Most of Montgomerie’s poems have been preserved respectively in the Drummond, the Maitland, and the Bannatyne MSS. After many separate editions of the chief pieces, the whole of the poems were for the first time collected into one volume (Edinburgh, 1821) by David Laing, with a biographical notice by Dr. Irving, the historian of Scottish poetry. The only other complete edition is that by Dr. James Cranstoun (Scottish Text Society, 1885–87). The latter, in the present volume, is regarded as the standard text.
“The Cherrie and the Slae,” Montgomerie’s chief effort, has ever since its composition been one of the most popular of Scottish poems, no fewer than twenty-three editions of it having been printed since 1597. The intention of the allegory, according to Pinkerton, was to show that moderate pleasures are better than high ones. But Dempster, who translated it into Latin, considered it to be, first, a love allegory, picturing a young man’s choice between a humble and a high-born mistress, and afterwards the pourtrayal of a struggle between virtue and vice. Most readers are likely to agree with Dr. Cranstoun in considering Dempster’s solution correct, believing with him that “what the poet began as an amatory lay he ended as a moral poem; what he meant for a song turned out a sermon.” Thus, probably, it comes about that the allegory is of small account, the chief value and charm of the poem lying in its passages of description, its freshness of imagery, and its mother-wit. The opening stanzas present by far the best part of the composition. The remainder possesses but secondary interest, notwithstanding the many pithy sayings introduced; and no climax is reached even when the cherry is attained at the end of the piece.
Of the poet’s other works the longest extant is “The Flyting betwixt Montgomerie and Polwart,” a tournament of Rabelaisian humour in the style of the famous “Flyting of Dunbar and Kennedie.” Its chief interest, for poetic qualities it has none, is as a specimen of a class of composition—the mock duel of vituperation between good friends—which was in those times considered an amusing literary performance. His sonnets, “characterised by great poetic skill and singular felicity of diction,” furnish no mean contribution to the stores of a verse-form then greatly cultivated, while his miscellaneous poems, nearly all amatory, exhibit mastery of a great variety of measures. Sometimes, however, the tone of these appears affected to a modern ear, and their imagery apt to descend into conceits.
There remains, preserved by the Maitland MS., another poem, “The Bankis of Helicon,” a love lyric of great charm, which long enjoyed the reputation of being the earliest piece written in the stanza of “The Cherrie and the Slae.” Laing thought it possible that Montgomerie might be the author of this, and Dr. Cranstoun establishes the opinion with a fair amount of certainty, considering it one of the series of compositions addressed by the poet to his kinswoman, Lady Margaret Montgomerie, and pointing out the frequency with which sets of expressions and even whole lines from the other pieces of the series are repeated in it. Even if ascertained beyond doubt, however, the authorship of “The Bankis of Helicon” would add nothing to Montgomerie’s reputation, which is likely to live and die with the reputation of his greatest work, the lyrical allegory of “The Cherrie and the Slae.”
Greater in manner than in matter, Montgomerie’s verse owes its charm to finish and grace rather than to vigour and imagination, affording rather a late reflection of the early glories of the century than the glow of a new inspiration; nevertheless it has remained constantly popular, a surprising number of its lines having become household words in the shape of proverbs; it claims the credit, along with Dunbar’s work, of furnishing models both to Allan Ramsay and to Burns; and, beyond all its Scottish contemporaries, it possesses intrinsic qualities which assure it an enduring fame.
[THE CHERRIE AND THE SLAE.]
About ane bank, quhair birdis on bewis[1347]
Ten thusand tymis thair notis renewis
Ilke[1348] houre into the day,