MONTGOMERIE, ALEXANDER (c. 1550-c. 161o)

This article appears in Volume V18, Page 783 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

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MONTGOMERIE, ALEXANDER (c. 1550-c. 161o) , Scottish poet, was the second son of Hugh Montgomerie of Hessilhead, Ayrshire, and was born about the middle of the 16th century.' He spent some part of his youth in Argyleshire and afterwards lived for a time at Compston Castle, in Galloway. He was in the service of the regent Morton; thereafter, on the regent's demission of office in 1578, in that of thi king, James VI. In 1583 the grant by the Crown of a pension of 500 marks was confirmed; and three years later he set out on a tour through France, Flanders and other countries. He appears to have got into trouble, to have been imprisoned abroad, and to have lost favour at the Scottish court, and (for a time) his pension. We have no

record

RECORD (Lat. recordari, to recall to mind, from cor, heart or mind)

of his closing years.
Montgomerie's

chief

CHIEF (from Fr. chef, head, Lat. caput)

poem is the Cherry and the Slae, first printed in 1597 (two impressions). It was frequently reprinted in the 17th and 18th centuries, and appeared twice in Latin guise in 1631, in Dempster's Cerasum et sylvestre prunum, opus poematicum. It is included in the collected edition of Montgomerie's Poems, by

David

Irving (1821), and by James Cranstoun, for the Scottish Text Society (1887). The text in the latter is a composite of 930 lines from the second impression of 1597 (U.S.) and 666 lines from the version in

Allan

Ramsay's (q.v.) Ever Green (1724); but a better text, from a MS. in the Laing collection in the university of Edinburgh, has been prepared (1907) for the Scottish Text Society by Mr George Stevenson.. The poem, written in the complicated alliterative fourteen-lined stanza, is a confused allegorythe confusion
' Alexander's brother, Robert Montgomerie (d. 1609), was made

bishop

or archbishop, of Glasgow, in 1581, an appointment which was strongly objected to by the General Assembly. The

long

LONG, GEORGE (1800-1879)
LONG, JOHN DAVIS (1838– )

struggle which ensued was only terminated by Montgomerie's resignation of the see in 1587.being due to the fact that sections of the poem were written at different timeson Youth's choice between a richly laden cherry-tree on a high crag and a sloe "

bush

BUSH

" at his feet. His other poems are: The Flyting betwixt Montgomery and Polwart (1629; 1st ed., 1621), which reproduces the literary habit of the Flyting of Dunbar and .Kennedie; a

series

SERIES (a Latin word from serere, to join)

of 70 sonnets; a large number of miscellaneous poems, amatory and devotional; and The Mindes Melodic, Contayning certayne Psalmes of the Kinglie Prophete Dayvid, applyed to a new pleasant tune (Edinburgh, 16o5). The formal value of Montgomerie's verse was fittingly acknowledged by James VI. in his early

critical

CRITICAL (in alphabetical order of authors)

essay Ane Schort Treatise conteining some reulis and cautelis to be observit and eschewit in Scattis Poesie, where the author makes three quotations from Montgomerie's poems, then in circulation in manuscript. Montgomerie had written a sonnet to his majesty, which is prefixed to the Essayes of a Prentise.
Montgomerie stands apart from the courtier-poets Ayton, Stirling, and others, who write in the literary English of the

South

SOUTH
SOUTH, ROBERT (1634–1716)

. He carries on the Middle Scots tradition, and was not without influence in the vernacular revival, in

Allan

Ramsay and his successors. (G. G. S.)

End of Article: MONTGOMERIE, ALEXANDER (c. 1550-c. 161o)

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