle Ages passed out of church and state the mediæval spirit passed out of the national poetry, and amid the strife of new ideals the last songs were sung in the national language of Scotland.
