'Then flew these birds over the boughis sheen,
Singing of love among the leaves small.'
William Dunbar is said to have been born about the year 1465. He received his education at St Andrews, and took there the degree of M.A. in 1479. He became then a friar of the Franciscan order, (Grey Friars,) and in the exercise of his profession seems to have rambled over all Scotland, England, and France, preaching, begging, and, according to his own confession, cheating, lying, and cajoling. Yet if this kind of life was not propitious, in his case, to morality, it must have been to the development of the poetic faculty. It enabled him to see all varieties of life and of scenery, although here and there, in his verses, you find symptoms of that bitterness which is apt to arise in the heart of a wanderer. He was subsequently employed by James IV. in some official work connected with various foreign embassies, which led him to Spain, Italy, and Germany, as well as England and France. This proves that he was no less a man of business-capacity and habits than a poet. For these services he, in 1500, received from the King a pension of ten pounds, afterwards increased to twenty, and, in fine, to eighty. He is said to have been employed in the negotiations preparatory to the marriage of James with Margaret Tudor, daughter of Henry VII., which took place in 1503, and which our poet celebrated in his verses, 'The Thistle and the Rose.' He continued ever afterwards in the Court, hovering in position between a laureate and a court-fool, charming James with his witty conversation as well as his verses, but refused the benefices for which he petitioned, and gradually devoured by chagrin and disappointment. Seldom has genius so great been placed in a falser position, and this has given a querulous tinge to many of his poems. He seems to have died about 1520. Even after his death, misfortune pursued him. His works were, with the exception of two or three pieces, locked up in an obscure MS. till the middle of last century. Since then, however, their fame has been still increasing. In 1834, Mr David Laing, so favourably known as one of our first antiquarians, published a complete and elaborate edition of Dunbar's works; and in a newspaper this very day (May 23) we see another edition announced, in a popular and modernised shape, of the poetry of this great old Scottish Makkar.
THE DANCE OF THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS THROUGH HELL.
I.
Of Februar' the fifteenth night,
Full long before the dayis light,
I lay into a trance;
And then I saw both Heaven and Hell;
Methought among the fiendis fell,
Mahoun[1] gart[2] cry a Dance,
Of shrewis[3] that were never shrevin,[4]
Against the feast of Fastern's even,
To make their observànce:
He bade gallants go graith[5] a guise,[6]
And cast up gamounts[7] in the skies,
As varlets do in France.
II.
* * * * *
Holy harlottis in hautane[8] wise,
Came in with many sundry guise,
But yet laugh'd never Mahòun,
Till priests came in with bare shaven necks,
Then all the fiends laugh'd and made gecks,[9]
Black-Belly and Bawsy-Broun.[10]
* * * * *
III.
'Let's see,' quoth he, 'now who begins:'
With that the foul Seven Deadly Sins
Began to leap at anis.[11]
And first of all in dance was Pride,
With hair wyld[12] back, and bonnet on side,
Like to make wasty weanis;[13]
And round about him, as a wheel,
Hang all in rumples to the heel,
His kethat[14] for the nanis.[15]
Many proud trompour[16] with him tripped,
Through scalding fire aye as they skipped,
They girn'd[17] with hideous granis.[18]
IV.
Then Ire came in with sturt[19] and strife,
His hand was aye upon his knife,
He brandish'd like a beir;
Boasters, braggers, and barganeris,[20]
After him passed into pairis,[21]
All bodin in feir of weir.[22]
In jackis, scripis, and bonnets of steel,
Their legs were chenyiet[23] to the heel,
Froward was their affeir,[24]
Some upon other with brands beft,[25]
Some jaggit[26] others to the heft[27]
With knives that sharp could shear.