The Feeling for Nature in Scottish Poetry Volume 1 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1887 Excerpt: ...poets indicates a flush of sun and glow of summer such as we seldom experience in that east-wind month in these days. But it is safer, on the whole, to imagine that the nightingale was borrowed by our poets from Chaucer, and from those Eomances to which he and they had access, and some of which, while simply translations from the French, have been wrongly attributed to him as author or translator. The other supposition we may make is, that the name nightingale was given to one or other of our Scottish birds which sing at night and early morning--such as the sedge-warbler or the blackcap. In Eoxburghshire the sedgewarbler used to be called the Scottish nightingale. But Gawin Douglas obviously had in his mind the proper nightingale, for in these lines he distinctly refers to the classical myth of Procne and Philomela, the former having been changed into the swallow, the latter into the nightingale, afterwards historic: --"For Progne had or than1 sung hir complaynt, 1 Before that time. And eik 2 hir dreidful systir Philomene 2 Also. Hir lais endit, and in woddis grene Hyd hir selvin,3 eschamyt of hir chance." 4 'Herself 4 Ashamed of her ftitjc Philomene is of course from the Low Latin philomena, for philomela. We have another reference to scenery in the poem, when the king goes to the assistance of his brother Edward in Ireland: --"This wes in the moneth of May, Quhen byrdis syngis on the spray; Melland 5 their notys with syndry soune,6 For softness of that sweit sesoune; And lewis on the branchis spredis, And blomys bricht besyd thame bredis;7 And feldis florist8 ar with flowris, Weill savourit,9 of seir10 colowris, And all thing worthis11 blith and gay, Quhen that this gud king tuk his way." t Prologue, dSneid, Book XII., Small's edition, i...