Till on a morning, or the lavrock sang, Not far frae thyne, on till a worthy wane, This burges brocht them sune quhair they Without God-speid,—thair herboury was tane Baith cheis and butter on lang skelfs richt hie, After, quhen they disposit wer to dyne, The rural mous lay flatlings on the ground, And when her sister in sic plicht her fand, Quhy ly ye thus? Ryse up my sister deir, Withouten grace they wush and went to meit, With watter kail, or gnaw beinis and peis, On every dish that cuikmen can divyne, With blyth upeast and merry countenance, The elder sister then speird at her gest, Betwixt that chalmer and her sary nest. For evirmair I wate, and langer to. Gif that be trew, ye ar at eise, quoth scho. To eik the cheir, in plenty furth scho brocht A threfe of caiks, I trow scho spairt them nocht, Thus made they mirry, quhyle they micht nae mair, And hail yule! hail! they cryit up on hie; And trouble after grit prosperitie: They tarriet not to wash, as I suppose, Her sister had nae place to hyde her in; But as God wald, it fell a happy case, The spensar had nae laisar for to byde, Nowthir to force, to seik, nor skar, nor chaiss, But on he went, and kest the dore upwyde. This burges mouss his pasage weil has spyd, Out of her hole scho came, and cryt on hé, How! fair sister, cry peip, quhair eir thou be. Then all your feist with this dreid and disseiss. With fair tretie, yit gart scho her ryse; To burde they went, and on togither sat; Frae fute to fute she kest her to and frae, Quhyle up, quhyle doun, als cant as ony kid; Quhyle wald she let her ryn under the strae, Quhyle wald she wink and play with her buk-hid: Thus to the silly mous grit harm she did; Quhyle at the last, throw fair fortune and hap, Betwixt the dressour and the wall scho crap. Syne up in haste behind the pannaling, Sae hie scho clam, that Gilbert might not get her. And be the cluks craftylie can hing, Till he was gane, her cheir was all the better. Then on the burges mous loud couth she cry, Thy mangery is myngit all with cair, Thy gyse is gud, thy gane-full sour as gall; So sall thou find heirefterwart may fall. Wer I into the place that I cam frae, For weil nor wae I sould neir cum again. And merrylie linkit unto the mure, I cannot tell how afterwart scho fure. As warm as wow, suppose it was not grit, The suetest lyfe, thairfoir, in this cuntré, Thy awin fyre, freind, thocht it be bot a gleid, WALTER KENNEDY. BORN 1450 DIED 1508. his own. He boasts also of the favour of royalty, and even of some affinity to it: WALTER KENNEDY, a contemporary of Dun- | store, and stakkis," "steids and cakes," of bar, was born in the district of Carrick, Ayrshire, about the middle of the fifteenth century. He resided in the town of Ayr, which he calls "hame," and belonged to the ecclesiastical order. Although Kennedy is now chiefly known to the readers of Scottish poetry by his Flyting" or altercation with Dunbar in rhyme, he appears in his time to have possessed a very considerable poetical reputation. He speaks of himself as "of Rethory the Rose," and as one who has "ambulate on Parnasso the mountain, Inspyrit with Hermes frae his golden sphere; And dulcely drunk of eloquence the fountain, Quhen purifiet with frost, and flowand cleir." In addition to his own testimony we find him mentioned by Douglas and Lyndsay, as one of the most eminent of their contemporaries. Douglas ranks him before Dunbar in his "Court of Muses," styling him " the great Kennedie." His works, with the exception of a few short poems, have perished. Dunbar, with whom he carried on a poetical warfare, upbraids him with living by theft and beggary; but Kennedy replies that he wants not "land, "I am the king's blude, his trew and special clerk, The "Flyting" is a miserable exhibition of rival malice, and does as little credit to the moral sense as to the poetical taste of the combatants. It is due, however, to Kennedy to mention that the controversy did not commence with him, and that he appears to have suffered least in the wordy conflict. Lord Hailes thinks it probable that the altercation between the poets may have been merely a play of fancy, without any real quarrel existing between the parties, and that there was more mirth than malice at the bottom of the affair. It is gratifying to know that Dunbar, who survived Kennedy, survived also whatever resentment he entertained towards him, if indeed he ever felt any. In his "Lament for the Death of the Makkaris," he thus mourns the Of Lollerdry, dry vand in the sey hir blawis; Law, luve, and lawtie, gravin law thay ly; Writ, wax, and selis ar no wayis set by; WILLIAM DUNBAR. BORN 1460-DIED 1520. WILLIAM DUNBAR, styled by Pinkerton "the | that he became a great favourite at the Scotchief of the ancient Scottish poets," was born about the year 1460. From passages in his writings he is supposed to have been a native of East Lothian. Having received his edu- | cation at the College of St. Andrews, where, in 1479, he took the degree of Master of Arts, he became a travelling novitiate of the order of St. Francis, as we learn from his poem "How Dunbar was desyred to be ane Frier," in which capacity he visited the principal towns and cities of England and Scotland. He also went to France, preaching, as was the custom of the order, and living by the alms of the pious-a mode of life which the poet himself acknowledges to have involved a constant exercise of deceit, flattery, and falsehood. He returned to Scotland about the year 1490, and attaching himself to the court of the brave, generous, and accomplished James IV., he received a small pension | from that monarch. What his duties at court were is not known, but he evidently entertained hopes of advancement in the church. His smaller poems abound with allusions to this effect:- "I knaw nocht how the kirk is gydit, "And sum, unworthy to brouk ane stall, "Unwourthy I, amang the laif, Ane kirk dois craif, and nane can have," &c. It does not appear that any ecclesiastical benefice was ever conferred upon Dunbar; a fact the more remarkable because it is known tish court. It is believed, from allusions in "For war it so, than weill were me, God gif ye war Johne Thomsounis man!" To be John Thomson's man, was a proverbial expression for being what is now familiarly known as a hen-pecked husband. At Martinmas, 1507, his pension was newly eiked; the king having ordered it to be increased to £20, and three years afterwards it was raised to £80, to be paid during his life, "or until he be promoted to a benefice of £100 or above." It is, we think, very evident that the cause of the court-bard's non-preferment was the king's reluctance to be deprived of his company, being pleased with his compositions, and probably also with his conversation, the charms of which, judging from his writings, must have been very great. His majesty would not have stood such incessant badgering about a benefice, had he not been loath to lose so bright a genius-nay, had he not loved the man. As for Dunbar himself, we doubt his having been as desirous to give up his £80 a year at court for £100 per annum, and a parish in some obscure village, as would appear to have been the case from his unceasing appeals to the king. "With all his cheerfulness and elasticity of spirit," says his biographer, "Dunbar had reached a period of life when he must have felt keenly the misfortune of continuing so long a dependant on court favour. Had the Scottish monarch not desired to retain him as a personal attendant, he would have found no difficulty in gratifying the wishes of an old and faithful servant, as the presentation to all vacant benefices was vested in the king's hands; for it has been well observed, 'that it must have been a pure priesthood, indeed, to whom Dunbar would not in his maturer years have done honour.'" Of the time or manner of Dunbar's death nothing is known with certainty. From one of his poems on the death of the poets he appears to have outlived most of his contemporaries, and probably lived until about 1520 or 1530. Next to the "Thrissill and the Rois," his most considerable poem was "The Goldyn Targe," a moral allegorical piece intended to demonstrate the general tendency of love to overcome reason; the golden targe, or shield, of reason, he shows to be an inefficient protection to the shafts of Cupid. It is cited by Sir David Lyndsay, as showing that Dunbar had "language at large.' The most remarkable of his poems is the "Dance of the Sevin Deidly Synnis." It is equal in its way to anything in Spenser. Dunbar was the author of a number of moral poems, the most solemn of which is the one in which he represents a thrush and nightingale taking opposite sides in a debate on earthly and spiritual affections. Among his numerous comic pieces, which are not, however, suited to the present era, the most humorous are the "Twa Marriet Wemen and the Wedo," containing many sarcastic reflections upon the fair sex; and an account of a tournament, entitled "The Justis betuix the Tailyzour and Sowtar"--conducted according to the laws of chivalry. It is in a style of the broadest farce, and as droll as anything in Scarron or Rabelais. Dunbar is supposed to be the author of another exquisitely humorous tale, "The Freirs of Berwick," which supplied the groundwork of Allan Ramsay's well known poem of "The Monk and the Miller's Wife." Our court-bard had the fortune, rare in that age, of seeing some of his poems printed in his lifetime. In 1508, among the first efforts of the Scottish press, Chapman and Miller published his "Golden Targe" and "Two Married Women and the Widow." Most of his writings were, however, allowed to remain in the obscurity of manuscript among the Bannatyne and Maitland collections, till the beginning of the last century, when some of his productions appeared in Allan Ramsay's Evergreen. It was not till 1834 that a complete edition of his works, accompanied by a life and valuable notes by David Laing, was published. Had any accident befallen the Bannatyne and Maitland MS. prior to 1834 Dunbar would not, as now, have been known as "the darling of the Scottish muses.' "In the poetry of Dunbar," says Dr. Irving, "we recognize the emanations of a mind adequate to splendid and varied exertion; a mind capable of soaring into the higher regions of fiction, or of descending into the humble walks of the familiar and ludicrous. His imagination, though highly prolific, was sufficiently chastened by the interposition of judgment. In his allegorical poems we discover originality, and even sublimity of invention; while those of a satirical kind present us with striking images of real life and manners. As a descriptive poet he has secured superlative praise. In the mechanism of poetry he evinces a won |