* Almighty God! how douchtily Sir Edward the Bruce and his men Amang their faes conteinit them than! Sae hardy, worthy, and sae fine, And the gude Douglas, that was sae stout, He sould say that till all honour They were worthy. * * * There micht men see mony a steed Flying astray, that lord had nane. * * 'On them! On them! On them! They fail!' And slew all that they micht o'erta'. And the Scots archers alsua 2 Shot amang them so deliverly, Engrieving them sae greatumly, That what for them, that with them faucht, And pressit them full eagerly; The appearance of a mock host, composed of the servants of the Scottish camp, completes the panic of the English army; the king flies, and Sir Giles D'Argentine is slain. The narrative then proceeds : They were, to say sooth, sae aghast, Fled to the water of Forth, and there On ane side, they their faes had, ANDREW WYNTOUN, the next important poet that the Scottish literature of this period presents, lived some time after the age of Barbour, but neither the place nor the period of his birth is now known. He was Prior of St. Serf's monastery at Lochleven, and about the year 1420, he completed an Orygynale Cronykil of Scotland, including much universal history, and extending down to his own time. The genius of this author was inferior to that of Barbour; but his versification is easy, his language pure, and his style often animated. His Chronicle is valuable as a picture of ancient manners, as a repository of historical anecdotes, and as a specimen of the literary attainments of that age in Scotland. It contains a considerable number of fabulous legends, such as we may suppose to have been told beside the parlor fire of the monasteries of those days, and which convey a curious idea of the credulity of the age. From this Chronicle we extract the following singular imaginary interview between St. Serf and Sathanas. St. Serf lived in the sixth century, and was the founder of the monastery of which Wyntoun was Prior :2 INTERVIEW OF ST. SERF WITH SATHANAS. While St. Serf, intil a stead, Lay after matins in his bed, For til found him with argument, St. Serf said, 'Gif I sae be, Foul wretch, what is that for thee?' I ask in our collation, Say where was God, wit ye oucht, Before that heaven and erd was wroucht?' St. Serf said, 'In himself steadless His Godhead hampered never was.' The devil then askit, 'What cause he had To make the creatures that he made?' To that St. Serf answered there, 'Of creatures made he was maker. A maker micht he never be, But gif creatures made had he.' 1 Slime, mud. 2 Ellis. The devil askit him, 'Why God of noucht Gif nought but he full gude had been.' 'Where God made Adam, the first man?' St. Serf said. And til him Sathanas, He was put out of Paradise?' St. Serf said, 'Where he was made.' In Paradise, after his sin.' 'Seven hours,' Serf said, 'bade he therein.' Men, are quite delivered free, Through Christ's passion precious boucht, St. Serf said, 'For that ye Fell through your awn iniquity; And through ourselves we never fell, But through your fellon false counsell.' ** Suddenly then passed he; Frae that stead he held his way, And never was seen there to this day. Besides Wyntoun there were a few other Scottish writers of the same period, such as Hutcheon of the Hall Royal, who wrote a metrical Romance entitled the Gest of Arthur; and Clerk of Tranent, who wrote a Romance entitled The Adventure of Sir Gawain. In the narrative of what remains of this latter poem, there is a sort of wildness which is very striking, though the language is often so obsolete, as to be quite unintelligible. The Howlate, an allegorical, satirical poem written about the same time by a poet named Howland, but of whom nothing more is known, strikingly reminds us of The 'Pricke of Conscience,' and 'Pierce Ploughman's Vision.' The last of the romantic or minstrel class of compositions in Scotland of this period was The Adventures of Sir William Wallace, written about the middle of the fifteenth century by a wandering poet usually called Blind Harry. Of the author, however, nothing is farther known than that he was blind from his infancy, that he wrote this poem, and that he supported himself by reciting it before company. The work abounds with marvellous stories respecting the prowess of its hero, and in one or two places, grossly outrages real history: its value has, perhaps, on this account been generally understated. But within a very few years past, several of the transactions attributed by the blind minstrel to Wallace, and hitherto supposed to be fictitious—such as his expeditions to France-have been confirmed by the discovery of authentic evidence. The poem is in ten-syllable lines, and is not deficient in poetical effect, and elevated sentiment. A paraphrase of it into modern Scotch, by William Hamilton of Gilbertfield, has long been a favorite volume among the Scotch peasantry; and it was the study of this book which had so great an effect in kindling the genius of Robert Burns. Perhaps the most striking passages in this poem are the Adventures of Wallace while fishing in Irvine Water-The Escape of Wallace from Perth-and Wallace's Death: the last of which follows: THE DEATH OF WALLACE. On Wednesday the false Southron furth brocht That all England I shall her interdite, The sacrament of kirk I shall him give: Syne take thy choice, to starve 3 or let him live. To keep sic ane in life in thy bandoun, Than all the land and good that thou hast reived, The king gart5 charge they should the bishop ta, But sad lords counsellit to let him ga. But then he was despalyed of his weed.2 This grace he asked at Lord Clifford, that knicht, He gart a priest it open before him hald, While they till him had done all that they wald. From these romantic writers of Scotland, we proceed to notice a few of a different class, the first of whom, in the order of time, is the Scottish king James the First. JAMES THE FIRST was the son of Robert the Third, king of Scotland, and was born 1395. His father being of a weak mind and easy disposition, allowed his brother, the Duke of Albany, to gain a complete ascendency over him. The reins of government consequently passed entirely into the duke's hands; and as he was the next heir to the crown after Robert and his issue, he soon entertained the ambitious and criminal design of securing the kingdom for himself. With this view, he so misrepresented the conduct of the king's eldest son, the Duke of Rothsay, that the weak monarch committed the prince to the care of the regent Albany, by whom he was immediately imprisoned in Falkland Castle, and soon after starved to death. The king, too weak to punish the man to whom he had foolishly committed the administration of the government, had still sufficient discernment to perceive the necessity of preserving his remaining son from a similar fate. With this view he, in 1404, caused the prince to embark, attended by a large retinue, for the court of his ally, Charles the Sixth of France, there to be educated. The vessel in which the prince sailed, had the misfortune to be captured on its way thither by an English ship-of-war, and James and his attendants were immediately conveyed to London as prisoners. This event occurred in the sixth year of the reign of Henry the Fourth; and during the remaining eight years of that monarch's reign, throughout the whole of the reign of Henry the Fifth, and until the commencement of the fourth year of the reign of Henry the Sixth, James remained a prisoner in England. Though Windsor Castle was his prisonhouse during the eighteen years of his captivity, yet his captors treated him 1 Expedition. 2 Clothes. 3 Many. |