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Vidas Achinlek, Chevalier 325
entered in the Roll under the
year 1471 as
Jas. Auchlek pauper, is pure
conjecture. (I have pointed out Laing's erroneous substitution of Glasgow
for St. Andrews in my edition of The Kingis )uair and the Ojtuare of Jelusy
published in October.) The theory that he is the Chantor of Dornoch,
who died in ^ s 1497, ^so Purely conjectural. This ecclesiastic, at any rate,
bore the name of Dunbar's poet. That a churchman wrote The Quare of
Jelusy a tedious didactic is poem much more probable than that it came
from the pen of an accomplished courtier, soldier, and man of the world.
That this churchman, or other poet of his name, was too poor to pay his
graduation fees has nothing improbable about it. Robert Fergusson, who
is by some excellent critics placed very high among the many poets on the
St. Andrews Roll, was also very poor.
Laing read the MS. of The ^uare of Jelusy (Arch. Selden B. 24) when
the close of the colophon must have been easier to read. Yet even in
Laing's day it was mutilated. Only the letters au are now clear, and
what follows is blurred. Mr. Maitland Anderson thinks that the letters
following are not ch or chin at all but possibly tor, and that the word may
be autor.
The date assigned by Professor Skeat and Miss Gray to Lancelot of the
Laik and to The Quare of Jelusy I believe to be later than the language and
the content demand. But discussion of this would open a wide field, too
extensive for this note. ALEXANDER LAWSON.
The University, St. Andrews.
The closing sentence of Miss Gray's interesting note on Vedast
Auchinlek leaves the problem of authorship where it was. Dunbar, as the
text of the Lament for the Makaris shews, knew a poet called James Afflek,
and for that reason ' the secretar of the Earl of Rosse,' whose Christian
name was James, has prima facie a better claim to consideration than
Vedast. Besides,
Dunbar's line will not scan if we substitute Vedast for
Auch '
James. The colophon *
quod certainly lends a degree of support to
the attribution to James Afflek.
More profitable, however, than any conjectures concerning Vedast, or
other member of the gens Afflek, would be an attempt to date the poem
by internal evidence. At line 380 the author, declaiming against jealousy,
says :
Qhare of I coud ane hundreth samplis tell
Of storeis olde, the I quhich lat oure go,
And als that in this tyme present befell ;
Amongis quhilk we fynd how one of tho
His lady sleuch and syne himselfe also,
In this ilk lond, withoutyn ony quhy,
But only for his wickit gelousy.
which indicates a domestic tragedy, then of recent date, where a lady had
been murdered by her jealous husband, who committed suicide. 'In this
ilk lond '
means most probably ' in Scotland,' and with that clue one
should expect to be able to fix a terminus a quo at any rate.