‘The fear of death distresses me.’ As a priest, Dunbar will have pronounced this
refrain as a Response in the Office of the Dead.
That strang unmercifull tyrand
Takis, on the moderis breist sowkand, sucking
The bab, ful of benignite: baby good will
Timor mortis conturbat me.
The poem begins ‘I that in heill [health] was and gladness’; it is known as Lament
for the Makaris(makers, poets). The recurrence of the Black Death made Death a
recurrent topic.
He has done petuously devour pitiably
The noble Chaucer, of makaris flour, flower of poets
The monk of Bery and Gower, all thre: i.e. Lydgate
Timor mortis conturbat me.Chaucer had died a century earlier. After the English trio, Dunbar names twenty
Scots poets: ‘In Dunfermlyne he has done roune [whispered] / With Maister
Robert Henrisoun.’ He concludes: ‘Sen [since] for the deid remeid [remedy] is none,
/ Best is that we for dede dispone [prepare for], / Eftir our dede that lif [live] may
we.’
‘Remeid’ for timor mortisis found in Dunbar’s poem on the Harrowing of Hell,
Christ’s descent into hell after the Crucifixion to release the souls of the good:
Done is a battell on the dragon blak;
Our campioun Christ confoundit hes his force, champion
The yettis of hell ar brokin with a crak; gates
The signe triumphall rasitt is of the croce. raised
The divillis trymmillis with hiddous voce; devils tremble voice
The saulis ar borrowit and to the bliss can go; saved
Chryst with his blud our ransonis dois indoce endorses our ransoms
Surrexit Dominus de sepulchro.The refrain comes from the Mass for Easter Day: ‘The Lord is risen from the tomb’.
Dunbar’s proclamation of victory has a personal sense of drama and a rhythmic
drive which anticipate John Donne (1572–1631). His poems are often set in the
Renaissance court of James IV, the last of the Stewarts to speak Gaelic. James died in
a medieval raid on England at the disastrous defeat of Flodden in 1513. Dunbar
shows another side in his vigorous ‘flyting’ (a duel of insults) with the Gaelic poet
Walter Kennedy. His invective is best seen in his burlesque on a friar who attempted
to fly from the walls of Stirling Castle, and his conversation piece ‘Twa maritt Wemen
and the Wedo’,members of the Wife of Bath’s secte. But the poems of Dunbar read
by non-Scots are his hymns and lyrics of personal complaint.
Gavin Douglas
Gavin Douglas, Bishop of Dunkeld, produced the first version of Virgil’s Aeneidin
any variety of English, working from the edition of Ascensius (Paris, 1501). The
range and raciness of Douglas’s style makes him the equal of Dunbar, but his
sprightly translation has been neglected in favour of the vivid Prologues to each
book of the Aeneid,especially those referring to the tongue and landscapes of
Scotland. Going to bed in December, he wrapped up his head, ‘kest on clathis thryn-
fald [threw on three layers of clothes] / For to expell the peralus persand cald’. In
THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY 73