The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).
Volume II. The End of the Middle Ages.
§ 10. Convivial Verse
In the bacchanalian quality shown in different ways in these rustic sketches and elfin dream-poems we have a third tradition of Scottish verse. It would, of course, be vain to seek a complete explanation of the eighteenth century convivial muse in the historical evidences of a literary habit—as vain as to estimate the general effect of Burn’s workd as an editorial modification of old material; but the testimony of historical continuity, in theme, in attitude and in techinque, is too strong to be overlooked in a survey of Scottish literature. The more thorough and connected the survey is, the clearer will it appear that the rusticity, the wild humour and the conviviality are not more the idiosyncrasies of Burns and his fellow-poets than the persistent, irrepressible habits of the literature itself. Criticism has been too willing to treat pieces like Burn’s Scothc Drink as mere personal enthusiasm.
The best of all the Middle Scots convivial verse is Dunbar’s Testament of Mr. Andro Kennedy, but some of the anonymous pieces in the collections deserve mention. Quhy sowld nocht Allane honorit be [char]? is a sprightly “ballat” on “Allan-a-Maut,” alias John Barleycorn. By a misreading of the subscription in the MS.—“Quod Allane Matsonis suddartis”—the poem has been given to one Watson. It tells the history of “Allan” from his youth , when he was “cled in grene,” to his powerful manhood.
In the foregoing groups we find the representative and historical qualities of the national verse, the timbre of Scottiscism: in the large residue of anonymous pieces in the collections we encounter the familiar fifteenth and sixteenth century southern types.