SCOTT, ALEXANDER (fl. 1550)

This article appears in Volume V24, Page 468 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: SAR-SCY

SCOTT, ALEXANDER (fl. 1550) , Scottish poet, was probably a

Lothian

LOTHIAN

man, but particulars of his origin and of his

life

LIFE

are entirely wanting. It is only by gathering together a few scraps of internal evidence that we learn that his poems were written between 1545 and 1568 (the date of the Bannatyne MS., the cnly MS. authority for the text).

Allan

Ramsay was the first to bring Scott's

work

WORK

to the notice of modern readers, by printing some of the poems in his Ever Green. In a copy of verses ("Some Few of the Contents ") on;,the Bannatyne MS., he thus refers to Scott:
" Licht skirtit lasses, and the girnand wyfe,
Fleming and Scot haif painted to the lyfe.
Scot, sweit tunged Scot, quha sings the welcum hame To Mary, our maist bony soverane dame;
How lyflie he and amorous Stuart sing!
Quhen lufe and bewtie bid them spred the wing."
The sketch is just, for Scott's poems deal chiefly with female character and with passion of a strongly erotic type. He is " sweit tunged," for his technique is always good, and his lyrical

measures

MEASURES

show remarkable accomplishment. In this respect he holds his own with the best of the " makars" represented in the Bannatyne MS. In what may appear excessive coarseness to present-day

taste

TASTE (from Lat. taxare, to touch sharply; tangere, to touch)

, he makes good claim to rival Dunbar and his contemporaries. The poems referred to by Ramsay are "Ane Ballat maid to the Derisioun and Scorne of Wantoun Wemen," " Ane New Yeir

Gift

GIFT (a common Teutonic word, cf. Ger. die Gift, gift, das Gift, poison, formed from the Teut.
stem
- STEM (O. Eng. staefn, stemn, cf. Du. stain, Ger. Stamm, &c., probably related to " staff ")
gab-, to give, cf. Dutch geven, Ger. geben; in O. Eng. the word appears with initial y, the guttural of later English is due to Scandinavian influence)

to the Queen Mary quhen scho come first Hame, 1562," and some or all of his amorous songs (about 30 in number). Of these " To luve unluvit," " Ladeis, be war," and " Lo, quhat it is to lufe " are favourable examples of his style. No early Scots poet comes nearer the quality of the Caroline love-lyric. His Justing and Debait vp at the Drum betwix W [illiam] Adamsone and Johine Sym follows the literary tradition of Peblis to the Play and Christis Kirk on the Grene. He has left verse-renderings of the 1st and 5oth

Psalms

PSALMS, BOOK
PSALMS, BOOK OF, or PSALTER

.
The first collected edition was printed by D.

Laing

in 1821; a second was issued privately at Glasgow in 1882. The latest edition is that by James Cranstoun (Scottish Text Society, I vol., 1896).
(G. G. S.)

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