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THE
MIDDLE AGES:
The first major
achievement in Scottish literature is John Barbour's splendid The Bruce
(c. 1375), an epic poem telling the story of Scotland's greatest military
figure. Too long for full inclusion here, the work remains one of
Scotland's prime artistic achievements. A second major narrative poem, The
Wallace, by "Blind Harry" appeared about 1480. It was part of
what is often called "the flowering of Scottish literature": the
work of The Makars (or "makers"-the word means poets). During
their time, Scottish literature was preeminent in the British isles. It is
customary to acknowledge five major poets: Henryson, Dunbar, Douglas,
Lindsay, and the author of The Kings Quair, said to be James I. These men
are sometimes referred to as the "Scottish Chaucerians," after
the great English poet who died in 1400. Chaucer was much admired by the
Makars, and to some degree imitated, but the term "Chaucerians"
should be avoided, as it is both limiting and condescending.
The first of the Makars wrote a brilliant allegorical romance, The Kings Quair. The author is identified in the lone manuscript as King James I. There is no historical corroboration for the identification, but no sure evidence to the contrary, so his authorship is traditionally conceded. The poem appears, at any rate, to describe an incident in the eighteen-year captivity of the King at the hands of the English:, and James's meeting and love for Lady Joan Beaufort, the English woman who eventually became his wife. Some critics have insisted the poem is an allegory of love in general, but the historical parallel with the specific circumstances of James's incarceration and subsequent marriage, along with his manuscript identification, have convinced most readers. The poem is one of the finest allegorical romances, certainly the best in English in the fifteenth century, and it remains probably the best treatment of its theme in Scottish literature.
Robert Henryson (c.1420-c.1490) is best known today for The Testament of Cresseid, a continuation of sorts of Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, in which the faithless Cresseid, now a leper, meets the Trojan warrior she abandoned years before, and is not recognized. The story is insightful, subtle and beautifully told. Henryson, a master of the quiet style, is also known for his Aesopian fables, two of which are given here.
Of the Makars, William Dunbar (c.1460-1520) is now the most highly regarded. He is probably the finest writer in English between Chaucer and Spenser (fl. 1580-1596). It is usually said that if Scotland has produced three major poets, they are Dunbar, Robert Burns (1759-1796) and Hugh MacDiarmid (1892-1978). Dunbar is noted for his tremendous range, in both subject matter and technique. "Lament for the Makars" is probably his best-known lyric. An example of the ubi sunt (Latin for "where are they?") theme, this is one of the finest elegies in English. (The Latin refrain, Timor Mortis Conturbit Me, is part of the service for the dead.) The poem is typically medieval in its sense of the omnipresence of death and of the transitoriness of the things of this world. Dunbar's Golden Targe is a fine example of that very popular medieval genre, the allegory, one which here shows the inadequacy of reason (the "targe" or shield) against the weapons commanded by Love. Satire, another medieval staple, is represented by his "Merchants of Edinburgh" and the "Twa Marriet Women and the Widow."
The major achievement of Gavin Douglas is the Eneados, his free translation of Virgil's Aeneid. His "Prologues" to the various books of Virgil's epic are entirely original and are usually considered his best works. The four prologues included here are examples of the Scottish emphasis upon nature, especially its harsher elements, which is one of their literature's most characteristic features. "King Heart," written in an unusually quiet style, is an allegory, as its name suggests, and one of the best in Scots.
David Lindsay lived during the Renaissance, a time which in England and on the Continent saw a burst of Humanistic feeling and Classical inspiration. Lindsay, however, is almost entirely medieval in his themes and techniques. His Dreme (1528), is a typical dream-allegory, notable for its nationalistic focus. It is the author's word of advice to the young king, James V. The History of Squire Meldrum, derived partly from the exploits of a historical figure, is a wonderful combination of late medieval romance, chronicle and burlesque. It is given here in full, as is the beast-fable "Testament of the Papingo," a general satire on greed and the corruption of the court and the clergy. Lindsay is perhaps best known for a very long drama, Ane Pleasant Satire of the Three Estates, a boisterous, wide-ranging satirical allegory in the style of the then-popular morality play. Of all the Makars, Lindsay seems to have identified most strongly with the common people. He is comparatively more colloquial and direct in his style. He was popular for many generations.
FOLK
BALLADS:
A major achievement of Scottish
literature is in the narrative and generally dramatic poem, the "folk
ballad." These poems are so called because they are thought to have
arisen from popular songs and to have been passed down through oral
transmissions, sometimes over centuries. Some form of folk ballad is
indigenous to almost all cultures. The English language has a particularly
fine collection of them, and a sizable percentage of the best ones,
certainly better than half, are Scottish.
Most of the folk ballads exist in several forms, some in both Scottish and English versions. Many are certainly very old-having their origin in events back in the mists of history. Others were composed in response to events occurring as late as the time they were written down (mostly in the eighteenth century). The majority of the Scottish ballads seem to have achieved their present shape in the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries. "Sir Patrick Spens," which has come down to us in many forms, is as well-known and respected as any. Though a historical source for the event it celebrates is still a matter for debate, its Scottishness is undisputed.
Characteristics of the ballads are terseness, pronounced rhythms (as they were intended to be sung), narrative detachment or objectivity, realism, and, predictable in such a popular genre, sensational subject matter. Many use what has come to be called the "ballad stanza," four-line units of alternate four and three stresses, rhyming abcb. "Sir Patrick Spens," typical in so many ways, employs this standard ballad form.
The great authority for the ballads in English is the American, Francis Child, whose monumental five-volume English and Scottish Popular Ballads was published in 1882. F. J. Child collected three hundred ballads, which he numbered and for most of which he cites several variations. All of the ballads printed here are taken from his collections. In most instances the one selected for inclusion was the version edited by Walter Scott, in spite of the fact that Scott occasionally "filled out" or "improved" the originals. His versions are the best poems in terms of literary excellence, and do no significant damage to the integrity of the form.
The reader may notice, however, that one of the ballads, "Kinmont Willie," is more literary than the others. The only text known is the one given by Walter Scott, in his Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. Scott contributed most of the stanzas himself. The poem is included here partly because Scott was so successful in his reconstruction, but partly also to permit comparison with the ballads of a more clearly folk origin.
The ballads are printed according to Child's listing, except for the last five, which appear to be based on historical events, and which are therefore given in chronological order.
That great flood in English literature, the Renaissance (c.1560-1660), was a thin trickle in Scotland. No Scottish writer of this long period has achieved status as a major writer. One reason sometimes given for this poor showing is the influence of the Presbyterian kirk, usually said to have come to power in Scotland about 1560 with the emergence of its fiery leader, John Knox. Admittedly, the kirk was hostile to many aspects of literature, including drama and the courtly lyric. But perhaps a greater problem was the premature death of James V, which left the throne in the hands of the infant Mary who was bundled off to France at the age of six to be raised by her Catholic relatives. Thus Scotland had no court, a traditional sponsor of the arts. When Mary did return, much of Scotland, now firmly Protestant, was hostile to her. When she was driven from the country in 1567, the court was once more in the hands of an infant, her young son, James VI. And in 1603, when James was invited to assume the crown of England as well, he took his court with him.
From this time dates one of the important cruxes in Scottish literature. Every Scottish writer had to choose between writing in the now-fashionable "English" dialect, or in his native Scots, since fallen from grace. Those who chose to write using English often found themselves employing a stilted, bookish diction foreign to their real sensibility. Those who wrote in Scots, on the other hand, often found themselves with no sales.
While still in Scotland (c. 1583), King James had attempted to promote literature by gathering about him a group of poets who came to be called the "Castalian Band." Among the writers in this Anthology who were members are John Stewart, William Fowler and Alexander Montgomerie. The group was essentially disbanded by the Court's transference to London in 1603.
The most respected of late sixteenth century poets is probably Alexander Scott, whose finest work may be "A New Year's Gift to the Queen Mary," an earnest, perceptive, rather powerful piece of advice to the young Queen upon her arrival in England.
Perhaps the best writer in Scotland during the seventeenth century is William Drummond of Hawthornden. Drummond, though he seldom left Scotland, wrote almost entirely in English. He has paid a price for this, in his relative neglect by Scottish critics. One of the worthiest practitioners of the sonnet, Drummond is represented here by several elegant lyrics and by the finest example of Scottish Renaissance prose, A Cypress Grove.
The First Two-Thirds of the Eighteenth Century For reasons which are still imperfectly understood, the eighteenth century saw a rebirth of Scottish culture, often called the Scottish Enlightenment. The country made major contributions not only in literature but in almost all the arts and in science, technology, and philosophy. Its former capital, Edinburgh, "The Athens of the North," was the equal of London and Paris as a European cultural center. In this same century Edinburgh expanded beyond its traditional cramped quarters between the castle and the palace ("the Royal Mile") into regions, especially to the north, which became miracles of town planning, and which have helped make the city one of the most stately and most beautiful in Europe.
The eighteenth century is often called the "age of reason." English literature by and large reflects this century's preference for rationality, clarity of both form and idea, polish, and social utility. The works of Alexander Pope are a fine example. The enlightenment artist is perceived as a craftsman, who writes after careful study of the best models, and often in such a way as to demonstrate this preparation. The chief literary mode was satire, the chief poetic form the closed couplet, and the chief precept the golden mean ("nothing to excess").
Eighteenth century Scottish literature to a major degree reflects this neo-classical attitude, as in the satires of Fergusson, Arbuthnot and Smollett, or the thoroughly rational prescription for "health" by John Armstrong.
The lyric achievement of the Scottish writers was also notable. The late-century Burns was to be its greatest example, but the impulse was well under way before him, taking up much of the second half of the century-and running current with the Ramsay-inspired revival of interest in folk poetry. The Scottish song was a full-throated impulse which may be Scotland's chief gift to the age. The number of Scottish poets who contributed at least one memorable lyric-often in Scots-to posterity, is large, and cuts across lines of age, gender and social condition. Scotland had found its singing voice.
Also notable in this century was a poetic rebirth-or at least vindication-of the native dialect, Scots, used by Allan Ramsay in about half of his poems,
Finally, even from the beginning of this neo-classical century, Scottish literature attached very much of its artistic energies to pre-romanticism: the interest in nature, in the primitive, the solitary, the emotional. Indeed, it would be difficult to imagine the great nineteenth century romantic impulse without its Scottish predecessors: Allan Ramsay, for his rediscovery of the pastoral and for his pioneering work in folk poetry; Robert Blair, co-founder of the "graveyard school"; James Thomson, the great nature poet of the century; and John Home, whose Douglas was its major romantic tragedy. Romanticism, including the pre-romantic eighteenth century and the post-romantic Victorian age, will be the primary theme of volume II of this anthology, but the seeds of this great cultural revolution took root very early in the soil of Scotland.
During the latter part of the eighteenth century, the aesthetic ideals of the Age of Reason were in conflict with the beginnings of Romanticism. The selections of this part of the Anthology contain striking examples of both styles, and of course of writers in whom the two styles were mixed, as with the greatest Scottish poet of the century, Robert Burns.
"Romanticism" is a term used by historians of culture to describe an ideological and aesthetic movement that reached fruition in Europe about 1800-1830, and died out slowly over the remainder of the century. The movement is based upon a view that sees civilization as an unnatural and hostile force that has stifled man's rapport with the universe, one that should be instinctive, and based on feeling. Rather than having a fixed place in the scheme of things, Romantic man is a dynamic creature, striving toward godhead, struggling to achieve a place in the world that is not yet determined, but which may be only a little below the angels. The great good is nature, including the natural man. The essential truths are neither logical nor material, but instinctive and spiritual. Man's route to this ineffable lies often through a mystical empathy with the "oversoul" that is part of all things, which links us to God, and from which we have been sundered since the Fall (i.e., the collapse into civilization).
The primary focus of Romantic literature is upon man as a feeling and imaginative animal, one working through largely instinctive means.
The Romantic aesthetic can be seen as a reaction against eighteenth century ideals, and can be depicted in the following diagram, in which the values of the left-hand side are gradually translated into the right-hand ones (allowing for simplification and exaggeration).
| 18th cent. ("Age of Reason") | Romanticism |
| rationality | sentiment, dreams |
| stability | dynamism, thrust |
| clarity | pursuit of the ineffable |
| balance | intensity |
| regularity | the unusual, irregular |
| simplicity | complexity, Gothicism |
| polish, craftsmanship | ardor, enthusiasm |
| imitation | originality |
| artistic control | inspiration |
| social utility | individualism, catharsis |
| aesthetic response ("taste") | emotion, empathy |
| satire | lyric poetry |
| common sense | the human heart |
One aspect of the Romantic movement which was much welcome in Scotland was its interest in common people-shepherds, farmers-and in rustic scenes and language. In Scotland this took the form of a tremendous outpouring of song, usually written in Scots and with rural settings. Even Robert Fergusson, so much a neo-classicist in his urban focus, satiric detachment, and verbal polish, displays a fascination with the common Scots people of his day, and with their speech. The other major poets of this section are Burns-the greatest songwriter of any age-and John Mayne, whose long po
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THE
VICTORIAN AGE: (1830 - 1990) During the century, many Scots writers either lived in England or wrote for the international market, as with Thomas Campbell, James Thomson-whose brilliant, morbid City of Dreadful Night is one of the major poems of the time-Andrew Lang, or Louis Stevenson himself. The major Scottish novelist aside from Scott and Stevenson was probably Margaret Oliphant whose prodigious literary output is primarily English in setting, most notably in the fine novel sequence, The Chronicles of Carlingford. The international success of Conan Doyle, the creator of that most English of detectives, Sherlock Holmes, affords other evidence of the Scottish writer abroad. But a lot of other Scottish writers stayed home, at least in setting their works, as Scottish writers found a market for their particular brand of sentimental and picturesque regional literature throughout the English speaking world. Again Scott was probably the main influence, as his "Scottish homespun" characters were imitated in hundreds of novels. John Galt was Scott's leading contemporary. Galt's Annals of the Parish (1821) is one of the finest small-town studies of the century. Later in the century, Galt was imitated by James Barrie, whose vastly popular sketches of Scottish village life, it is often said, led to that wave of nostalgic Scots fiction called "kailyard" (cabbage-patch). The kailyard school is represented here by three of its more effective practitioners, John Watson ("Ian Maclaren"), Samuel Crockett, and William Black. Their short stories reflect the rusticity, and "tough-sadness" which is a cardinal feature of the genre. The essence of the sentimental view of mankind is usually said to be the belief that all men are essentially good-thus the emphasis in sentimental fiction on reformed villains, prostitutes with hearts of gold, criminals who love their mothers, and so on. And indeed Watson, Crockett and Black reaffirm the essential decency of mankind under even the most trying of conditions (which they also love to depict). This is a view which is out of favor in our hard-boiled age, but it has been a feature of some very great literature at various times. At any rate, the kailyarders entertained and persuaded millions and they held up an image of Scotland which was terrifically influential. As with Romanticism, that other major influence upon nineteenth century literature, Realism, was also muted in Scotland. Not one significant Scottish writer of the century may be labeled a realist, though of course realistic detail is to some degree a stock in trade of regionalists, and one finds occasional naturalistic moments in the kailyarders, in Margaret Oliphant's studies of the middle-class, and even in pages of the spiritual novelist, George Macdonald. But for the most part Scottish literature was notable, even notorious, for its love of the other states: the heroic past, the "Celtic twilight," the world of children, the ideal world, and at their least literary level, melodrama. |
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SCOTTISH LITERATURE: Scotland has participated rather fully in the pluralist currents of modern literature-in our century's explosion of styles and subject matter. Attempting to categorize the last one hundred years of Scottish literature is therefore doomed to shallowness and contradiction. But if such an attempt be at least mildly useful, here is a quick outline. One may divide the Scottish twentieth century into three main phases. (Writers whose dates are given in parenthesis are represented in this book. In some instances more background material is provided in their individual introductions.) |
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The continuation of nineteenth century literary traditions: The later nineteenth century was dominated by two opposite literary movements: post-romanticism and realism. They each lingered on into much of the new century. They combined to form the now thoroughly discredited "kailyard" (cabbage patch) school of sentimental Scottish small-town life. The main kailyarder was the extraordinarily talented James Barrie (1860-1937), through his sketches, short stories and novels (at least those set in Scotland). Besides Barrie, this volume's representative of that school is Samuel Crockett (1860-1914) with his "Last Anderson of Deeside." Another expression of the late romantic is the vestige of the dreamland, the Celtic twilight, etc., as exemplified by William Sharp, who ended the last volume. Perhaps the major representative at the beginning of this century is Barrie again with the otherworldly Mary Rose (1920), and his Never Never Land. Kenneth Grahame, with his short stories of The Golden Age (1895) and the splendid Wind in the Willows (1908)-usually considered a children's novel-is another example. The golden world survives too in the fallen Eden of the troubled poems of Edwin Muir (1887-1959). The rousing adventure-tale tradition of Walter Scott and Robert Louis Stevenson has remained a major factor throughout the century. Notable practitioners are the internationally famous Arthur Conan Doyle and John Buchan (1875-1940), or the more contemporary best-seller, Alasdair Maclean. Even the world-famous Klondike ballads of Robert Service (1874-1958) could probably be fitted in here. Finally, a third aspect of romanticism is the delight in nature and the tendency to associate nature with God, mystical states, or at least profound truths. Hundreds of minor Scottish poets devoted themselves to this tradition. Perhaps the chief major poet who may be placed in this category is Andrew Young (1885-1971), but almost every Scottish poet has been at least influenced by it. Perhaps a final feature of the nineteenth century romanticism-its late aestheticism, world-weariness and decadence-appears, if not too prominently, in Scotland as well. Its most obvious Scottish practitioner is probably Alfred Douglas. The second major feature of nineteenth century literature is realism, which may be defined as the literary technique of employing "real life" characters, dialogue and situations, together with a strongly determinist philosophy (i.e., that we are what our heredity and our environment make us). It appears in a sentimental and much muted form in the kailyard novelists (where is it rather like the realism of the American illustrator Norman Rockwell), but first explodes into prominence in Scottish literature with the tragic grandeur of George Douglas' great anti-kailyard novel, The House with the Green Shutters (1901), and its depiction of the actual banality, pettiness and brutality of small-town life in Scotland. We can see realism also in the working-class urban themes of John Davidson (1857-1909), and his interest in the new science. It appears in the realistic novel of manners, as practiced by the Findlater sisters, among others. Finally, Scotland joined a by now universal preoccupation with big-city slums and social conditions with the Gorbals stories of Edward Gaitens (1897-1966). Realism remains an essential feature of modern Scottish literature. |
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| The
"Scottish Renaissance" This is the twentieth century movement for which Scotland may be most celebrated. It was led by Hugh MacDiarmid (1892-1978) in the 1920's. Tired of what he considered the effete, shallow, conventional and pithless "Burns tradition" of Scottish diction and subject matter, MacDiarmid demanded a fresh, contemporary but still uniquely Scottish literature, fueled by a newly invigorated Scots and which took as its subject matter the entire world, and which included all the new experimental themes and techniques which were then spreading across Europe. He ransacked old Scottish literature, Scots dictionaries, and the spoken language of the Scottish working classes to produce poems of startling brilliance which were simultaneously deeply Scottish, yet absolutely modern and European. His long philosophical poem, A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle (1926), is the masterpiece of this movement and is surely one of the major artistic achievements of the twentieth century. Its linguistic and thematic variety, intellectual complexity and resonance from a wide range of literary sources made clear that everything was possible in Scots and that Scotland itself was neither a provincial subject nor an exhausted one. Several Scottish poets had been doing rather distinguished, if much less ambitious, work in Scots before MacDiarmid, as for example Violet Jacob (1863-1946), Charles Murray (1864-1930), Marion Angus (1866-1946), and Helen Cruickshank (1886-1975). MacDiarmid's example prompted a wave of serious and adventurous new poets in Scots, such as William Soutar (1898-1943), Robert Garioch (1909-1981), Douglas Young (1913-1973), Sydney Smith (1915-1975), and Tom Scott (1918-1995). Smith's epic series of love stories, Under the Eildon Tree (1948), was, like A Drunk Man, an ambitious and successful fusing of the new Scots with the great traditions of European literature. But one can surely trace MacDiarmid's influence in prose writers as well-notably in the trilogy of novels by Lewis Grassic-Gibbon, A Scot's Quair (1932-34), usually considered the major twentieth century work of Scottish fiction. Grassic-Gibbon wrote the book in a rhythmic Scots which, like MacDiarmid's, was partly of his own making. This great work is a fusion of ideas and energy of the Scottish Renaissance with the realistic mode and the traditional Scottish preoccupation with their land and its history. The most important Scottish novelist of our century is usually said to be Neil Gunn (1891-1973), whose long series of novels on Scottish themes, while only slightly "vernacular," may surely also be said to reflect the influence of MacDiarmid in their combination of Scottish setting and universality of theme and insight. Indeed it would be very difficult to deny the influence of MacDiarmid on any Scottish writer who came after him, including those who wrote in standard English and even those who eschewed Scottish themes. He is the major presence in modern Scottish literature. As well as a splendid poet, who led by his own brilliant example, MacDiarmid was a tireless propagandist for the cause of a new Scottish literature, who kept the dream alive with countless speeches, articles and editorial efforts. |
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