For laik of reformatioun,
The common profit tine and fame?
Think ye nocht shame
That ony other regioun
Sall with dishonour hurt your name?
This is hardly the Edinburgh of subsequent romance, as we see it in Scott’s Abbot; but that Scott had good warrant for what he wrote there, other than his own imagination, appears from a supplement to Dunbar furnished by Sir David Lindsay. The Edinburgh which Sir David Lindsay knew was the Edinburgh of a later generation than Dunbar’s, say from 1513 to 1555; and, whether from this lapse of time or from difference in the tempers of the two poets, Sir David Lindsay’s Edinburgh is liker Scott’s than Dunbar’s. Thus, in one poem of Lindsay’s,—
Adieu, Edinburgh! thou heich triumphant town,
Within whose bounds richt blithefull have I been,
Of true merchánds the root of this regioun,
Most ready to receive Court, King, and Queen!