We British: The Poetry of a People - Andrew Marr

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and then Robert the Bruce against the English, culminating in the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314, Scotland had been free. It had adopted a different notion of kingship to England. In 1320 the Scots had sent a letter to the Pope expressing their view that independence from London meant a kind of freedom rare in medieval Europe. The so-called ‘Declaration of Arbroath’ asserted that ‘for, as long as but a hundred of us remain alive, never will we on any conditions be brought under English rule. It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom – for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself.’ This is the spirit of the most famous Scottish medieval poem, written by John Barbour, an Aberdonian priest who studied in Oxford and Paris. His huge epic The Brus was completed at the Scottish court in the 1370s, on a commission from the great king’s grandson, Robert II. In the tale of the independence wars, essentially an adventure story, the most famous lines are a reflection on the importance of political freedom:

      A! Fredome is a noble thing

      Fredome mays man to haiff lyking

      Fredome all solace to man giffis,

      He levys at es that freely levys.

      A noble hart may haiff nane es

      Na ellys nocht that may him ples

      Gif fredome failyhe, for fre liking

      Is yharnyt [desired] our all other thing.

      Na he that ay has levyt fre

      May nocht knaw weill the propyrte

      The angyr na wrechyt dome [condition]

      That is couplyt to foule thryldome,

      But gif he had assayit it.

      But if he did say, or try, it, he

      Suld think fredome mar to prys

      Than all the gold in warld that is.

      This feels as if it was passionately written, and there are no equivalent passages in medieval poetry south of the border.

      After the wars of independence, Scotland suffered a long period of terrible bad luck with its kings. That bad luck, however, gives us a rare example of poetry by a king which isn’t half bad. In March 1406 the heir to the Scottish throne, the future King James I, set off by sea to avoid his enemies at home and escape to France. But when his vessel passed close to the English coast he was captured by pirates and handed over to Henry IV of England, beginning an eighteen-year captivity under different English kings. Clearly influenced by Chaucer, James wrote an autobiographical poem now known as The King’s Quair (The King’s Book). He falls asleep – as all poets do – and dreams of the philosopher Boethius – again, almost mandatory – before describing what actually happens to him. Here is his account of boarding ship and then being captured:

      Purvait of all that was us necessarye,

      With wynd at will, up airly by the morowe,

      Streight unto schip, no longer wold we tarye,

      The way we tuke, the tyme I tald to forowe.

      With mony ‘fare wele’ and ‘Sanct Johne to borowe’

      Of falowe and frende, and thus with one assent

      We pullit up saile and furth oure wayis went.

      Upon the wawis weltering to and fro,

      So infortunate was us that fremyt day

      That maugré, playnly, quhethir we wold or no,

      With strong hand, by forse, schortly to say,

      Of inymyis takin and led away

      We weren all, and broght in thair contree:

      Fortune it schupe non othir wayis to be.

      King James’s story ends quite well. He hears a lady singing and is entranced by her. This will be his own bride in real life, Joan Beaufort, with whom he eventually returns to Scotland. There he wasn’t a bad king, but became entangled in English wars, as Scottish kings mostly did, and was eventually murdered by his uncle, another occupational hazard of Scottish monarchy. But James shared one thing with the best of his subjects – his enthusiasm for Chaucer and the new developments in English verse. The Scottish renaissance was late and brief, but its flowering was extraordinary; and whatever the country’s political freedom, for literary inspiration its writers looked south.

      Gavin Douglas, a member of one of the most powerful Scottish families, and later an eminent churchman and diplomat, was the first person writing in any form of English to translate Virgil’s Aeneid, producing a powerful and gripping version. Robert Henryson, a cleric from Fife, wrote a series of dream poems and witty animal fables, and also a coda to Chaucer, the Testament of Cresseid. His great virtue is down-to-earth directness. In his tale of the country mouse and the town mouse, taken from Aesop, Henryson really makes us feel the distinction between the life of a rural peasant, constantly threatened with starvation, and the snug, smug world of a well-to-do merchant in the town – indeed, his town mouse has been elected as a city burgess, freed from any obligation to pay taxes.

      This rurall mous into the wynter tyde

      Had hunger, cauld, and tholit grit distres.

      The tother mous that in the burgh couth byde,

      Was gild brother and made ane fre burges,

      Toll-fre alswa but custum mair or les

      And fredome had to ga quhairever scho list

      Amang the cheis and meill in ark and kist.

      The town mouse goes to visit her sister in the country, but is deeply unimpressed with the poor food and humble abode, and persuades her to come to the town, where they feed richly:

      with vittell grit plentie,

      Baith cheis and butter upon skelfis hie,

      Flesche and fische aneuch, baith fresche and salt,

      And sekkis full of grotis, meile, and malt.

      Efter quhen thay disposit wer to dyne,

      Withowtin grace thay wesche and went to meit,

      With all coursis that cukis culd devyne,

      Muttoun and beif strikin in tailyeis greit.

      Ane lordis fair thus couth thay counterfeit

      Except ane thing, thay drank the watter cleir

      Insteid of wyne bot yit thay maid gude cheir.

      All is going swimmingly, until first a steward and then a cat find them. The country mouse falls into a faint, and just escapes being eaten by the cat after being played with. The cat departs, and the town mouse reappears to find her sister:

      Out of hir hole scho come and cryit on hie,

      ‘How, fair sister! Cry peip, quhairever ye be!’

      This rurall mous lay flatlingis on the ground

      And for the deith scho wes full sair dredand

      For till hir hart straik mony wofull stound,

      As in ane fever trimbillit fute and hand.

      And quhan hir sister in sic ply hir fand,

      For verray pietie scho began to greit,

      Syne confort hir with wordis hunny sweit.

      ‘Quhy ly ye thus? Ryse up, my sister deir,

      Cum to your meit, this perrell is overpast.’

      The uther answerit with a hevie cheir,

      ‘I may not eit, sa sair I am agast.’

      Here, as so often in Henryson, I think you can hear the very voices of the Scottish people in the late 1400s. These and other

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