Indeed, some little further insight into the history of this Scottish bard is gained from the title prefixed to some of his poems preserved in the British Museum, viz. The morall Fabillis of Esop, compylit be Maister Robert Henrisoun, scolmaister of Dumfermling, 1571. Harl. MSS. 3865, § 1.
In Ramsay's Evergreen, vol. i. are preserved two other little Doric pieces by Henryson: the one intitled The Lyon and the Mouse, the other The garment of gude Ladyis. Some other of his poems may be seen in the Ancient Scottish Poems, printed from Bannatyne's MS. above referred to.
[This remarkable poem is peculiarly interesting as being the earliest specimen of pastoral poetry in the language. Campbell calls it "the first known pastoral, and one of the best in a dialect rich with the favours of the pastoral muse." Langhorne writes justly:
"In gentle Henryson's unlaboured strain
Sweet Arethusa's shepherd breath'd again."
Percy errs in describing Henryson as a contemporary of Surrey, as the Scottish poet lived half a century before the English one. The dates of his birth and death are not known, but he flourished in the reign of James III. (1460-1488). "On the 10th of September, 1462, the venerable master Robert Henrysone, Licentiate in Arts and Bachelor in Degrees, was incorporated or admitted a member of the newly founded University of Glasgow." He was a notary public, and probably the master of the grammar school attached to the Abbey of Dunfermline, not as might be supposed a mere parish schoolmaster. According to the tradition of the last century, our poet was the representative of the family of Henryson or Henderson, of Fordell, in the county of Fife; but Mr. David Laing thinks that it is a gratuitous assumption to suppose that he or his predecessors ever possessed a single acre of the lands of Fordell.
Percy has used the version given in Ramsay's Evergreen, which is slightly altered in diction from the original in the Bannatyne MS.; for instance, the last stanza occurs in the latter as follows:
"Makyne went hame blyth anneuche,
Attour the holltis hair;
Robene murnit, and Makyne leuche;
Scho sang, he sichit sair
And so left him, bayth wo and wreuch,
In dolour and in cair,
Kepand his hird under a huche
Amangis the holtis hair."
In the Evergreen version, the last verse is altered to "Amang the rushy gair," either because the words "holtis hair" occur in verse two of the stanza, or that the Editor saw an impropriety in the close vicinity of the similar words holt and heuch. The two words "holtis hair" are explained as hoary hills or hoary woods, but Finlay (Scottish Historical and Romantic Ballads, 1808, vol. ii. p. 193) holds that "hair" really means high, and derives it from Isl. har == altus. He says that a high rock in some of the northern counties of Scotland, where the dialect is strongly tinctured with Danish, is called "hair craig," and that the same word lingers on in the Hare-stone of the Borough Moor, Edinburgh, which obtained its name in the following manner: The laird of Pennycuik held certain lands by a strange tenure. He was obliged to mount a large stone or rock, and salute the king with three blasts of a horn whenever he passed that way. This rock or eminence was called the "Hare-stone," and still exists near Morningside Church. Hoary, however, is to be understood as grey and not as white with snow, so that the hare-stone is probably the grey stone. The word holt may also mean a heath, and Cædmon uses the phrase "har hæð" = hoar or grey heath.