NOTES 1-3. GEOFFREY CHAUCER (1340-1400). 1. From The Legend of Good Women: Text A in Professor Skeat's Third Volume of The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer (Oxford, 1894). A formal ballade, less the envoy. giltë golden y-fere together Maketh make (imp.) clere bright disteyne-bedim betraysed betrayed soun=sound But it is 2. Selected from the Fifth Book of Troilus and Criseyde. It is, not a formal lyric but, an excerpt from a romance in verse. charged with an emotion which is not of a day but of all time; its effect is absolutely lyrical; and, to this compiler at least, it makes as perfect a liederkranz as is in the language. Section I corresponds to Stanzas 77-79 of Professor Skeat's Edition (as above), Vol. ii. y-hight called quaint quenched gye=guide lisse=joy II corresponds to Stanzas 81-3. onës once: alderlevest dearest of all III corresponds to Stanzas 91-92, the first two lines of Stanza 91 being omitted. 3. A triple roundel, as Professor Skeat notes (Works, as above, i. 386-7). hem=them sterve starve helen-heal halt holds 4-6. WILLIAM DUNBAR (c. 1465?-1520?). A master of metre, a rare humourist, a satirist of lasting distinction, a writer whose vocabulary amazes even now, the most considerable poet bred in Scotland between Robert Henryson and Robert Burns, Dunbar lived to see himself in print in the first volume issued by the Scottish Press (1508). My text is more or less modernised from The Poems of William Dunbar, edited, in Four Parts, by John Small (M.A., F.S.A. Scot.) for the Scottish Text Society (Edinburgh, 1884-90). 4. This number consists of Stanzas i.-xiii. and Stanzas xxiv.-xxv. of Dunbar's Lament for the Makaris (=poets) Quhen He Wes Seik. For the form, that of the kyrielle (a favourite with Dunbar, who has a round dozen of examples), see Banville, Petit Traité :— Here are Stanzas xiv.-xxiii., for whose omission I make no apology, even though they demonstrate beyond the possibility of doubting that Dunbar's Lament was suggested by Villon's immortal trilogy of ballades, Des Dames du Temps Jadis'; 'Des Seigneurs du Temps Jadis'; and 'Mesme Propos en Vieil Langage François': The gude Syr Hew of Eglintoun, That scorpioun fell hes done infek Maister Iohne Clerk, and James Afflek, Fra balat making et trigide ; Timor Mortis conturbat me. Holland et Barbour he has berevit ; Timor Mortis conturbat me. Clerk of Tranent eik he has tane, He has Blind Hary, et Sandy Traill Quhilk Patrik Iohnestoun myght nought fle; Timor Mortis conturbat me. He hes reft Merseir his endite, So schort, so quyk, of sentence hie; Timor Mortis conturbat me. He hes tane Roull of Aberdene, In Dumfermelyne he has done rovne And he has now tane, last of aw, Gud Maister Walter Kennedy, 5. The obsession of Winter, which bears so heavily on such middleaged folk as are susceptible to external influences, has nowhere been conveyed, I think, so powerfully as here. 6. The stanza here is the ballade octave, but the rhymes change as the octave ends. In the last verse but one, as often in Burns, the strong Scots gives 'world' the value of a dissyllable. Wend thee fro=pass from thee Dress from desert- Forth from the waste graithing in thy gait=working on thy road ythand steady 7-8. JOHN SKELTON (14—?-1529). 7. The litany In Praise of Johanna Scroope forms part of The Boke of Phyllyp Sparowe. The Latin refrains are omitted. In the original, upon the line In beauty and virtue,' there follows this quatrain : · tote=glance stepe=deep pastaunce chee emportured with coráge (doubtful: perhaps =) full of passion. 8. The song In Praise of Isabel Pennell is taken from The Garland of Laurell (lines 972-1002). reflaring odorous jelofer gillyflower nepte=calamint The text is that printed by Dyce in the First Volume of his Edition of The Poetical Works of John Skelton (London, 1843). 9. SIR THOMAS WYATT (1503-1542). Reprinted and modernised from Mr. Arber's Reprint (London, 1870) of the Miscellany called Songes and Sonnettes written by the ryght honorable Lorde Henry Howard, late Earle of Surrey and other [sic]. Apud Richardum Tottel (1557). The title in Tottel reads:-The louer complayneth the unkindnes of his loue. Wyatt is rather an ingenious metrist than a poet; but he made his mark, and even now, as here, is sometimes readable. 10-12. HENRY HOWARD, EARL OF SURREY (1517-1546), the true Morning Star of the English Renascence, of whom Marlowe learned the numerousness of the heroic iambic, and Shakespeare, as my No. II will show, the cadence and the cut, the capacity and spirit, of the English quatorzain. All three pieces are modernised from Mr. Arber's Reprint of Tottel. The original title of 10 is A praise of his loue: wherin he reproueth them that compare their Ladies with his; that of 12 is Complaint of the absence of her louer being upon the sea. 13. NICHOLAS GRIMALD (1519-1562). The first among the Songes Written by Nicolas Grimald, as reprinted by Mr. Arber in his Edition of Tottel. 14-17. ALEXANDER SCOTT (1520?-158-?), called 'the Scottish Anacreon,' was a writer of singular elegance and ease, an expert in form, at once a lyrist and a wit; but for nearly two centuries he existed only in the famous Manuscript compiled, (1568), in a time of pestilence, by George Bannatyne. Allan Ramsay, drawing on this Manuscript for his Ever Green (1724), quoted some Scotts as nearly as he dared-(for Scott, like all the makers, was anything but mim-mouthed)—and in 1821 the late David Laing, keen for the honour of Scotland, but shrinking, as Ramsay before him, from Scott in his integrity, published a First Edition of the Poems, complete, I believe, so far as numbers go, but something chastened in the matter of diction. An Edition has been done of late for the Scottish Text Society; but my text is more or less modernised from The Bannatyne MS. as printed (1879) at Glasgow for the Hunterian Club. 14 is No. ccxxxi. in the Hunterian Edition aforesaid. The stanza is the ballade octave-a b, ab, bc, b c. suaif=sweet perigall=privileged sall gang shall go sen= since saif=save clear of hue bright in colour Do go with mine, with mind invart=Go as I go, not merely in semblance, but also in spirit. 15. The stanza, an exceeding hard one, is a variation from that of the decasyllabic ballade: also of ten verses on four rhymes. |