The young fawns followand the dun does,
Kiddès, skippand through, runs after roes.
In lissours, and on leaès, little lambs
Full tart and trig 2 socht bleatand to their dams.
Tidy kye lowès, vealès 3 by them rins;
All snug and sleekit worth thir 4 beastès skins.
On salt streamès walks Doris and Thetis,
By rinnand strandès, nymphs and naiades,
Sic as we clepe wenches and damosels,
In grassy grovès wanderand by spring-wells,
Of bloomit branches and flowers white and red
Plaitand their lusty chaplets for their head;
Some sing sangès, dances leads, and rounds,
With voices shrill, while all the dale resounds.
Whereso they walk into their carolling,
For amorous lays doth all the rockès ring.
Ane sang The ship sails ower the salt faem
Will bring thir merchants and my leman hame :
Some other sings, I will be blythe and licht;
Mine heart is lent upon sae goodly wicht
And thochtful lovers roamès to and fro,
To lese their pain and plene their jolly woe;
After their guise, now singand, now in sorrow,
With heartès pensive the lang summer's morrow.
Some ballads list indite of his ladye;
Some lives in hope; and some all utterly
Despaired is, and sae quite out of grace,
His purgatory he finds in every place.
Dame Nature's minstrels, on that other part, .
With merry notès mirthfully forth brest. ...
The cushat croods and pirkès on the rise ;10
The starling changes divers stevens 11 nice;
The sparrow chirmès in the wallès clift;
Goldspink and lintwhite fordinnand the lift;
The cuckoo galès,12 and so whitters the quail;
While rivers reirdit,13 shaws, and every vale;
And tender twistès trimmilt 14 on the trees,
For birdès sang and bimming 15 of the bees.
3 Calves (Fr. veau; English, veal). 4 Become those. 5 Such as we call.
7 Names of old Scottish songs: "The ship sails over the salt foam that will bring those merchants and my lover home; "I will be blithe and light; my heart is set upon so goodly a wight." 8 Lose, forget. 10 The wood-pigeon coos and twitters on the branch.
9 Complain, bemoan. 11 Sounds, modulations.
In warbles dulce of heavenly armonies,
The larkès, loud releshand1 in the skies,
Lovès their Liege,2 with tonès curious;
Baith to Dame Nature and the fresh Venus,
Rendering high laudès in their observance;
Whaes sugured throatès made glad heartès dance;
And all small fowlès singès on the spray :-
"Welcome, the Lord of Light and Lamp of Day;
Welcome, foster of tender herbès green;
Welcome, quickener of flourished flowers sheen;
Welcome, support of every root and vein;
Welcome, comfort of allkind fruit and grain;
Welcome, the birdès bield upon the breir;3
Welcome, maister and ruler of the year;
Welcome, weelfare of husbands at the ploughs;
Welcome, repairer of woodès, trees, and boughs;
Welcome, depainter of the bloomit meads;
Welcome, the life of everything that spreads;
Welcome, storer of all kind bestial;5
Welcome be thy bricht beamès, gladding all;
Welcome, celestial mirror, and espy,
Atteaching all that hauntès sluggardy."
And with this word, in chamber where I lay,
The ninth morrow of freshè temperate May,
On foot I sprent.8
VISION OF MAPHEUS VEGIUS: OR HOW DOUGLAS CAME TO ADD A SUPPLEMENT TO HIS VIRGIL.9
Toward the even, amid the summer's heat,
When in the Crab Apollo held his seat,
During the joyous moneth-time of June,
As gone near was the day and supper done,
I walked forth about the fieldès tite,10
Whilks tho11 replenished stood, full of delight,
With herbès, cornès, cattle, and fruit trees,
Plenty of store, birdès and busy bees
1 Singing freely (relacher).
3 Shelter on the brier.
7 Practise. 8 Sprang.
4 Husbandmen. 9 Maphæus Vegius was an Italian scholar and poet of high celebrity in the fifteenth century (b. 1407, d. 1459). Among his works was a supplement in Latin verse to Virgil's Æneid, forming a thirteenth book to be added to Virgil's twelve. It was first printed in 1471, and was often afterwards annexed to editions of the Eneid. Hence Douglas included it in his translation; but in what spirit
In emerant meadès fleeand east and west,
After labour to take the nichtès rest.
And, as I blinkit on the lift me by,
All burnand red gan wax the even sky:
The sun, enfirit haill,1 as to my sicht,
Whirlit about his ball with beamès bricht,
Declinand fast toward the north in dead; 2
And fiery Phlegon, his dim nichtès steed,
Dowkit his head sae deep in floodès grey,
That Phoebus rolls down under hell away,
And Esperus in the west with beamès bricht
Upspringès, as fore-rider of the nicht.
The licht begouth 3 to quinckle out and fail;
The day to dirken, decline and devail.4.
Upgoes the bat with her peeled leathern flicht;
The lark descendès from the skiès hicht;
And everything, whereso them likès best,
Bounès to take the hailsome nichtès rest,
Out-tak the merry nichtgale, Philomene,
That on the thorn sat singand frae the spleen.
Whase mirthful notès langing for to hear,
Until a garth' under a green laurere
I walk anon, and in a siege3 down sat,
Now musand upon this and now on that.
I see the Pole, and eke the Urses9 bricht,
And hornèd Lucine castand but dim licht; .
That shortly, there as I was leanèd down,
For nichtès silence and these birdès soun,
Asleep I slid: Where soon I saw appear
Ane aged man, that said, "What does thou here
Under my tree, and willest me nae good?”
Methocht I lookit up under my hood
To spy this auld,10 that was as stern of speech
As he had been ane mediciner or leech,
And weel perceivit that his weed was strange,
Thereto so auld that it had not been change,
By my conceit, fully that forty year,
For it was threadbare into places sere.12
Side 13 was his habit, round, and closing meet,
That streikit 14 to the ground down ower his fect,
And on his head of laurer-tree a crown,
Like to some poet of the auld fassoun.15
Methocht I said to him with reverence
"Father, gif I have done you ony offence,
1 Wholly on fire. 2 In death, dying. 3 Began. 4 Cease.
6 Except.
9 The two constellations of the Bear (Ursa), the greater and the lesser.
I sall amend, gif it lies in my micht;
But, soothfastly, gif I have perfit sicht,
Unto my doom, I saw you never ere.1
Fain would I wit when, on what wise, or where
Againist you trespassit aught have I."
"Weell," quoth the tother, "would thou mercy cry,
And mak amends, I sall remit this fault
But, otherwise, that seat sall be full salt.2
Knaws thou not MAPHÆUS VEGIUS, the poet
That on to Virgil's lusty Bookès sweet
The thirteenth Bookè eked3 Æneidane?
I am the samin, and of thee naething fain,1
That has the tother twelve into thy tongue
Translate anew.5 They may be read and sung
Ower Albion Isle into your vulgar lede ;6
But to my book yet list thee tak nae heed."
"Master," I said, "I hear weell what ye say;
And in this case of pardon I you pray;
Not that I have you ony thing offendit,
But rather that I have my time misspendit,
So lang on Virgil's volume for to stare,
And laid aside full mony grave matter,
That, would I now write in that treaty more,
What suld folk deem but all my time forlore?8
Also, sundry holdès, father, trustes me,
Your book ekit but ony necessity,9
As to the text according never a deal
Mair than langis 10 to the cart a fifth wheel.
Thus, sin ye been a Christian man at large,
Lay nae sic thing, I pray you, to my charge.".
"Yea, smy," "11
quoth he, "would thou escape me sae?
In faith we sall not thus part or 12 we gae!...
I let thee wit I am nae heathen wicht;
And, gif thou has aforetime gaen unricht,13
Followand sae lang Virgil, a Gentile clerk,
Why shrinkès thou from my short Christian wark?
For, though it be but poetry we say,
My book and Virgil's moral been, baith tway.
Lend me a fourteen-nicht, however it be ;
'Or, by the father's soul me gat," quoth he,
"Thou sall dear bye11 that ever thou Virgil knew!"
1 Upon my fate, I never saw you before. 2 Your condition will be troublesome.
4 Not at all friendly with you.
6 In your common speech. 7 Subject, treatise. 9"Also sundry people are without any necessity.'
of opinion, believe me, that your book is added
10 Belongs.
11 Coward, sneak. 12 Before.
And, with that word, doun of1 the seat me drew;
Syne2 to me with his club he made a braid,
And twenty routs upon my rigging laid,
Till "Deo, Deo, mercy!" did I cry,
And, by my richt hand streekit3 up on high,
Hecht to translate his Book, in honour of God
And his Apostles twelve, in the number odd.5
SIR DAVID LYNDSAY was born in the early years of the reign of James IV., thirty years later than Dunbar and Skelton, and fifteen years after Gavin Douglas. In 1529 he was made Lyon King of Arms, or chief Herald, and also knighted, by James V.; and he was employed during that king's reign in various important embassies in France and Germany. He sat in the Scottish parliaments of 1544, 1545, and 1546, representing Cupar in Fife, and was one of the most notable supporters of the principles of Knox and the Reformation. His earliest works, the Dream and the Complaint, were written when he was about thirty-eight years of age, and record very pleasantly many details of the early life of James V., when Lyndsay was his favourite attendant and the companion of his play-hours. He wrote also a Satire of the three Estates, a kind of drama or Morality, which was acted before James V. at Linlithgow in 1539, and before Mary of Guise at Edinburgh in 1554; a Tragedy, or narrative (after the manner of Boccaccio's De Casibus, which Lydgate translated) concerning the death of Cardinal Beaton by assassination at St. Andrews in 1546; the History of Squire Meldrum, and many other minor pieces. His last and most important work, The Monarchy, was finished in 1553, the year of Edward VI.'s death, when Mary Queen of Scots was still a child at the court of France, and Mary of Guise ruled as Regent in Scotland. It consists of a Dialogue between Experience and a Courtier on the miserable state of the 1 Off. 2 Then.
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