We British: The Poetry of a People. Andrew Marr

luxuries like cheese and cooked meats, but it’s also a place of danger and rapacity. Henryson looks life squarely in the face: elsewhere he writes about leprosy and the plague. In the end, however, he has a very medieval sensibility: everything has an allegorical meaning, and the purpose of poetry is to point the moral. Here’s part of the moral drawn to the end of the story of the two mice, and it’s a familiar Christian one about the virtues of modesty and moderation. The best life is one of ‘sickerness’ – security, or safety, with only modest possessions:

      Blissed be sempill lyfe withoutin dreid,

      Blissed be sober feist in quietie.

      Quha hes aneuch, of na mair hes he neid

      Thocht it be littill into quantatie.

      Grit aboundance and blind prosperitie

      Oftymes makis ane evill conclusioun.

      The sweitest lyfe thairfoir in this cuntrie

      Is sickernes with small possessioun.

      Aside from Chaucer himself, Robert Henryson seems the most lovable and humane of medieval poets. His slightly later and greater contemporary William Dunbar is a very different kettle of fish. More so than anyone before him, we feel we can get inside his mind, though it’s not always attractive. Probably born south of Edinburgh around 1460, this courtier, priest and ambassador to England and Norway speaks in his own voice, in a way that feels new. He writes, for instance, about having a migraine headache:

      My heid did yak yester nicht,

      This day to mak that I na micht,

      So sair the magryme dois me menyie

      Persying my brow as ony ganyie

That scant I luik may on the licht.*

      Dunbar wasn’t a particularly nice man. He was always whingeing about money, enjoyed ferocious quarrels, and is the author of a spectacularly racist poem about a black African woman who arrives in Edinburgh by ship. But he has a directness that we rarely find before him. Here, for instance, is his furious address to the merchants of Edinburgh, whom he blames for leaving their city in an embarrassingly dilapidated state. May no one, he asks, go through the principal gates of the town without being assaulted by the stench of rotten fish – haddocks and skate – and the screams of old women and ferocious arguments, descending into mere abuse? Doesn’t this dishonour the town before strangers?

      May nane pas throw your principall gaittis

      For stink of haddockis and of scattis,

      For cryis of carlingis and debaittis,

      For feusum flyttinis of defame.

      Think ye not schame,

      Befoir strangeris of all estaittis

      That sic dishonour hurt your name?

      The dirty, stinking lanes cut out the light from the parish church; the porches in front of the houses make them darker than anywhere else in the world – isn’t it a shame that so few civic improvements have been made?

      Your Stinkand Stull that standis dirk

      Haldis the lycht fra your parroche kirk.

      Your foirstairis makis your housis mirk

      Lyk na cuntray bot heir at hame.

      Think ye not schame,

      Sa litill polesie to work,

      In hurt and sclander of your name?

      The high cross in the centre of the town should be a place of gold and silk; instead, it’s all crud and milk. The public weighing beam stinks of shellfish, tripe and haggis:

      At your Hie Croce quhar gold and silk

      Sould be, thair is bot crudis and milk,

      And at your Trone bot cokill and wilk,

      Pansches, pudingis of Jok and Jame.

      Think ye not schame,

      Sen as the world sayis that ilk,

      In hurt and sclander of your name? …

      Dunbar protests that tailors, cobblers and other low craftsmen crowd the streets, defiling them. A notorious passage leading to the main church, the so-called ‘Stinking Style’, means that the merchants are crammed together as in a honeycomb:

      Tailyouris, soutteris, and craftis vyll

      The fairest of your streitis dois fyll,

      And merchantis at the Stinkand Styll

      Ar hamperit in ane honycame.

      Think ye not schame

      That ye have nether witt nor wyll

      To win yourselff ane bettir name?

      The entire town is a nest of beggars; scoundrels are everywhere, molesting decent people with their cries. Even worse, nothing has been properly provided for the honest poor:

      Your burgh of beggeris is ane nest,

      To schout thai swentyouris will not rest.

      All honest folk they do molest,

      Sa piteuslie thai cry and rame.

      Think ye not schame,

      That for the poore hes nothing drest,

      In hurt and sclander of your name?

      As to the merchants themselves, who are supposed to be in charge of all this, their profits go up every day and their charitable works are less and less. You can’t get through the streets for the cries of the crooked, the blind and the lame – shame on you.

      Your proffeit daylie dois incres,

      Your godlie workis, les and les.

      Through streittis nane may mak progres

      For cry of cruikit, blind, and lame.

      Think ye not schame,

      That ye sic substance dois posses,

      And will not win ane bettir name?

      William Dunbar’s great cry of anger against the corrupt and incompetent merchants running Edinburgh concludes with a plea for reform, proper pricing and better management. He was a junior member of the court of King James IV, and one likes to hope that his passionate protests had some effect; at any rate, it’s the most vivid account of the reality of medieval streets in British poetry thus far – we could almost say English poetry, because Dunbar and his colleagues insisted that they wrote in ‘Inglis’, albeit strongly tinged with the special words and accents of contemporary Scotland.

      James IV was one of the most impressive kings Scotland had had. He was multilingual, interested in everything from alchemy to shipbuilding, and he presided over a highly cultured court. Earlier, we noted the widespread influence of the old British languages – now broken up into Welsh, Scottish Gaelic, Irish and Cornish. The English wars against the Welsh had helped spread the idea that the old British were barbarians. We will see this in Shakespeare later on, and by late Tudor times the wars against the Irish kick-started a strain of intra-British racism which survives today. But even in Dunbar’s Scotland, when King James was trying to pacify the Gaelic-speaking north (Dunbar used ‘Erse’ or Irish as the preferred term), there was a profound and mutually antagonistic cultural divide. In his ‘Dance of the Seven Deadly Sins’ Dunbar imagines Mahoun – the devil – celebrating with Highlanders, the foreign-tongued Irish or Gaels of the north. I could try to translate for you, but it’s hardly worth it. The point is, they are barely human, and clog up even hell:

      Than cryd Mahoun for a Heleand padyane.

      Syne ran a feynd to feche Makfadyane

      Far northwart