“O, ay for sicken[1073] quarters as I gat yesternight!”
And we’ll gang nae mair, &c.
[SIR RICHARD MAITLAND.]
Many of the finest flowers of Scottish poetry previous to the middle of the sixteenth century owe their preservation to the taste and patience of two curiously contrasted collectors. One of the quaintest stories of Scottish literature is that narrating how, during time of pestilence in 1568, George Bannatyne, a young man of twenty-three, occupied the leisure of his enforced retirement with transcribing, page after page, the best works of the national makars. Little further is known of the transcriber except that he became a burgess of some substance in Edinburgh; but the work of those three months, a neatly written folio of eight hundred pages, now in the Advocates’ Library in Edinburgh, has made his name immortal.[1074] The companion picture belongs to a slightly later date. It is that of Sir Richard Maitland, the blind old judge of the Court of Session, in the last year of his life, directing the transcription by his daughter Mary of the collection which was to hand his name to posterity.
No necessity exists for comparing the merits of the two manuscripts which have been the means of preserving so much of the legacy of northern genius. To a large extent they deal with different work; in each case the task of transcription and preservation has been performed with the utmost patience and care; and in each the good taste and good faith of the collector has established his transcript as a classic authority. But while gratitude is due to Bannatyne for his services as preserver of many priceless poems, as an original poet, upon the strength of the few compositions of his own which he included in his manuscript, he remains of but small account. In this respect his contemporary, on the other hand, has a definite claim to regard. Sir Richard Maitland was not only a diligent and careful collector of the works of others; he was himself also a makar of respectable merit, and several, at least, of the original compositions which he added to his collection are entitled to a place on the page of Scottish poesy.
The son of William Maitland of Lethington in Haddingtonshire, who fell at Flodden, and of Martha, daughter of George, second Lord Seton, the poet was the representative of an ancient family. The well-known ballad of “Auld Maitland” celebrates a gallant defence of the castle of Lauder or Thirlstane against the English by an ancestor of Sir Richard about the year 1250.[1075] Again and again during the succeeding centuries the family name appears in history;[1076] in due course Thirlstane was inherited by the poet from his grandfather; and from that time, till the climax of the family fortunes in the person of the poet’s great-grandson, the Duke of Lauderdale, in Charles II.’s time, the house may be said to have been continuously in a foremost place. Born in 1496, and studying law, it is said, first at St. Andrews, and afterwards, upon his father’s death, in France, Maitland appears presently to have entered the service of James V.[1077] Nothing certain, however, is known of his early life except that, about the year 1530, he married Mary, a daughter of Sir Thomas Cranston of Corsby. By this lady he had a family of at least three sons and four daughters, of whom the former were destined to play some of the most conspicuous parts in the history of their time.
The poet himself appears throughout to have cultivated a life of retirement and study. All the references of contemporary writers, except one, mention him with great respect, and his life would appear to have been mostly that of the quiet country gentleman. The single exception occurs in John Knox’s History, where he is accused of having taken bribes to allow Cardinal Beaton to escape from Seton House in 1543. Knox, however, was somewhat ready to attribute such misdemeanours to persons whom he thought inimical to the reformed faith, and in the present case there exists no evidence whatever to support the charge, except that Maitland was a relative of Lord Seton, and may have been visiting Seton House at the time of the occurrence. There exists, on the other hand, direct evidence to show that the Cardinal was set at liberty by order of the Regent Arran.[1078]