Richard or Richard De Holande Holland

HOLLAND, RICHARD or RICHARD DE HOLANDE (ft. 1450), Scottish writer, author of the Buke of the Howlat, was secretary or chaplain to the earl of Moray (1450) and rector of Halkirk, near Thurso. He was afterwards rector of Abbreochy, Loch Ness. He was an ardent partisan of the Douglases, and on their overthrow retired to Orkney and later to Shetland. He was employed by Edward IV. in his attempt to rouse the Western Isles through Douglas agency, and in 1482 was excluded from the general pardon granted by James III. to those who would renounce their fealty to the Douglases.

The poem, entitled the

Buke of the Howlat, written about 1450, shows his devotion to the house of Douglas:— On ilk beugh till embrace Writtin in a bill was 0 Dowglass, 0 Dowglass Tender and trewe ! (ii. and is dedicated to the wife of a Douglas Thus for ane Dow of Dunbar drew I this Dyte, Dowit with ane Dowglass, and boith war thei dowis, but all theories of its being a political allegory in favour of that house may be discarded. The poem, which extends to i,00i lines written in the irregular alliterative rhymed stanza, is a bird allegory, of the type familiar in the Parlement of Foules.

The text of the poem is preserved in the Asloan and Bannatyne mss. Fragments of an early 16th century black-letter edition, discov ered by D. Laing, are reproduced in the Adversaria of the Bannatyne club. Of the many editions see that by F. J. Amours in Scottish Allit erative Poems (Scottish Text Society, 1897), pp. 47-81. (See also Introduction, pp. xx.—xxxiv.)