: Printed 1899 for the
Roxburghe
Club.
Cambridge History of English Literature - 1908 - v02
The translators of these works aimed at being understood by a
wider class of readers than the audience of Chaucer or even of Piers
the Plowman. The style, therefore, though simple, is by no means
terse. Where any doubt of the meaning might arise, pairs of words
are often used, after a fashion not unknown to the poets. This usage
prevailed during the following century—and with some reason, for
the several dialects of England still differed so much that a southern
man could scarcely apprehend what Trevisa calls the 'scharpe
slitting, frotynge and unschape' speech of York. The translators
desired only to convey the meaning of their originals and their ren-
derings are extremely free; they omit or expand as they choose,
and this saves early English prose from the pitfall of Latinism, giving
it a certain originality, though at the cost of tautology. Trevisa,
in the introduction to Polychronicon, explains to his patron that
though he must sometimes give word for word, active for active,
passive for passive, yet he must sometimes change the order and
set active for passive, or 'a resoun’ (a phrase) for a word, but
he promises that, in any case, he will render the meaning exactly.
These translations became recognised authorities among the reading
public of the fifteenth century and may reasonably be considered
the corner-stones of English prose. All three were accepted as
absolutely veracious; the adventures of Mandeville, the legends of
Polychronicon, the fairy-tale science of Bartholomaeus, were taken
as literally as their scriptural quotations or hints on health. The
information, all the same, seems to be conveyed with an eye to
entertainment; little effort of thought is required in the reader;
paragraphs are short, statements definite and the proportion of
amusing anecdote is only equalled by the trite moralising, couched
in common-place phrases, which had become a required convention
in a materialist age. Books were distributed to the public by
means of professional scribes; but, since there lay no sanctity
in exact phraseology, the translators themselves were at the mercy
of copyists. Cheaper copies were sometimes produced by cur-
tailing the text, or newer information might be added. Trevisa's
Bartholomaeus was probably brought up to date by many a
scribe, and the different MSS of his Polychronicon, though un-
altered as to the narrative, present a variety of terms. Mandeville,
too, appears in (probably) three distinct translations, the most
popular of which was multiplied in shortened forms.
It is,
## p. 73 (#91) ##############################################
John Trevisa
73
therefore dangerous to base theories upon the forms found in any
one MS; for we can rarely be sure of having the actual words of
the author. Often, though not always, the MS may be incon-
sistent with itself, and, in any case, few MSS of philological
interest exist in many copies ; in other words, they were not popular
versions, and, as most of the MSS are inconsistent with each other
in spelling and in verb-forms, it seems that the general reader must
have been accustomed to different renderings of sound. Caxton
need hardly bave been so much concerned about the famous 'egges
or eyren. '
John Trevisa, a Cornishman, had made himself somewhat
notorious at Oxford. He was a Fellow of standing at Exeter
College in 1362, and Fellow of Queen's, in 1372–6, when
Wyclif and Nicholas Hereford were also residents, at a time
when Queen's was in favour with John of Gaunt, and, perhaps,
a rather fashionable house. The university was then, like other
parts of England, a prey to disorder. Factions of regulars and
seculars, quarrels between university authorities and friars,
rivalry amongst booksellers and a revolt of the Bachelors of
arts, produced petitions to parliament and royal commissions
in quick succession. Amongst these dissensions had occurred a
quarrel in 'Quenehalle,' so violent that the archbishop of York,
visitor of the college, had intervened and, in 1376, in spite of re-
sistance and insult, had expelled the Provost and three Fellows,
of whom one was Trevisa, ‘for their unworthiness. ' It is possible
that Wyclifite leanings caused this disgrace; for the university was
already in difficulties on the reformer's account, and both Exeter
and Queen's are believed to have been to some extent Wyclifite,
while Trevisa's subsequent writings betray agreement with Wyclif's
earlier opinions? . The ejected party carried off the keys, charters,
plate, books and money of their college, for which the new Provost
was clamouring in vain three years later. Royal commissions
were disregarded till 1380, when Trevisa and his companions at
length gave up their plunder. No ill-will seems to have been
felt towards the ejected Fellows, for Trevisa rented a chamber
6
1 The old suggestion of Henry Wharton, rejected by Forshall and Madden, that
Trevisa might be the author of the general prologue to the second Wyclifite Bible, has
been lately repeated, on the ground of the likeness of their expressed opinions on the
art of translation. But, apart from other arguments, the style is not Trevisa's, nor
its self-assertion, nor its vigorous protestantism. Trevisa's anti-papal remarks are
timid and he never finds fault with the secular clergy. The same principles of
translation were in the literary atmosphere, and it is open to doubt whether Trevisa's
scholarship would have been equal to the full and precise explanations of the prologue.
## p. 74 (#92) ##############################################
74
The Beginnings of English Prose
at Queen's between 1395 and 1399, probably while executing his
translation of Bartholomaeus. Most of his subsequent life, how-
ever, was spent as vicar of Berkeley in Gloucestershire and chaplain
to Thomas, Lord Berkeley, reputed to have been a disciple of
Wyclif. He also, like Wyclif, held a non-resident canonry of the
collegiate church of Westbury-on-Trym. At some earlier date,
Trevisa had travelled, for he incidentally mentions his experiences
at Breisach on the Rhine, Aachen and Aix-les-Bains, but he had not
seen Rome.
His two great translations were made at the desire of Lord
Berkeley. Polychronicon was concluded in 1387, De Proprieta-
tibus in 1398. He executed several smaller translations, including
the famous sermon of archbishop FitzRalph, himself an Oxford
scholar, against the mendicant orders, and, probably, a translation
of the Bible now lost.
Trevisa was a man of wide reading rather than exact scholar-
ship; his explanation of the quadrivium is incorrect, and his
Latinity was far inferior to Higden's. But his robust good sense,
his regard for strict accuracy and his determination to be under-
stood, make him an interesting writer. He was fond of nature,
he knew his De Proprietatibus well before he wrote it in English
and he could even bring witness of additional wonders, told to him
at first hand by trustworthy parishioners of Berkeley. Without
historical acumen, he does not hesitate to level scathing criticisms
at old writers, but, on the other hand, he sometimes clears away a
difficulty by common sense. Why was Higden puzzled by the
inconsistent descriptions of Alcluyd? was there not more than
one Carthage, and is there not a Newport in Wales and another
in the parish of Berkeley?
The explanations so frequently inserted in the text suggest
that, though Polychronicon was translated in the first instance
for Lord Berkeley, a wider public was in the maker's mind. His
notes are usually brief:
Ethiopia, blew men lond; laborintus, Daedalus his hous; Ecco is be re-
boundynge of noyse; Gode genius is to menynge a spirit þat foloweș a man
al his lyftime; Kent and Essex, Westsex and Mercia - þat is as hit were a greet
deel of myddel Englond; theatres, places hize and real to stonde and sytte
ynne and byholde aboute: Tempe Florida, likynge place wip floures.
It is but seldom that he is absurd, as when he renders matrones
by old mothers, or gives a derivation for satirical: "som poete is
i-clepede satiricus, and haþ þat name of satis, þat is inow, for be
matire þat he spekep of he touchep at pe fulle. ' These lengthier
notes, inserted 'for to brynge here hertes out of pouzt' he always
1
## p. 75 (#93) ##############################################
Trevisa's Polychronicon
75
signs "Trevisa. ' We observe that he feels it advisable to explain
in full a very simple use of hyperbole.
As a translator, many more slips in scholarship might be for-
given him for the raciness of the style. Neither in terms nor
structure does it suggest the Latin, but the interpolated criticisms
are less wordy than the translation. Trevisa expands his original,
not because he is a poor Latinist but partly because he wishes
to be understood, and partly from that pleasure in doublets which
would seem to be a natural English inheritance. Sometimes the
synonymous words are accepted catch-phrases, sometimes they
evince pure pleasure in language. We always get 'domesmen and
juges,' 'tempest and tene,' pis worlde wyde'i Not that Trevisa
is enslaved by alliteration; he uses it less as the work proceeds,
save in the regular phrases ; but he loves balanced expression,
and ruins Higden's favourite antitheses. His picturesqueness is,
perhaps, elementary, less that of an artist than of a child.
It is Trevisa's principle to translate every word: the Medi-
terranean is 'be see of myddel erpe. ' Even when he cannot
understand a set of verses he doggedly turns them into a
jumble of pure nonsense which he asserts to be rime, adding,
candidly, 'God woot what pis is to mene. ' The outspoken
criticisms and occasional touches of sarcasm seem to betray a
man impatient of conventions which he felt to be practical abuses,
but scrupulously orthodox in every detail which could be held to
affect creed. To the wonderful fable of the marble horses at Rome he
appends the moral that it shows þat who forsakep all þyng forsakep
all his clobes, and so it folowe} þat þey þat beep wel i-cloped and
goop aboute and beggep and gaderep money and corn and catel of
oper men forsakep not al þing. ' On the other hand, he is shocked
that Gregory Nazianzen tells 'a ungodly tale of so worthy a
prince of philosophes as Aristotle was. ' A saying of the mythical
Nectabanus: ‘No man may flee his owne destanye' is thus
stigmatised : Nectabanus seide pis sawe and was a wiiche, and
þerfore it is nevere be bettere to trowynge. . . for from every mis-
hap þat man is i-schape in his worlde to falle inne God may hym
1 •Limites=þe meeres and be marke, aflixit = dede hym moche woo and tene,
fortes=stalworpe men and wight. ' So too 'a pigmey boskep hym to bataile and array
hym to fizt. '
3 . Figmenta gentilium, dicta ethicorum, miranda locorum,' becomes 'feynynge
and sawes of mysbileved and lawles men and wondres and merveillis of dyverse con-
trees and londes. '
8 Ocean by clippeb al þe erbe aboute ag & garlond '; antiquitas=' longe passynge
of tyme and elde of dedes. '
## p. 76 (#94) ##############################################
76
The Beginnings of English Prose
save zif it is his wille. To the charitable miracle recorded of
Dunstan and St Gregory who, respectively, prayed the souls of
Edwy and Trajan out of hell, he refuses credit—so it mzte seeme
to a man þat were worse pan wood and out of rizt bileve. At
least once, he deliberately modifies his author: Higden observes,
giving his reasons, that the Gospel of Matthew must, in a certain
passage, be defective; Trevisa writes that here St Matthew 'is
ful skars for mene men myzte understonde. ' Yet, though puncti-
liously orthodox, Trevisa has scant reverence for popes or for
fathers of the church, and none for monks and friars. Edgar, he
saye, was lewdly moved to substitute monks for (secular) clerks :
and, in at least two of the early MSS, though not in all, a passage
distinctly Wyclifite is inserted in the midst of the translation:
and nowe for þe moste partie monkes beep worste of all, for þey beep to riche
and þat makep hem to take more hede about seculer besynesse pan gostely
devocioun. . . þerfore seculer lordes schulde take awey the superfluyte of here
possessionns and zeve it to bem þat needep or elles, whan pey knowen þat, þey
beep cause and mayntenours of here evel dedes. . . for it were almesse to take
awey þe superfluite of hero possessiouns now pan it was at be firste fundacioun
to zeve hem what hem nedede.
Though this passage is not signed ‘Trevisa,' its occurrence in the
copy which belonged to Berkeley's son-in-law Richard Beauchamp
suggests its authenticity. Trevisa was a positive man: he falls
foul of Alfred of Beverley for reckoning up the shires of England
without Cornwall' and he cannot forgive Giraldus Cambrensis
for qualifying a tale with si fas sit credere.
The translation of Bartholomaeus, also made for Lord Berkeley,
though doubtless as popular as the chronicle, has, perhaps, not
survived in so authentic a form; moreover, embodying the
accepted learning of the Middle Ages, it gave less scope for Trevisa's
originality. History anyone might criticise but novelty in science
was only less dangerous than in theology. The style of the original,
too, is inferior to Higden's; there are already duplicate terms
in plenty, and, though Trevisa contrived to increase them, he got
less opportunity for phrasing.
This encyclopaedia, in nineteen books, is a work of reference for
divine and natural science, intermixed with moral and metaphor.
Beginning with the Trinity, the prophets and angels, it proceeds
to properties of soul and body, and so to the visible universe. A
book on the divisions of time includes a summary of the poetical,
astrological and agricultural aspects of each month; the book
on birds in general includes bees, and here occurs the edifying
imaginary picture of these pattern creatures which was the
6
## p. 77 (#95) ##############################################
Trevisa's Bartholomaeus
77
origin of so much later fable, including Canterbury's speech in
King Henry V. There are a few indications of weariness or haste
as Trevisa's heavy task proceeds, but it is especially interesting
for his rendering of scriptural quotations. Like the writers
of Piers the Plowman and like Mandeville, Trevisa expects
certain Latin phrases to be familiar to his readers, catchwords to
definite quotations ; but he translates the texts in full in a
version certainly not Wyclif's and possibly his own. Always
simple and picturesque, these passages cause regret for the loss
of that translation of the Bible, which, according to Caxton,
Trevisa made. Caxton's words in the prohemye to Polychronicon
imply that he had seen the translation ; but no more is heard
of it until the first earl of Berkeley gave to James II an ancient
MS ‘of some part of the Bible,' which had been preserved (he
said) in Berkeley Castle for ‘neare 400 years. ' It probably passed
to the cardinal of York, and may have been that copy of Trevisa's
English Bible said once to have been seen in the Vatican catalogue,
but now unknown.
The dialogue between a lord and a clerk-Lord Berkeley and
John Trevisa-prefixed to Polychronicon is really Trevisa’s excuse
for his temerity. It gives a somewhat humorous picture of the doubts
of the man of letters. Ought famous books and scriptural texts to
be put into the vulgar tongue? Will not critics pick holes ? Lord
Berkeley brushes his objections aside. Foreign speech is useless to
the plain man: 'it is wonder that thou makest so febell argumentis
and hast goon soo longe to scole. ' The clerk gives in, breathing a
characteristically alliterative prayer for 'Wit and wisdom wisely to
work, might and mind of right meaning to make translation trusty
and true. He has only one question to put: 'whether is zou
lever have a translacion of þese cronykes in ryme or in prose ? ’
We ought to be grateful for Lord Berkeley's reply:—'In prose,
for comynlich prose is more clere than ryme, more esy & more
pleyn to knowe & understonde. '
To be certain in any given instance exactly what words Trevisa
used is not always possible, for the four MSS which have been
collated for the Rolls edition of Polychronicon show a surprising
variety. Even in the same MS, old and new forms come close
together, as 'feng' and 'fong,' and other variations of past tenses
and participles, though the sentence is always the same? .
1 The MS, which almost always gives 'myncheon,' 'comlynge,''fullynge,' 'maw.
mette,' wood,'bytook,' 'dele,' gives, also, at least once, 'nonne,' 'alien,' bapteme'
and 'i-cristened,''idole,''madde,' 'took,'' partye. ' Prefixes are already disappearing :
6
6
3
## p. 78 (#96) ##############################################
78
The Beginnings of English Prose
6
Most of Trevisa's vocabulary is still in common use, though a
few words became obsolete soon after he wrote, for instance:
‘orped,' 'magel,' 'malshave,' 'heled,' 'hatte,' which stand for
'brave,''absurd,''caterpillar,''covered,''called. ' He uses 'triacle'
sarcastically for 'poison'— Nero quyte his moder that triacle. '
He usually distinguishes between 'bewes' (manners) and ‘manere'
(method) and between 'feelynge' (perception) and 'gropynge'
(touching). 'Outtake' is invariably used for 'except,' which did
not come into use until long after. Perhaps in ‘Appollin,' as the
equivalent of Apollo Delphicus, we may recognise the coming ap-
pearance of a later personage. Trevisa's translation needs only to
be compared with the bungling performance of the later anonymous
translator', in order to be recognised as a remarkable achievement
of fluency. Where Higden tried to be dignified, Trevisa was
frankly colloquial; this characteristic marks all his translations
and gives them the charm of easy familiarity. His use of the
speech of the masses is often vigorous-a 'dykere,' for a 'dead
stock,' the ‘likpot,' for the ‘first finger,''he up with a staff þat he
had in hond! He had, too, a fine onomatopoeic taste : Higden's
boatus et garritus (talk of peasants') becomes a 'wlafferynge,
chiterynge, harrynge and garryge grisbayting’; and to this sense
of sound is, no doubt, owing the alliteration to which, though
southern by birth and education, he was certainly addicted-a
curious trait in a prose writer. His work would seem to have been
appreciated, the number of MSS still extant of Polychronicon
and its production by the early printers proving its popularity;
and his Description of England formed the model for later accounts.
The chroniclers of the sixteenth century who quoted from Poly-
chronicon as from an unquestionable authority were, perhaps, not
altogether uninfluenced by the copiously vigorous style of this first
delineation of England and her story in native English.
The Travels of Sir John Mandeville had been a household
word in eleven languages and for five centuries before it was
we have 'to-sparpled' and 'to-schad' (dispersus), ‘i-hilde' and `i-schad' (infusum),
but few others. In the genitive, the separate his' is usual — Austin his bookes,'
though we get the chirches roves'; the combination ‘oon of Cristes nayles, our
lady smok and Seynt Symon bis arme' gives all forms. The feminine, as a rule,
has no mark, though his ' occurs twice, possibly by an error of the scribe ("Faustina
his body,' •Latona his son '). Another translation of Polychronicon, made by an
anonymous hand, 1432—50, uses, by preference, the preposition of,' but his' had
even intruded into proper names. Trevisa expressly states that, in his day, Hernishowe
is nowe Ern his hulle' and Billingsgate ‘Belyn his gate. '
· Printed with Trevisa's in the Rolls edition.
6
## p. 79 (#97) ##############################################
Mandeville's Travels
79
ascertained that Sir John never lived, that his travels never
took place, and that his personal experiences, long the test of
others' veracity, were compiled out of every possible authority,
going back to Pliny, if not further.
The Voiage and Travaile of Sir John Maundevile, knight,
purported to be a guide for pilgrims to Jerusalem, giving the
actual experiences of the author. It begins with a suitably serious
prologue, exhorting men to reverence the Holy Land, since, as he
that will publish anything makes it to be cried in the middle of
a town, so did He that formed the world suffer for us at Jerusalem,
which is the middle of the earth. All the possible routes to
Jerusalem are briefly dealt with, in order to introduce strange
incidents; and mention of saints and relics, interspersed with
texts not always à propos, presses upon more secular fables. We
pass from the tomb of St John to the story of Ypocras's daughter
turned into a dragon; a circumstantial notice of port Jaffa con-
cludes by describing the iron chains in which Andromeda, a great
giant, was bound and imprisoned before Noah's flood. But
Mandeville's geographical knowledge could not all be compressed
into the journeys to Jerusalem, even taking one via Turkestan;
so, when they are finished, with their complement of legends from
Sinai and Egypt, he presents, in a second portion of the book,
an account of the eastern world beyond the borders of Palestine.
Herein are lively pictures of the courts of the Great Cham and
Prester John, of India and the isles beyond, for China and all
these eastern countries are called islands. There is the same
combination of the genuine with the fabulous, but the fables are
* bolder: we read of the growth of diamonds and of ants which keep
bills of gold dust, of the fountain of youth and the earthly
paradise, of valleys of devils and loadstone mountains. You
must enter the sea at Venice or Genoa, the only ports of de
parture Sir John seems acquainted with, and go to Trebizond,
where the wonders begin with a tale of Athanasius imprisoned by
the pope of Rome. In the same way, all we learn of Armenia is
the admirable story of the watching of the sparrow-hawk, not,
says Sir John cautiously, that'chastelle Despuere'(Fr. del esperuier)
lies beside the traveller's road, but ‘he þat will see swilk mervailes
him behoves sum tym pus wende out of be way. '
Both parts of the book bave been proved to have been com-
piled from the authentic travels of others, with additions gathered
from almost every possible work of reference. The journeys to
Andromeda had become merged in Prometheus. • Geen, Januenes,
## p. 80 (#98) ##############################################
80
The Beginnings of English Prose
Jerusalem are principally based upon an ancient account of the
first crusade by Albert of Aix, written two-and-a-half centuries
before Mandeville, and the recent itinerary of William of Bolden-
sele (1336), to which are added passages from a number of pilgrimage
books of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The second half
of Mandeville's work is 'a garbled plagiarism' from the travels
of a Franciscan missionary, friar Odoric of Pordenone (1330),
into which, as into Boldensele’s narrative, are foisted all manner
of details, wonders and bits of natural history from such sources
as The Golden Legend, the encyclopaedias of Isidore or Bartholo-
maeus, the Trésor of Brunetto Latini, Dante's tutor, or the
Speculum of Vincent de Beauvais (c. 1250). Mandeville uses
impartially the sober Historia Mongolorum of Plano Carpiniº or
the medieval forgeries called The Letter of Alexander to Aristotle,
and The Letter of Prester John; no compilation of fiction or
erudition comes amiss to him. He takes no account of time;
though he is quite up to date in his delimitation of that shifting
kingdom, Hungary, many of his observations on Palestine are
wrong by three centuries ; a note he gives on Ceylon was made
by Caesar on the Britons; some of his science comes, through
a later medium, from Pliny; his pigmies, who fight with great
birds, his big sheep of the giants on the island mountain, boast
a yet more ancient and illustrious ancestry. The memory which
could marshal such various knowledge is as amazing as the art
which harmonised it all on the plane of the fourteenth century
traveller, and gave to the collection the impress of an individual
experience.
The genius which evolved this wonderful literary forgery
sent it forth to fame from the great commercial city of Liège
in the latter part of the fourteenth century. The unques-
tioned myth of its origin was that John de Mandeville, knight,
of St Albans, had left England in 1322 to make the pilgrimage
to Jerusalem; he afterwards travelled all over the world and,
returning homewards in 1343, was laid up at Liège by arthritic
gout and attended by a doctor, John ad barbam, whom he had
previously met in Cairo. At the physician's suggestion he wrote,
to solace his enforced dulness, a relation of his long experiences,
which he finished in 1356 or 1357. Such is the statement given in
the principal Latin edition ; but neither the gout nor the physician
* Including Pélerinaiges por aler en Iherusalem, c. 1231, The continuation of Wm.
of Tyre (1261), Jacques de Vitry (d. 1240) and others,
· Papal emissary to Tartary in 1245.
## p. 81 (#99) ##############################################
Jean d'Outremeuse
81
a
are mentioned in the earliest MS now known, which is in French,
dated 1371, and was originally bound up with a medical treatise on
the plague by Maistre Jehan de Bourgoigne autrement dit à la
Barbe, citizen of Liège, physician of forty years' experience, author
(before 1365) of various works of science, of whose plague treatise
several other copies still exist. Now, there was at this time
resident in Liège a voluminous man of letters, Jean d'Outremeuse,
a writer of histories and fables in both verse and prose. He
told, in his Myreur des Histors', how a modest old man, content to
be known as Jehan de Bourgogne or Jean à la Barbe, confided on
his death-bed to Outremeuse, in 1372, that his real name was John
de Mandeville, comte de Montfort en Angleterre et seigneur de
l'isle de Campdi et du chateau Perouse, and that he had been
obliged to fly from home in 1322 because he had slain a man of
rank. Unluckily, Outremeuse's story only confounds Mandeville's
own, as set forth in the Latin travels, and adds impossible titles
to this knight turned doctor. Outremeuse also added that he
himself inherited the old man's collection of foreign jewels and
- damaging admission-his library. He quotes Mandeville some-
times in his own historical works; but he does not confess the use
he makes of the genuine travels of friar Odoric-and neither did
Mandeville. ' According to Outremeuse, Sir John was buried in
the church of the Guillemins, and there, by the end of the fourteenth
century, stood his tomb, seen by several trustworthy witnesses in
the succeeding centuries, adorned by a shield bearing a coat, which
proves to be that of the Tyrrell family (fourteenth century), and
an inscription differently reported by each traveller. Tomb and
church were destroyed during the Revolution. At his birthplace,
St Albans, the abbey boasted a ring of his gift, and, in course of
time, even showed the place of his grave.
Whether John the Bearded really told Outremeuse that he
was John de Mandeville of the impossible titles, or whether
Outremeuse only pretended that he did, we cannot hope to
ascertain. The puzzling point is the selection of so plausible a
name: for there was a John de Bourgogne concerned, though not
as a principal, in the troubles of Edward II, who had a pardon in
1321, revoked after Boroughbridge, 1322, when he fled the country.
And there was a John de Mandeville, of no great importance, also
of the rebellious party, who received a pardon in 1313, but of
whom no more is known. The facts ascertained so far about the
1 In Bk. 4, now lost, but copied, as to this entry, by Louis Abry, before 1720. See
Nicholson, The Academy, XXX (1884), p. 261,
B, L. II. CH, III
6
## p. 82 (#100) #############################################
82
The Beginnings of English Prose
real author or authors of the Travels are: that he was not an
Englishman; that he never visited the places he describes, or visited
them without making any intelligent observation; that he wrote at
Liège before 1371, and in French; that he was a good linguist and
had access to an excellent library; that his intimate acquaintance
with nearly all the works of travel and of reference then known
implies long and diligent study hardly compatible with travelling ;
that he gauged exactly the taste of the reading public and its easy
credence; and, finally, that he (or they) carried out the most suc-
cessful literary fraud ever known in one of the most delightful
volumes ever written. It would be curious if Liège contained at
once two men so well read as Outremeuse and ‘Mandeville,' both
compiling wonder-books, secretly using the same basis, and not
in collusion, and it is remarkable that the Latin version with its
tale of the physician contains some adventures, not in the French
and English versions, of Ogir the Dane, a hero on whom Outremeuse
wrote an epic.
To the statements made by the author himself no credit need
be attached. This greater than Defoe used before Defoe the
art of introducing such little details as give to fictions the appear-
ance of personal recollection. He is great on numbers and
.
measurements not in his originals, on strange alphabets, some
real, some garbled or not to be identified'; and, as his statements
about himself cannot be verified, there is no more ground for
believing that he visited Cairo and met Jean à la Barbe there,
or was laid up at Liège with arthritic gout, than that he drank
of the fountain of youth and knew the road to the earthly
paradise. Similarly, the statement of the French MS that the
author ought to have written in Latin, to be more concise, but
preferred Romance as more readily understood by travelled gentle-
men who could testify to his truthfulness, is to be accepted on the
ground of internal evidence and because the Latin versions all
betray a later date and a French original. That the writer was
no Englishman, may be deduced from the absence of any local
colouring, and from his ignorance of English distances, more surely
than from the erroneous titles and coat of arms.
The Travels of Sir John Mandeville were translated into almost
every European language, and some 300 MSS are said to be still
in existence. The three standard versions are the Latin, French
and English, all of which, as early as 1403, Mandeville was credited
with having himself composed. Of the five known Latin versions,
one' was far better known than the others; 12 copies of it survive,
1 Warner's 'vulgate. '
## p. 83 (#101) #############################################
Mandeville Manuscripts
83
and it was the basis of other translations. It contains the allusion
to the physician. Not a very early version, it was made from the
French, shortened in some respects, but with some interpolations.
The French manuscripts are said to be all of one type and many copies
remain; some of them were written in England for English readers,
proving that, in the fifteenth century, the educated might still read
French for pleasure. The best MS is the oldest, the French MS
of 1371, once in the library of Charles V. Of English versions
there seem to be three, represented by (1) the Cotton MS', (2) the
Egerton MS and (3) defective MSS. The Cotton translation
was the work of a midland writer who kept very closely to a good
French original. The Egerton was made by a northerner who
worked with both a Latin and a French exemplar, but whose
French model must have differed from any now known, unless
the translator, whose touch is highly individual, deliberately com-
posed a free paraphrase. But the version popular in the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries was much shorter than either of these, being
taken from some French MS which lacked pages covering nearly
two chapters, while the translator, too dull to discover the omission,
actually ran two incongruous accounts together and made nonsense
of the words juxtaposed. The first printed edition corrected the
error only very briefly. Though it is possible that this defective
version, represented by several MSS, might come from the same
original as the complete and superior Cotton MS, seeing that
copyists not unfrequently shortened their tasks, the differences
are so numerous that it seems, on the whole, easier to assume an
independent hand. There is a curious variation in the dates
assigned: the best French and Latin texts and the Cotton give
1322 for the pilgrimage and 1355 or 1357 for the composition of
the book: the defective MSS and the Egerton put the dates ten
years later, 1332 and 1366.
Of these three versions, the defective one is the least spirited,
the Cotton is the most vraisemblable, owing to the fulness of
detail and the plausibility with which everything appears to be
accounted for, as it is in the French, while the Egerton is the most
original in style and, though it omits some passages found in the
Cotton, sometimes expands the incidents given into a more har-
monious picture. The change of the impersonal 'men' to 'I,'
the occasional emphatic use of 'he pis,’ ‘he pat' instead of the
mere pronoun, the vivid comparisons—the incubator 'like a hous
· First printed 1725.
: Printed 1899 for the Roxburghe Club.
8 Often printed 1499-1725.
>
6-2
## p. 84 (#102) #############################################
84 The Beginnings of English Prose
full of holes'-and countless similar touches, give a special charm
to the tale in this version. So vigorous and native is the composition
that it scarcely gives the impression of a translation, and gallicisms,
such as 'þat ilke foot is so mykill þat it will cover and oumbre all
the body,' are rare exceptions. We find plenty of old and northern
words? Slight hints of antipathy to Rome may be detected, and
there are some additions to the recital not found in other English
copies, in particular a legend of St Thomas of Canterbury, oddly
placed in Thule. The writer of this version so far identifies himself
with Sir John as to add to the account of the sea of gravel and the
fish caught therein an assertion that he had eaten of them himself.
It matters little that there are sundry inaccuracies of translation,
such as the rendering of latymers (Fr. lathomeres = interpreters)
by 'men þat can speke Latyne'; but the proper names are terribly
confused; we not only get ‘Ysai' and 'Crete' for ‘Hosea' and
'Greece,' or 'Architriclyne'as the name of the bridegroom at Cana,
but also other quite unintelligible forms. Indeed, the transforma-
tions of place-names might be worth while tracing: thus, the
town Hesternit appears in Latin as Sternes ad fines Epapie, in a
French version as Ny e puis a fine Pape, in Cotton as 'Ny and to the
cytie of fine Pape,' in Egerton as 'Sternes and to be citee of Affyn-
pane. ' The names of the Cotton version are far more accurate than
those of the Egerton, as its vocabulary and spelling are also less
archaic, but the translator sometimes errs by transferring the sound
of his French original; so, poy d'arbres becomes 'lytill Arborye,'
izles of Italy become ‘hills,' and, with like carelessness, porte du
fer is turned to 'gates of hell,' signes du ciel to 'swannes
of hevene, cure d'avoir to 'charge of aveer' (Egerton, ‘hafyng
of erthely gudes'). The Cottonian redactor is strong in scientific
explanations and moral reflections, and, like his Egertonian brother,
must add his mite to the triumphs of the traveller; to the account
of the vegetable lamb he adds: ‘Of that frute I have eten, alle
thoughe it were wondirfulle but that I knowe wel that God is
marveyllous in his werkes. '
This identification of themselves with Mandeville is partly the
cause of the high place which these three (or two) translators occupy
in the history of English letters. In all literary essentials their work
is original; tautology has disappeared ; they find in their model
6
1 Growe,''graven' (buried), . warne' (unless), "buse' (must), 'bese' (is), 'nedder'
(dragon or serpent), 'oker' (usury), “umqwhile' (formerly), “spire after' (ask for),
. mesells' (leprosy), salde wonder dere,' 'ga na ferrere,' 'to see on ferrum' (from
afar), 'mirkness umbelapped pe emperoure. '
## p. 85 (#103) #############################################
Mandeville's Style
85
no temptation to repetition or to jingling constructions and they
add none; the narrative goes smoothly and steadily forward,
with an admirable choice of words but without any phrasing,
as different from the lavish colloquialism of Trevisa as from
the unshapen awkwardness of the Wyclifite sermons. This natural
style of simple dignity undoubtedly aids the genius of the
original author in investing his fairy tales with that atmosphere
of truthfulness which is the greatest triumph of his art. In the
first place, Mandeville had the boldness not to be utilitarian, but
to write with no other aim than entertainment. It is true that
he professes to begin a manual of pilgrimage, but the thin disguise
is soon cast aside, and the book could scarcely be mistaken for
either a religious or a solidly instructive work. It was a new
venture in literature-amusement had been hitherto the sphere
of poets. And what vivifies the book, what marks it off from
medieval tales like those of Gesta Romanorum, was also a
new thing in prose: the sense of a human interest which is
really the inspiring principle of the whole and forms out of
scattered anecdotes a consistent story. The descriptions are of
people and their behaviour, and in the midst is the quiet but dis-
cernible figure of Sir John himself. It was to the interest in
human life that Mandeville appealed and this, in turn, he edu-
cated. He had, moreover, skilful devices for creating the feeling of
reality: the wonders are sometimes accounted for by what appears
a rational cause ; touches of criticism or personal reflection contra-
dict the supposition of simplicity ; with equally circumstantial
gravity he describes the trees which bear 'boumbe,' or cotton,
and those which bear the very short gourds 'which, when ripe,
men open and find a little beast with flesh and blood and bone,
like a little lamb without wool. Certainly, he was abreast of the
most recent knowledge of his time in his account of the cotton-tree
and in his assurance of the roundness of the earth. His readers,
he says, witten well that the dwellers on the other side of the earth
are straight against us, feet against feet, and he feels certain that
by always going onwards one may get round the world, especially
since Jerusalem is in the middle of the earth, as men may prove
by a spear pight into the ground which casts no shadow at midday
in the equinox. Then, as many journeys as it takes to reach
Jerusalem, so many more will bring one to the edge of the world,
after which one must proceed to India and other places on the
underneath side; 'I hafe oft tymes thoght on a tale þat I herd
;
when I was zung' of a man who travelled till he reached an island
## p. 86 (#104) #############################################
86 The Beginnings of English Prose
.
where he heard one calling to plow oxen in words of his own
tongue; 'but I suppose he had so long went on land and on see
envirounand be werld þat he was commen in to his awen marchez'
(Egerton). The author dovetails his bits of genuine information into
his fictions with deft ingenuity. One of the means of proving a
diamond is to 'take pe adamaund that drawez be nedill til him
by be whilk schippe men er governed in þe sea' (Egerton), and, if the
diamond is good, the adamant, 'that is the schipmannes ston'
(Cotton) will not act upon the needle while the gem rests upon it. But
Mandeville cannot refrain from heightening the marvellous stories
culled elsewhere. To the account of the diamond, sufficiently
strange in Ysidre' or 'Bertilmew,' to whose corroboration he
appeals, he must needs add that 'bai growe sammen, male and
female, and þai er nurischt with dew of heven. . . and bringes furth
smale childer and so þai multiply and growez all way' (Egerton).
He has often seen that they increase in size yearly, if taken up by the
roots with a bit of the rock they grow on and often wetted with
May dew. The source of this detail, as of the stories of Athanasius,
of the man who environed the earth and of the hole in the
Ark 'whare the fend 3ode out' when Noe said Benedicite, has
not yet been discovered. Probably Mandeville invented them,
as he did the details of the Great Cham's court: hangings of
red leather, said Odoric—hangings made of panther skins as red
as blood, says Mandeville; now, a panther, in those times, was
reckoned a beast of unheard-of beauty and magical properties.
Odoric expressly owned that he did not find such wonders in
Prester John's land as he had expected from rumour ; Mandeville
declares that the half had not been reported, but that he will be
chary of what he relates, for nobody would believe him. Such
indications of a becoming reticence help to create the air of
moderation which, somehow, pervades the book. The author's tone
is never loud, his illustrations are pitched on a homelier key than
the marvel he is describing-80 of the crocodiles, 'whan thei gon
bi places that ben gravelly it semethe as thoughe men hadde
drawen a gret tree thorghe the gravelly places' (Cotton). It is
a blemish on the grandeur of the Cham's court that the comouns
there eten withouten clothe upon here knees. ' Mandeville faces
the probability that his readers may withhold belief: 'he pat will
trowe it, trowe it; and he pat will no3t, lefe. For I will never be
latter tell sum what þat I sawe. . . wheder pai will trowe it or pai
nil'(Egerton). He discounts a possible comparison with Odoric by
mentioning that two of his company in the valley of devils were
## p. 87 (#105) #############################################
Mandeville's Detail
87
6
'frere menoures of Lombardye,' and artfully calls to witness the
very book that he stole from, 'the Lapidary that many men
knowen noght. ' Not that he ever avowedly quotes, save, rather
inaccurately, from the Scriptures. The necessary conventional
dress of orthodoxy he supplies to his travels by the device of credit-
ing the mysterious eastern courts with holding certain Christian
tenets. The shrine of St Thomas is visited 'als comounly and
with als gret devocioun as Cristene men gon to Seynt James'
(Odoric said, St Peter's); Prester John's people know the Pater-
noster and consecrate the host.
Mandeville hopes that everyone will be converted; his tolerance
of strange creeds and manners is that of a gentle, not of a careless,
mind. The Soudan of Egypt-who, indeed, rebuked the vices of
Christianity after the fashion of Scott's Saladin—would have wedded
him to a princess, had he but changed his faith. “But I thanke
God I had no wille to don it for no thing that he bebighten me'
(Cotton). It is with such light touches that Sir John pictures bim-
self. He is no egoist, nor braggart; we know nothing of his
appearance; he does no deeds of prowess himself 'for myn unable
suffisance'; his religion is that of ordinary men. He ventured,
duly shriven and crossed, down the perilous vale, full of treasure
and haunted by devils,
I touched none (he says) because that the Develes ben so subtyle to make a
thing to seme otherwise than it is, for to disceyve mankynde,. . . and also
because that I wolde not ben put out of my devocioun; for I was more devout
thaune than evere I was before or after, and alle for the drede of Fendes that
I saughe in dyverse Figures (Cotton).
Sir John, in short, reveals himself as a gentleman, filled with a
simple curiosity and with that love of strange travel which, he says,
is native to Englishmen, born under the moon, the planet which
moves round the world so much more quickly than the others.
He is honest and broad-minded, free from any taint of greed-
there is not a sordid observation in the whole book and that he
ever comes to an end is due to his consideration for others, for
were he to tell all he had seen uothing would be left for other
travellers to say: 'Wherfore I wole holde me stille. '
## p. 88 (#106) #############################################
CHAPTER IV
THE SCOTTISH LANGUAGE
EARLY AND MIDDLE SCOTS
The history of the Scots vernacular is, in its earlier stages,
a recapitulation of the tale of Northumbrian Old English and
northern Middle English. It is, perhaps, too dogmatic to say,
especially when the documentary evidence is so slight, that, in the
earliest period, the language north of the Tweed was identical with
that between the Tweed and the Humber; but we may reasonably
conclude that the differences were of the narrowest. The runic
verses of The Dream of the Rood on the cross at Ruthwell,
Dumfriesshire, might have been cut on the shores of the Forth,
or in Yorkshire. Later, though local differences may have been
accentuated, chiefly by the intrusion at one point or another of
Scandinavian or other words, the structural identity of the language
in the two areas was maintained. The justice of this assumption
appears when, in a still later period, we have an opportunity of
comparison by written texts. It is unnecessary to point out the
close kinship, in the fourteenth century, of the language of
Barbour's Bruce, written in Aberdeen, with that of the writings
of Richard Rolle, the hermit of Hampole, near Doncaster. The
likeness is the more remarkable, if we accept the opinion that
Barbour's text, in its extant form, was written out in the fifteenth
century. It is, therefore, not only scientifically accurate to
treat the language of the Bruce as northern English, but it is
historically justifiable to call that language English. ' To Barbour
and his successors—till a change in political circumstance made
a change in nomenclature necessary—their tongue is not 'Scots,'
but invariably ‘Ynglis,' or English.
The name 'Scots' or 'Scottish' has been applied to the
language of the whole or part of the area of modern Scotland
in such a variety of senses that some statement of the history
of the term is a necessary preliminary to even the briefest outline.
6
## p. 89 (#107) #############################################
• Scots' and `Ynglis'
89
Modern associations and modern fervour have too often obscured
the purely linguistic issues. In its original application, 'Scots' is
the speech of the Scottish settlers in Alban: that is, Celtic of the
Goidelic group, the ancestor of the present Scottish Gaelic. In
due course, the name was applied to the vernacular of the entire
area north of the dividing-line between the estuaries of the Forth
and Clyde. As this extension covered the eastern Pictish territory,
then under the rule of the kings of the Scots, it is possible that
some change was ultimately effected by the political association of
these several northern non-Teutonic communities. Whatever be
the outcome of speculation on this point, the only consideration
pertinent to our present purpose is that the speech of this wider
area was known as 'Scots' to all peoples south of the dividing-
line, whether Anglian settlers in the Lothians or Bretts (or
'Welsh') in Strathclyde.
When the limits of the Scottish' kingdom were enlarged
southward and had, in the thirteenth century, become identical
with those of modern Scotland, the name 'Scots' was no longer
applied to the language of the rulers. The process of amal-
gamation was, in every sense, an anglicisation, which became
more effective as the Scottish kings carried out their policy of
intruding Teutonic culture into the eastern fringe of their
ancestral 'Scotland. Thus, when the wider political idea of a
'Scotland' takes shape, we find 'Ynglis' the name of the speech
of the 'Scottish’ court and of the surrounding Anglian population
in the Lothians and Fife, and 'Scots' that of the speech of the
northern and western provinces. This alienation of the anglicised
Scot from the Gaelic Scot-illustrated in the story of Duncan and
Macbeth—was completed in the wars of independence, in which
the Teutonic or 'English' elements representing 'Scottish'
nationality were hampered in their resistance to the Anglo-
French civilisation of England by the vigorous opposition of
non-Teutonic Scots. When the struggle was ended and Teutonic
Scotland started on a fresh career of national endeavour, the
separation from the Celtic Scots was absolute. On the other hand,
certain elements of Anglo-French culture were readily assimilated.
The guiding factor was race. For some time after this, even at
the close of the fifteenth century, 'Scots' is the name for
the Gaelic speech of the north and west. By writers of Lothian
birth, this tongue is spoken of disrespectfully as the tongue of
'brokin men' and 'savages' and 'bribour bairdis. These
'
Lothian men are Scots, willing subjects of the king of 'Scots,'
6
1
## p. 90 (#108) #############################################
The Scottish Language
90
6
proud of their 'Scotland'; but they are careful to say that the
language which they speak is ‘Ynglis. '
Later, however, with the political and social advance of the
kingdom and the development of a strong national sentiment
during the quarrels with England, it came about, inevitably, that the
term ‘Ynglis' no longer commended itself to northern patriotism.
It was the language of the 'auld enemy,' an enemy the nearest
and the most troublesome. If these northerners were proud of
Scotland and of being Scots, why might not their tongue be
'Scots'? In some such way the historian guesses at the purpose
of sixteenth century literature in taking to itself the name of the
despised speech of the 'bards, and in giving to that speech the
name of 'Ersch' or 'Yrisch' (Irish). The old reproach clung to the
new title 'Ersch': and it was to be long before the racial animosity,
thus expressed in the outward symbol of language, was to be
forgotten in a more homogeneous Scotland. No better proof of
this internal fissure can be found than in Dunbar's Flyting with
Kennedieł, which is, in first intention, an expression of the feud
between the English east and the Gaelic west. If the poem be,
as we are asked to believe, a mere bout of rough fun, it is none
the less interesting as evidence of the material which gave the
best opportunities for mock warfare.
This break with the family name and historic association
indicates, in a blunt way, a more fundamental change in the
language itself. The causes which produced the one could not fail
to influence the other. For 'Scots,' erst ‘Ynglis,’ had, for some
time, lived apart: during more than two centuries there had
been little intercourse with England by any of the peaceful
methods which affect language most strongly; closer association
had been enforced with the unreconciled Gaels within its area or
with new friends beyond ; generally, a marked differentiation had
been established between the civilisations north and south of the
Tweed. These considerations, among others, prepare us for the
changes which soon become evident, though they may not be very
helpful in explaining the details of these changes. It may be
that some of them were longer in the making than our study of
the few extant documents of the earlier period has led us to
believe. We lack evidence of the extent of Scandinavian inter-
ference in the northern Anglic dialect, structural and verbal, and
we know too little of the Anglo-French influences resulting from the
Norman culture which had grown up in the Lothians. Yet, while
1 See Chapter .
## p. 91 (#109) #############################################
Middle Scots
91
allowing for possibilities, or probabilities, of this kind, we may
conclude that, on the whole, the literary language of Scotland down
to the early fifteenth century was in close conformity with the
usage of northern England. The texts of Barbour and Hampole
force us to accept this. Any qualification which may be made
must be due, not to the testimony of facts (for they are wanting),
but to an acknowledgment of the general principle that languages
and dialects change slowly and that the differences in the latter
part of the fifteenth century (to which we are about to refer)
are too fundamental to have taken shape of a sudden.
A change in the habit of the literary language is discernible
from the middle of the fifteenth century. It is definite and of
general occurrence; and it continues with but few variations,
which are due to the idiosyncrasies of writers or the circumstances
of publication, down to the opening decades of the seventeenth
century. To this period (1450-1620) the name of 'Middle Scots'
has been given. The title is not altogether satisfactory, but it is
the best that has been found ; and it is useful in suggesting the
special linguistic phase which intervened between earlier and later
(or modern) Scots. It is applied only to the literary speech. The
spoken language pursued its own course and showed fewer points
of difference from both the literary and spoken dialects of northern
England. When the middle period closes, spoken Scots is again
restored to something of the dignity of a literary medium. This is
said advisedly, for diversity of dialect and the lack of a fixed
orthography in Modern Scots are the denial of the main charac-
teristics of a standard instrument. In Middle Scots, on the other
hand, the linguistic peculiarities are, with the allowances already
noted, uniform within the period, and deliberately followed.
The name 'Early Scots,' for the period ending c. 1450, is
even less satisfactory than 'Middle Scots' for the next (from
1450 to 1620); but it will do no harm if it be understood to be the
literary language of Teutonic Scotland during the century and
a half before 1450, when such differentiation from early northern
English as may be assumed, but cannot readily be proved, was
established. The names 'Northumbrian' and 'Early Northern
English' may be applied to the still earlier stages. Of 'Early Scots'
the typical examples are Barbour's Bruce and Wyntoun's Chronicle :
of Middle Scots the writings of Henryson, Dunbar, Douglas and
Lyndsay. In a more exhaustive scheme it is convenient to have
an intervening 'Early Transition Period'-say from 1420 to 1460—
represented by such important works as The Kingis Quair, Lancelot
of the Laik, and The Quare of Ielusy. The linguistic basis of
a
>
## p. 92 (#110) #############################################
92
The Scottish Language
these poems is Early Scots; but they show an artificial mixture
with southern and pseudo-southern forms derived from Chaucer.
Their language represents no type, literary or spoken; it is a
bookish fabrication; but, though exceptional and individual, it has
the historical interest of being the first expression of a habit
which, in Middle Scots, was neither exceptional nor individual
In this transition period the foreign elements are exclusively
Chaucerian : in Middle Scots, Chaucerian influence, though great
and all pervading, is not the sole cause of the differences ?
The statement that Middle Scots is uniform throughout its
many texts must not be misunderstood. Full allowance must be
made, in each case, for the circumstances of composition and
production. Translations from Latin or French will show a larger
percentage of Romance forms; a dream-poem will attract more
Chaucerian words and phrases and tricks of grammar; a recension
of a southern text or the writing of a Scot in exile in England
will carry over' certain southern mannerisms; French printers
in Paris, or Chepman and Myllar's English craftsmen in Edinburgh,
will bungle and alter; and poets like Gavin Douglas will deal in
archaisms which even an educated contemporary might not readily
understand. Yet these exceptions, and others which might be
named, but prove the validity of the general rule.
Middle Scots stands in marked contrast with Early Scots in
phonology and orthography, in accidence, in syntax and in
vocabulary and word-forms. It is not desirable to attempt even
an outline of each of these in this short chapter. The reader who
wishes further acquaintance is referred to the bibliography.
The remaining pages will be devoted to brief consideration of the
main causes of change and of their relative importance in the
transformation of the dialect, especially in the matter of vocabulary.
The persistence of certain popular misconceptions, or overstate-
ments, of the indebtedness of Scots justifies some discussion of the
question in this place.
An artificial dialect such as is used by the greater Middle Scots
poets is, in some respecte, unaffected by the processes which mould
a living speech? It draws from sources which are outside the
natural means of supply; it adopts consciously and in accordance
1 It may be well to add that these transition' texts are more strongly southern
than are the later texts which continued the habit of borrowing.
If the entire literature of the period (prose as well as verse) be considered, this
impression of artificiality will, of course, be modified. This must always be so, even
when eccentricity is more marked than it is in the present case. Yet we must not
underestimate the importance of a habit which was, after all, followed by all Middle
Scots writers who make any claim to literary style.
## p. 93 (#111) #############################################
Southern Influence on Middle Scots
93
with a deliberately accepted theory of style. If it borrow the forms
which come to all languages with the new things of the market-
place, it does so advisedly, just as it recovers the older forms which
have been lost to ordinary speech. Books are its inspiration, and
the making of books is its end. In this way the literary conscious-
ness of an age as it appears in writers like Henryson and Dunbar
is an index to its linguistic habit. When poets show a new pride
in the vernacular and are concerned with the problems of poetic
diction and form, their admiration of the models of style takes
a very practical turn. Scottish literature, in the full enjoyment
of a new fervour, showed the effect of its enthusiasm in the
fashion of its language. In it, as in the Italian and Burgundian,
the chief effort was to transform the simpler word and phrase into
'aureate' mannerism, to “illumine' the vernacular, to add 'fresch
anamalit termis celicall. ' This Crétinism was the serious concern
of the Scottish poets for at least a century, and even of prose-writers
such as the author of The Complaynt of Scotlande, or Abacuck
Bysset, so late as 1622. In the later stages of Middle Scots, and
especially in the prose, other influences were at work, but the tra-
dition establisbed during the so-called 'golden age still lingered.
The chief modifying forces at work during the middle period
are English, Latin and French. Otherssay Celtic and Scan-
dinavian-may be neglected, but the case for the former will be
glanced at later.
The southern, or English, influence, which is the strongest, is
exerted in three ways. It comes through the study of Chaucer
and the English 'Chaucerians'; through religious and controversial
literature; and, lastly, through the new political and social
relations with England, prior to and following the accession of
James VI to the English throne. The first of these is the most
important. In a later chapter, attention is drawn to the debt
of the Scottish 'makars' to the southern poet and his followers
for the sentiment and fabric of their verse. The measure of
that debt is not complete without acknowledgment to Chaucer's
language. The general effect on Middle Scots of this literary
admiration was an increase in the Romance elements. It may
be taken for granted that the majority of words of Anglo-French
origin which were incorporated at this time were Chaucerian ; but
it is not always easy to distinguish these words from the Anglo-
French which had been naturalised in the early period. It must
not be forgotten, especially in estimating the French contribution
to Middle Scots (see post) that the most active borrowing
from that quarter had been accomplished before this time. In
## p. 94 (#112) #############################################
94
The Scottish Language
6
The Kingis Quair and Lancelot, which illustrate the first Chaucerian
phase in Scots, the infusion is not confined to the vocabulary.
Fantastic grammatical forms are common : such as infinitives in
-en (even -ine), weren for war, past participles with y, frequent
use of finale—all unknown and impossible to the northern dialect.
In these cases there is no mistaking the writer's artifice and its
source. Such freaks in accidence are hardly to be found in the
poetry of James IV's reign ; though Gavin Douglas's eclectic taste
allows the southern ybound and the nondescript ysoupit. In the
verse of the 'golden age' it is the word, or tag, which is the
badge of Chaucerian affectation. The prose shows little or nothing
of this literary reminiscence. John of Ireland, whose writing is
the earliest extant example of original Scots prose of a literary
cast, speaks of 'Galfryde Chauceir' (by whom he really means
Occleve), but exhibits no trace of his influence. When the Middle
Scots prose-writer is not merely annalistic, or didactic, or argu-
mentative, he draws his aureat termis from the familiar Latin.
So, when The Complaynt of Scotlande varies from the norm, it
is, in Rabelais's phrase, to despumate the Latial verbocination,'
or to revel in onomatopoeia.
In the prose, the second and third English influences are
more easily noted, and they are found towards the end
of the period, when a general decadence has set in. Indeed,
they are the chief causes of the undoing of Middle Scots, of
breaking down the very differences which Chaucer, Latinity
and (in a minor degree) French intercourse had accomplished.
It is to be observed that the language of nearly all religious
literature from the middle of the sixteenth century is either
purely southern or strongly anglicised : it is worthy of special
note that, until the publication of the Bassandyne Bible in 1576–9,
all copies of the Scriptures were imported direct from England,
and that the Bassandyne, as authorised by the reformed kirk,
is a close transcript of the Genevan version. This must have
had a powerful influence on the language, spoken and written.
Even in Lyndsay, whose dialect is unmistakable, translated
passages from the Vulgate are taken direct from the English
text. The literary influence was strengthened by protestant
controversialists, notably by Knox, perhaps the most 'English'
of all Scottish prose-writers. This ‘knapping' of 'sudroun’ was
one of the charges preferred against them by catholic pamphleteers
- among others by John Hamilton, author of Ane Catholik and
Facile Traictise (1581), who even saw treason in the printing of
Scottish books at London 'in contempt of our native language. "
## p. 95 (#113) #############################################
The French Element in Middle Scots 95
The third English influence, latest in activity, emphasised these
tendencies. It is easy to trace in state documents and in the
correspondence of the court the intrusion of southern forms. Sal
and shall, till and to, quhilk and which, participles in -and and
-ing, -it and -ed, jostle each other continually. The going of the
court to England, and the consequent affectation of English ways,
undid the artificial Middle Scots which had been fashioned at, and
for, that court. Poetry was transferred, almost en bloc, as if by
act of the British Solomon, to the care of the southern muse : all
the singers, Alexander, Aytoun, Drummond and the rest became
'Elizabethan’ in language and sentiment, differing in nothing,
except an occasional Scotticism, from their southern hosts. When
Scottish literature revives in the mid-seventeenth century, and in
the next is again vigorous, its language is the spoken dialect, the
agrest termis of the Lothians and west country?
That the Romance contribution to Middle Scots is large is
obvious ; that it is found in writings which are not mere tours
de force of aureate' ingenuity is also obvious. But the sorting
out of the borrowings according to their origin has not been
so clear to amateurs of Scots etymology. There has been no lack
of speculation, which, in its generally accepted form, must be
seriously traversed.
The non-Teutonic elements (excluding Celtic) are Latin and
French. An exaggerated estimate of the political and social inter-
course with France, and a corresponding neglect or depreciation
of the position of Latin in Scottish culture, have given vogue to a
theory of French influence on the language which cannot be
accepted without serious modification. The main responsibility
for the popular opinion that Scots is indebted, inordinately, to
French must rest with the late Francisque Michel's Critical
Inquiry into the Scottish Language, with the view of illustrating
the Rise and Progress of Civilisation in Scotland (1882). It
may be true that, 'to thoroughly understand Scottish civilisation,
we must seek for most of its more important germs in French
sources'; but certain important qualifications are necessary.
The French element in Middle Scots represents three stages of
borrowing: first, the material incorporated in the early period
during the process of Anglo-French settlement in the Lothians;
next, the material, also Anglo-French in origin, drawn from Chaucer
and the 'Chaucerian' texts; and, finally, the material adopted from
i Sume qualification is, of course, necessary in Ramsay's case. His antiquarian
taste must be reckoned with by the philologer.
## p. 96 (#114) #############################################
96
The Scottish Language
central French during the close diplomatic intercourse of the
Scottish and French courts, and as a result of the resort of Scottish
students to the university of Paris, and, later, of the national
interest in Calvinistic protestantism. The last of these groups
commends itself readily to the popular imagination: its plausibility
is enforced by recalling the stories of the Scot abroad, of careers
like Buchanan’s, of the Quentin Durwards, and by pointing to the
copies of French institutions in the College of Justice and the older
universities. Yet, when all these are allowed for, the borrowings
from this third source are the smallest in extent, and by no means
important.
