Apon the Midsumer evin, mirrest of nichtis,
I muvit furth allane, neir as midnicht wes past,
Besyd ane gudlie grene garth, full of gay flouris,
Hegeit, of ane huge hicht, with hawthorne treis;
Quhairon ane bird, on ane bransche, so birst out hir notis
That never ane blythfullar bird was on the beuche harde:
Quhat throw the sugarat sound of hir sang glaid,
And throw the savar sanative of the sueit flouris;
I drew in derne to the dyk to dirkin eftir myrthis;
The dew donkit the daill, and dynarit the foulis.
(William Dunbar: The Tua Mariit Wemen and the Wedo, ll. 1-10. Ed. Scottish Text Society, vol ii. p. 30.)
See notes on Dunbar as a metrist, in this edition, vol. i. pp. cxlix and clxxii, and T. F. Henderson's Scottish Vernacular Literature, pp. 153-164.
Alliteration as an organic element of verse was especially favored in the North country, and its popularity in Scotland—illustrated in the present specimen from Dunbar—considerably outlasted its use in England. The famous words of Chaucer's Parson will be recalled:
"But trusteth wel, I am a Southren man,
I can nat geste—rum, ram, ruf—by lettre."
We find King James, as late as 1585 (Reulis and Cautelis), giving the following instructions: "Let all your verse be Literall, sa far as may be, ... bot speciallie Tumbling verse for flyting. By Literall I meane, that the maist part of your lyne sall rynne upon a letter, as this tumbling lyne rynnis upon F:
Fetching fude for to feid it fast furth of the Farie."
The following specimen is one of the latest examples of fairly regular alliterative verse, written in England, that has come down to us. It is from a ballad of the battle of Flodden Field (1513).
Archers uttered out their arrowes, and egerlie they shotten.
They proched us with speares, and put many over,
That the blood outbrast at there broken harnish.
There was swinging out of swords, and swapping of headds;
We blanked them with bills through all their bright armor,
That all the dale dunned of their derfe strokes.