SCOTTISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE. As the Scots were originally Irish Celts who settled in the western highlands of Alban, the phrase " Scottish language" ought to denote, and did originally denote, Ersch, or Gaelic; but the gradual extension of the authority of the Scottish kings, first over their Celtic neighbors the Picts, then over the Kymry or Cymry (q.v.) of Strathclyde, and the Angles of Lothian and the Merse, led to the name " Scottish" being given to the language of the last of these; though, in reality, the true old " Scottish"—i.e., the Gaelic, the speech of Kenneth MacAlpin and Malcolm Canmore, is further removed from the "Scottish" of Ramsay and Burns (which is simply a dialect of northern English) than the latter is from Russian or Sanskrit. On this point Mr. Murray remarks in English) scholarly paper, or rather treatise, in the Transactions of the Philological Society for 1873, which bids fair to become a standard authority on the sub ject: " Ethnologically speaking, the Lowland Scotch dialects are forms of the Angle, or English, as spoken by those northern members of the Angle or English race who became subjects of the king of the Scots.. . More particularly they are forms of the Northum brian or northern English—` the langage of the Northin lede '—which up to the war of independence was spoken as one language, from the Humber to the Forth, the Gram pians, and the Moray firth; but which, since the final renunciation of attempts upon the independence of the kingdom, has had a history and culture of its own, has been influenced by legal institutions, an ecclesiastical system, a foreign connection, and a national life, altogether distinct from those which have operated upon the same language on the southern side of the border." Using, then, the term "Scottish" to denote the dialect of English used n. of the Tweed, and omitting all consideration of anything written in Celtic, we may divide the kistory of Scottish literature into two periods; the first extending from the date of the earliest composition to the union of England and Scotland under one king, the second from that time to the present day.
A well-known brief lament for the death of Alexander ITT. preserved by Wyntoun, and marked by considerable beauty and pathos, is generally supposed to be one of the earliest specimens of Scottish poetry which has come down te us. The first Scottish poet—in the proper sense of the word—was John Barbour (q.v.), archdeacon of Aber deen, who was born in the first half of the 14th c., and died in 1395. His great work
is the poem of The Brus, in which be celebrates the struggles and final victory of the Scottish king, Robert I. It is superior to any composition by English writers of the same century, with the exception of Chaucer and Piers the Plowman. The language of Barbour is even purer English than that used by the great author of the Canterbury Tales, There are editions of The Bras by Pinkerton and Jamieson, but the latest and best is that by Mr. Cosmo limes, published in 1856.
The 15th c., during which England produced no poetield writer of eminence, was fertile in Scottish poets. First in rank, and hardly inferior to any in genius, was James I., king of Scotland, the author of The Kingis Quhair—i.e., The King's Quire or Book. Before him, in point of time, was Andrew Wyntoun, prior of Lochleven, who wrote a metrical chronicle, the Orygynale Cronykil, which was edited—so far as it treated of Scottish history—by David Macpherson in 1795. Another Scottish poet of this century was Henry the Minstrel, commonly called Blind Harry (q.v.), the author of a poem on the life of sir William Wallace, which in a modernized text was long a favorite in Scotland.
The closing years of this century, and the first half of the next, were distinguished by poets of still higher name. Foremost of these is William Dunbar (q.v.), author of the Thrissill and the Rois, The Goldyn Targe, and many smaller poems, both serious and satirical, of very high merit. The only complete edition of his works is that by Mr. David Laing, which was published in 1834. Gawin Douglas (q.v.), a son of the earl of Angus, and bishop of Dunkeld, was contemporary With Dunbar. He wrote several original poems, but his principal work is the translation in which he first gave " rude Scotland Virgil's page." A magnificent edition of Douglas has just been published under the editorship of Mr. Small (Edinburgh: Paterson, 1874). The last remarkable writer of this age is sir David Lindsay (q.v.), who died in 1555, and whose poetical works were published in 1806 by George Chalmers, and again in 1871 by David Laing. The 16th c. also produced the first Scottish prose-writers. Among these is the anonymous author of The Complaynt of Scotland, recently edited by Mr. Murray, from whom we have quoted above; and John Bellenden, archdeacon of Moray, the translator of Boece's S2otorant Historke, and of the first five books of Livy.