William Dunbar
Encyclopedia
William Dunbar was a Scottish
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

 poet
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...

. He was probably a native of East Lothian
East Lothian
East Lothian is one of the 32 council areas of Scotland, and a lieutenancy Area. It borders the City of Edinburgh, Scottish Borders and Midlothian. Its administrative centre is Haddington, although its largest town is Musselburgh....

, as assumed from a satirical reference in the Flyting of Dunbar and Kennedie http://web.archive.org/web/20091027134733/http://geocities.com/bescritt/theflytingofdunbarandkennedie.txt, where, too, it is hinted that he was a member of the noble house of Dunbar.

Life

His name appears in 1477 in the Register of the Faculty of Arts at the University of St Andrews
University of St Andrews
The University of St Andrews, informally referred to as "St Andrews", is the oldest university in Scotland and the third oldest in the English-speaking world after Oxford and Cambridge. The university is situated in the town of St Andrews, Fife, on the east coast of Scotland. It was founded between...

, among the Determinants or Bachelors of Arts, and in 1479 among the masters of the university. Thereafter he joined the order of Observantine Franciscans, at St Andrews
St Andrews
St Andrews is a university town and former royal burgh on the east coast of Fife in Scotland. The town is named after Saint Andrew the Apostle.St Andrews has a population of 16,680, making this the fifth largest settlement in Fife....

 or Edinburgh
Edinburgh
Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland, the second largest city in Scotland, and the eighth most populous in the United Kingdom. The City of Edinburgh Council governs one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas. The council area includes urban Edinburgh and a rural area...

, and proceeded to France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 as a wandering friar. He spent a few years in Picardy
Picardy
This article is about the historical French province. For other uses, see Picardy .Picardy is a historical province of France, in the north of France...

, and was still abroad when, in 1491, Bothwell's mission to secure a bride for the young King James IV of Scotland
James IV of Scotland
James IV was King of Scots from 11 June 1488 to his death. He is generally regarded as the most successful of the Stewart monarchs of Scotland, but his reign ended with the disastrous defeat at the Battle of Flodden Field, where he became the last monarch from not only Scotland, but also from all...

 reached the French court. There is no direct evidence that he accompanied Robert Blackadder
Robert Blackadder
Robert Blackadder was a medieval Scottish cleric, diplomat and politician, who was abbot of Melrose, bishop-elect of Aberdeen and bishop of Glasgow; when the last was elevated to archiepiscopal status in 1492, he became the first ever archbishop of Glasgow...

, the first Archbishop of Glasgow
Archbishop of Glasgow
The Bishop of Glasgow, from 1492 Archbishop of Glasgow, was the ecclesiastical head of the Diocese of Glasgow and then, as Archbishop of Glasgow, the Archdiocese of Glasgow...

, on a similar embassy to Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...

 in 1495. On the other hand, we know that he proceeded with that prelate to England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 on his more successful mission in 1501.

Dunbar had meanwhile (about 1500) returned to Scotland, and had become a priest at court, and a royal pensioner. His literary life begins with his attachment to James's household. All that is known of him from this date to his death about 1520 is derived from the poems or from entries in the royal registers of payments of pension and grants of livery. He is spoken of as the Rhymer of Scotland in the accounts of the English privy council dealing with the visit of the mission for the hand of Margaret Tudor
Margaret Tudor
Margaret Tudor was the elder of the two surviving daughters of Henry VII of England and Elizabeth of York, and the elder sister of Henry VIII. In 1503, she married James IV, King of Scots. James died in 1513, and their son became King James V. She married secondly Archibald Douglas, 6th Earl of...

, rather because he wrote a poem in praise of London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

, than because, as has been stated, he held the post of "Makar" (similar to an unpaid poet laureate) at the Scottish court. In 1511 he accompanied the queen to Aberdeen and commemorated her visit in verse. Other pieces such as the Orisoun ("Quhen the Gouernour past in France"), apropos of the setting out of the regent John Stewart, Duke of Albany, are of historical interest, but they tell us little more than that Dunbar was alive. The date of his death is uncertain. He is named in David Lyndsay
David Lyndsay
Sir David Lyndsay of the Mount, was a Scottish Lord Lyon and poet of the 16th century, whose works reflect the spirit of the Renaissance.-Biography:...

's Testament and Complaynt of the Papyngo (1530) with poets then dead, and the reference predates that of Douglas who had died in 1522. He certainly survived his royal patron. We may not be far out in saying that he died about 1520.

Work and Influence

Dunbar's reputation among his immediate successors was considerable. By later criticism, stimulated in some measure by Scott's eulogy that he is "unrivalled by any which Scotland has produced," he has held the highest place among the northern makar
Makar
A makar is a term from Scottish literature for a poet or bard, often thought of as royal court poet, although the term can be more generally applied. The word functions in a manner similar to the Greek term which means both maker and poet...

s. He belongs, with King James I of Scotland
James I of Scotland
James I, King of Scots , was the son of Robert III and Annabella Drummond. He was probably born in late July 1394 in Dunfermline as youngest of three sons...

, Robert Henryson
Robert Henryson
Robert Henryson was a poet who flourished in Scotland in the period c. 1460–1500. Counted among the Scots makars, he lived in the royal burgh of Dunfermline and is a distinctive voice in the Northern Renaissance at a time when the culture was on a cusp between medieval and renaissance sensibilities...

 and Gavin Douglas
Gavin Douglas
Gavin Douglas was a Scottish bishop, makar and translator. Although he had an important political career, it is for his poetry that he is now chiefly remembered. His principal pioneering achievement was the Eneados, a full and faithful vernacular translation of the Aeneid of Virgil and the first...

, to what was formerly called the Scottish Chaucerian school, although the influence of Chaucer on these writers was in fact minimal. In his allegorical poems reminiscences of Chaucer's style and literary habit are frequent, but his wilder humour and greater heat of blood give him opportunities in which the Chaucerian tradition is not helpful, or even possible.

One hundred and one poems have been ascribed to Dunbar. Of these at least ninety are generally accepted as his: of the eleven attributed to him it would be hard to say that they should not be considered authentic. Most doubt has clung to his verse tale The Freiris of Berwik.

Dunbar's chief allegorical poems are The Goldyn Targe and The Thrissil and the Rois. The motif of the former is the poet's futile endeavour, in a dream, to ward off the arrows of Dame Beautee by Reason's "scheld of gold." When wounded and made prisoner, he discovers the true beauty of the lady: when she leaves him, he is handed over to Heaviness. The noise of the ship's guns, as the company sails off, wakes the poet to the real pleasures of a May morning. Dunbar works on the same theme in a shorter poem, known as Beauty and the Prisoner. The Thrissil and the Rois is a prothalamium in honour of James IV
James IV of Scotland
James IV was King of Scots from 11 June 1488 to his death. He is generally regarded as the most successful of the Stewart monarchs of Scotland, but his reign ended with the disastrous defeat at the Battle of Flodden Field, where he became the last monarch from not only Scotland, but also from all...

 and Margaret Tudor, in which the heraldic allegory is based on the familiar beast-parliament.

The greater part of Dunbar's work is occasional
Occasional poetry
Occasional poetry is poetry composed for a particular occasion. In the history of literature, it is often studied in connection with orality, performance, and patronage. As a term of literary criticism, "occasional poetry" describes the work's purpose and the poet's relation to subject matter...

--personal and social satire, complaints, orisons and pieces of a humorous character. His best known orison, usually remembered as Timor mortis conturbat me
Timor mortis conturbat me
Timor mortis conturbat me is a Latin phrase commonly found in late medieval Scottish and English poetry, translating to "fear of death disturbs me"...

which is repeated as the fourth line of each verse, is titled Lament for the Makars and takes the form of a prayer in memory of the medieval Scots poets.

The humorous works show Dunbar at his best, and point the difference between him and Chaucer. The best specimen of this work, of which the outstanding characteristics are sheer whimsicality and topsy-turvy humour, is The Ballad of Kynd Kittok. This strain runs throughout many of the occasional poems, and is not wanting in odd passages in Dunbar's contemporaries; and it has the additional interest of showing a direct historical relationship with the work of later Scottish poets, and chiefly with that of Robert Burns
Robert Burns
Robert Burns was a Scottish poet and a lyricist. He is widely regarded as the national poet of Scotland, and is celebrated worldwide...

. Dunbar's satire is never the gentle funning of Chaucer: more often it becomes invective. Examples of this type are The Satire on Edinburgh, The General Satire, the Epitaph on Donald Owre, and the powerful vision of The Dance of the Sevin Deidlie Synnis. Two satirical ballads lampoon a colleague at court, the would-be aviator John Damian
John Damian
John Damian was an Italian clergyman at the court of James IV of Scotland. His attempts at medicine, alchemy, flying, and his advancement by the King encouraged a satirical attack by the poet William Dunbar....

. In the Flyting of Dunbar and Kennedie, an outstanding specimen of a favourite northern form, analogous to the continental estrif, or tenzone, he and his rival reach a height of scurrility which is certainly without parallel in English literature. This poem has the additional interest of showing the antipathy between the Scots
Scots language
Scots is the Germanic language variety spoken in Lowland Scotland and parts of Ulster . It is sometimes called Lowland Scots to distinguish it from Scottish Gaelic, the Celtic language variety spoken in most of the western Highlands and in the Hebrides.Since there are no universally accepted...

-speaking inhabitants of the Lothians and the Gaelic
Scottish Gaelic language
Scottish Gaelic is a Celtic language native to Scotland. A member of the Goidelic branch of the Celtic languages, Scottish Gaelic, like Modern Irish and Manx, developed out of Middle Irish, and thus descends ultimately from Primitive Irish....

-speaking folk of Carrick
Carrick, Scotland
Carrick is a former comital district of Scotland which today forms part of South Ayrshire.-History:The word Carrick comes from the Gaelic word Carraig, meaning rock or rocky place. Maybole was the historic capital of Carrick. The county was eventually combined into Ayrshire which was divided...

, in southern Ayrshire
Ayrshire
Ayrshire is a registration county, and former administrative county in south-west Scotland, United Kingdom, located on the shores of the Firth of Clyde. Its principal towns include Ayr, Kilmarnock and Irvine. The town of Troon on the coast has hosted the British Open Golf Championship twice in the...

, where Walter Kennedy was from.

Dunbar also contributed to poetry of the natural environment, as exemplified in his description of Fowlsheugh
Fowlsheugh
Fowlsheugh is a coastal nature reserve in Kincardineshire, northeast Scotland, known for its seventy metre high cliff formations and habitat supporting prolific seabird nesting colonies. Designated as a Site of Special Scientific Interest by Scottish Natural Heritage, the property is owned by the...

, a notable Scottish sheer cliff area on the North Sea
North Sea
In the southwest, beyond the Straits of Dover, the North Sea becomes the English Channel connecting to the Atlantic Ocean. In the east, it connects to the Baltic Sea via the Skagerrak and Kattegat, narrow straits that separate Denmark from Norway and Sweden respectively...

 near Dunnottar Castle
Dunnottar Castle
Dunnottar Castle is a ruined medieval fortress located upon a rocky headland on the north-east coast of Scotland, about two miles south of Stonehaven. The surviving buildings are largely of the 15th–16th centuries, but the site is believed to have been an early fortress of the Dark Ages...

.

First printed obscenity

Dunbar has the curious distinction of having been responsible for the first printed use of the word "fuck
Fuck
"Fuck" is an English word that is generally considered obscene which, in its most literal meaning, refers to the act of sexual intercourse. By extension it may be used to negatively characterize anything that can be dismissed, disdained, defiled, or destroyed."Fuck" can be used as a verb, adverb,...

": his 1503 poem "Brash of Wowing" [Collected Poems, ed. Mackenzie SEE 'In secret place this hyndir nycht'] includes the lines: "Yit be his feirris he wald haif fukkit:/ Ye brek my hairt, my bony ane." The powerful word which Dunbar put into print in 1503 was not decriminalised until 1960.

His poem The flyting of Dunbar and Kennedie also contains the term cuntbittin (meaning afflicted with venereal disease), the first known use of the word cunt
Cunt
Cunt is a vulgarism, primarily referring to the female genitalia, specifically the vulva, and including the cleft of Venus. The earliest citation of this usage in the 1972 Oxford English Dictionary, c 1230, refers to the London street known as Gropecunt Lane...

 in literature (although Chaucer used queynte as a euphemism for the word in the Canterbury Tales). The Flyting also contains the line (addressed by Kennedy to Dunbar) [38] "Wan-fukkit funling, that natour maid ane yrle" (the phrase "wan-fukkit" might perhaps be rendered as 'unfortunately conceived', or 'ineptly conceived', in Modern English - Kennedy is accusing Dunbar of being a foundling
Child abandonment
Child abandonment is the practice of relinquishing interests and claims over one's offspring with the intent of never again resuming or reasserting them. Causes include many social and cultural factors as well as mental illness. An abandoned child is called a foundling .-Causes:Poverty is often a...

 and a dwarf
Dwarfism
Dwarfism is short stature resulting from a medical condition. It is sometimes defined as an adult height of less than 4 feet 10 inches  , although this definition is problematic because short stature in itself is not a disorder....

).

"Back to Dunbar"

For the Scottish Literary Renaissance
Scottish Renaissance
The Scottish Renaissance was a mainly literary movement of the early to mid 20th century that can be seen as the Scottish version of modernism. It is sometimes referred to as the Scottish literary renaissance, although its influence went beyond literature into music, visual arts, and politics...

 in the mid-twentieth century, William Dunbar was a touchstone. Many tried to imitate his style, and "high brow" subject matter, such as Hugh MacDiarmid
Hugh MacDiarmid
Hugh MacDiarmid is the pen name of Christopher Murray Grieve , a significant Scottish poet of the 20th century. He was instrumental in creating a Scottish version of modernism and was a leading light in the Scottish Renaissance of the 20th century...

 and Sydney Goodsir Smith
Sydney Goodsir Smith
Sydney Goodsir Smith was a Scottish poet, artist, dramatist and novelist. He wrote poetry in literary Scots often referred to as Lallans, and was a major figure of the Scottish Renaissance....

. As Hugh MacDiarmid
Hugh MacDiarmid
Hugh MacDiarmid is the pen name of Christopher Murray Grieve , a significant Scottish poet of the 20th century. He was instrumental in creating a Scottish version of modernism and was a leading light in the Scottish Renaissance of the 20th century...

 himself said, they had to go "back to Dunbar".

William Dunbar is commemorated in Makars' Court, outside The Writers' Museum, Lawnmarket, Edinburgh.

Selections for Makars' Court are made by The Writers' Museum; The Saltire Society; The Scottish Poetry Library.

External links

  • The Chepman & Myllar Prints digital edition at the National Library of Scotland
    National Library of Scotland
    The National Library of Scotland is the legal deposit library of Scotland and is one of the country's National Collections. It is based in a collection of buildings in Edinburgh city centre. The headquarters is on George IV Bridge, between the Old Town and the university quarter...

     contain the following works by Dunbar:
    • The Golden Targe
    • The Flyting of Dunbar and Kennedy
    • The Ballade of Lord Bernard Stewart
      Bernard Stewart, Lord of Aubigny
      Bernard Stewart, 4rd Lord of Aubigny was a French soldier, Commander of the Garde Écossaise, and diplomat belonging to the Scottish family of Stewart of Darnley.-Early life:...

    • The Tua Mariit Wemen and the Wedo
    • Lament for the Makars (Timor mortis conturbat me
      Timor mortis conturbat me
      Timor mortis conturbat me is a Latin phrase commonly found in late medieval Scottish and English poetry, translating to "fear of death disturbs me"...

      )
    • Kynd Kittok
    • The Testament of Mr Andro Kennedy
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