Mary Oxlie would seem to have been an early 17th century Scottish or Northumbrian coterie poet, though extremely little is known of her beyond one attribution.

"Mary Oxlie of Morpet" is credited as the author of a commendatory poem of fifty-two lines, "To William Drummond of Hawthornden

William Drummond of Hawthornden

William Drummond , called "of Hawthornden", was a Scottish poet.-Life:Drummond was born at Hawthornden Castle, Midlothian. His father, John Drummond, was the first laird of Hawthornden; and his mother was Susannah Fowler, sister of William Fowler, poet and courtier...

," which prefaced Edward Phillips

Edward Phillips

Edward Phillips , was an English author.-Life:He was the son of Edward Phillips of the crown office in chancery, and his wife Anne, only sister of John Milton, the poet. Edward Phillips the younger was born in the Strand, London. His father died in 1631, and Anne eventually married her husband's...

' 1656 edition of his brother-in-law's poems. In 1675 in a section of his Theatrum poetarum called "Women among the moderns eminent for poetry," Phillips describes "Mary Morpeth" as a "Scotch Poetess" who wrote "many other things in Poetry" (259) apart from the dedication, though none of these other poems are now known and the 1656 ascription identifies her as Northumbrian. The original date of the poem is conjectural though from internal evidence it would seem to have been 1616. There is stronger indication that Oxlie, along with other women such as Anna Hume

Anna Hume

Anna Hume , was the daughter of David Hume of Godscroft.Anna superintended the publication of her father's 'History of the House and Race of Douglas and Angus.' William Douglas, 11th Earl of Angus, and first marquis of Douglas, who was dissatisfied with Hume's work, consulted Drummond of Hawthornden...

, was part of the Hawthornden literary circle: Phillip's terms her "a friend of the Poet Drummond" (259).

The poem opens with formulaic humility:

I Never rested on the Muses bed,

Nor dipt my Quill in the Thessalian Fountaine,

My rustick Muse was rudely fostered,

And flies too low to reach the double mountaine. (1-4)

The second verse clarifies that this "rusticity" is due in large part to the particular situation of the woman writer:

Perfection in a Woman's worke is rare

From an untroubled mind should Verses flow;

My discontents makes mine too muddy show;

And hoarse encumbrances of household care

Where these remaine, the muses ne're repaire. (6-10)

Despite these caveats, the poem itself is generally agreed to be an accomplished pastoral that offers insight into the coterie culture of the period.

Works

• "To William Drummond of Hawthornden." Poems by that most famous wit William Drummond of Hawthornden. Ed. Edward Phillips (1656).

Resources

• Dunnigan, S. M. “Oxlie, Mary (fl. 1616).” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004. 20 Jan. 2007.
• Greer, Germaine, et al., eds. "Mary Oxlie of Morpeth." Kissing the Rod: an anthology of seventeenth-century women's verse. Farrar Straus Giroux, 1988. 79-82.