630 MR HENRY BELLYSE BAILDON ON 



manship of Dunbar. So that, when we find a really bad rhyme in his poems, we may 

 be well-nigh certain that the text is corrupt and that Dunbar never uttered the poem 

 for complete in such a form. 



If one is asked for absolute proof of this conviction, it is not easy to produce one, 

 except on general grounds. So I would put the matter in the form of two propositions, 

 neither of which can reasonably be doubted. The first is that Dunbar's technical 

 accomplishments as a verse-writer were such, as witness his mastery of a great variety 

 of metrical forms and his marvellous command of rimes (as shown, for instance, in the 

 two concluding stanzas of his part of the " Flyting," where he has no less than thirty- 

 two rimes, some of them dissyllabic, in each stanza), that he could never really have 

 been at a loss to find a correct rime ; and so, if he used them, must have done so from 

 pure carelessness, which is clearly not his characteristic. In the second place, we are 

 really not able to convict Dunbar of a palpably bad rime, because, in the instances 

 where he is apparently guilty, there are usually indications of corruption in the text. 

 I do not, of course, maintain that all Dunbar's rimes are exact and perfect, a statement 

 which would probably be true of no poet that ever wrote. Indeed, anyone who has 

 given any attention to verse- effects must know that an occasional imperfection gives 

 a curious charm in the hands of a master. But it must be slight, and cannot extend 

 to discord in consonantal sound. I cite just two cases of apparently false rimes. The 

 first is in Dunbar's " Dirge to the King at Stirling," in the couplet (41. 9, 10) : — 



" 3e eremeitis and hankersaidilis 

 That takis your pennance at your tablis." 



Even if my conjecture of hanker saiblis = black anchorites be not correct, saidlis = cells, 

 hermitages makes no sense, and it would be too unjust to Dunbar to suppose that he 

 wrote both a bad rime and nonsense at the same time. 



The second instance is perhaps not quite so conclusive : still there is every appear- 

 ance of some error having crept into the text. It occurs in the courtly and beautiful 

 poem, "To the Princess Margaret on her arrival at Holyrood " in the following 



couplet : — 



" Rejoysing from the sone beme 

 Welcum of Scotland to be Quene." 



On this it may be said (see Professor Schipper's note, p. 92) that there is some corrup- 

 tion of the text here, so that if we are not convinced that beme is wrong, we have no 

 certainty that it is right ; and I venture the conjecture that the original word was 

 schene, which gives a rather better sense, as though the queen came from the sunshine 

 of the sunny south — sunny as compared with Scotland. Further, even supposing the 

 reading " beme " to be correct, the poem is not provably Dunbar's, so that in any 

 case he cannot be clearly convicted of a false rime in this instance. 



And, apart even from these arguments, I must really claim the right of an expert 

 in poetry, in poetical technique, and in literary criticism generally [being a critic and j 

 verse-writer myself of at least twenty-five years standing] to speak with authority on | 



