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The
Makars
Robert Henryson (1450-c.1505) 
Henryson flourished through the turbulent reign of
James III. He is thought to have been educated at
Glasgow University and found work as a schoolmaster
in Dunfermline.
He
is well known for his reworking of Aesop’s Fables
into the Scots tongue, called ‘The Morall Fabillis
of Esope the Phrygian’, which was loved by generations
of Scots readers.
Perhaps his most famous work is 'The Testament of
Cresseid', where he follows the fate of the classical,
tragic anti-heroine, Cressida. The work is a continuation
of a theme which the English poet, Chaucer, had depicted
in his 'Troilus and Criseyde' - Henryson is known
in some literary circles as a Scottish Chaucerian.
Cressida
betrays the true love of Troylus for the lust of Diomede,
and is then judged by the gods, who sentence her to
life as a leper. Cast out into the world to suffer
her fate at a leper colony, one day she meets her
ex-lover, Troylus, who, poignantly, fails to recognise
her in her leprous state. Henryson uses Cressida’s
tragic story and her subsequent penitence to pose
difficult questions about the nature of sin and the
difficulties of leading a moral life.
Indeed,
most of his poetry grapples with these moral issues
and Henryson aims to guide and educate the medieval
reader using allegory and fable - perhaps making the
lesson easier to learn when it is made less personal.
Thus, the trials of life are allegorised through the
adventures of foxes, chickens, wolves and lambs in
his fables.
Bishop Gavin
Douglas (1476-1522)
Gavin Douglas is the celebrated translator of Virgil’s
famous Latin epic poem, The Aeneid. Translating
into vernacular Scots, he tells the tale of the Trojan
Aeneas’s epic journey after the fall of Troy.
Douglas was educated at St. Andrews University and
pursued a successful career as a poet until the Battle
of Flodden, fought between Scotland and England in
1513, when he became involved in various political
intrigues.
James
IV’s widow, Margaret Tudor, married into the
Douglas faction, and Gavin was soon her chief advisor,
gaining a promotion to the post of Bishop of Dunkeld
(1515). However, the fickle fortunes of Renaissance
politics dictated that the Douglas faction would fall
from power and in 1521 Gavin Douglas was arraigned
for high treason. He fled into exile to save his neck
only to die of the plague.
Sir
David Lyndsay of the Mount (c.1486-1555)
David Lyndsay was the last of the great Makars before
the Reformation. The son of a Fife laird, he was an
attendant to the infant James V and later acted as
a diplomat for James to the courts of Europe. Lyndsay
drew on his experiences at the heart of the royal
court to write his most famous play, 'Ane Satyre of
the Thrie Estaitis'. The 'three estates' mentioned
in the title are the clergy, the nobility and the
burgesses (or craftsmen), and their faults are exposed
by John the Common-Weill (commonwealth). This play,
like so much of Lindsay's work, is directed against
the pride and greed prevalent in Scottish society
and against the ills of society which hamper the common
good of the nation
William Dunbar
(c.1460-c.1530)
William Dunbar was the ‘maister poete’ of
the Renaissance court of King James IV. Educated at
St Andrews University, he possessed an outstanding
poetic talent that some consider to equal, if not
surpass, that of Robert Burns.
Literary scholars point out that Dunbar, unlike many
medieval poets, reveals a lot of his own personality
through his poetry, disclosing a sensitive and moody
individual, capable of harsh cynicism and cutting
humour. He writes with heartfelt emotion and wit on
subjects as mundane as the toothache, yet always entertains
- as he was required to do. Like many other Renaissance
artists, he was dependent on the king’s patronage
and for Dunbar, well aware of his own talent, that
reward was never enough.
Dunbar was at home with a vast range of poetic genre,
from hymns to satire and from the strict formality
of the high poetic style to vulgar comedy.
'The
Flyting of Dunbar and Kennedie' is a brilliant example
of the Scots tradition of Flyting, a tradition in
which two poets match their skills in a contest of
poetic insults - a sort of literary slagging match.
In this example, the contestants were Dunbar and fellow
Makar Walter Kennedy.
Perhaps
Dunbar’s most touching poem is his ‘Lament for
the Makaris’. He wrote it in a time of sickness when
he was troubled by his own mortality, thus the refrain:
‘Timor mortus conturbat me’ ('the fear of death
worries me'). The poem also shows that Dunbar saw himself
as part of a long tradition of Makars in Scotland. Sadly
many of their works are lost to us now, but among those
mentioned by Dunbar are poets like Andrew Wyntoun, author
of a verse chronicle of Scottish history, and John Barbour,
who composed 'The Bruce', as well as Blind Harry, Robert
Henryson and, affectionately, his flyting partner, Walter
Kennedy.
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