William Dunbar
William Dunbar (1459 or 1460 – by 1530) was a Scottish makar, or court poet, active in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.
He was closely associated with the court of King James IV[1] and produced a large body of work in Scots distinguished by its great variation in themes and literary styles.
[1] In comparison, Dunbar's contemporary Hector Boece received an annual salary of £26 13s for his role as Principal of King's College, Aberdeen.
His allegory The Thrissil and the Rois commemorated the marriage of Margaret of England to King James in 1503 while the Eulogy to Bernard Stewart, Lord of Aubigny welcomed the arrival of a distinguished Franco-Scottish soldier as the French ambassador in 1508.
[8] The poem "In Honour of the City of London", of the medieval urban description genre, was made into a cantata of the same name by William Walton in 1937.
[2][8] Dunbar's poems The Tabill Of Confessioun, Rorate Celi Desuper and Done Is A Battell On The Dragon Blak were included in the "Ballatis of Theologie" section of the Bannatyne Manuscript.
[11] Many of the poet's pieces appear to provide entertainment for the King, the Queen and his fellow courtiers with comic elements as a recurring theme.
[2][8] Poems in the tradition of courtly love are represented in Dunbar's work including a short lyric Sweit Rois of Vertew and the extended allegory The Goldyn Targe.
In The Petition of The Gray Horse, Auld Dunbar the poet asked the King for a new suit of clothes to mark Christmas.
Meditatioun In Wyntir considers ageing and the poet's frustrated ambitions while On His Heid-Ake is apparently an attempt to excuse a lack of productivity by recounting a migraine.
The motif of the former is the poet's futile endeavour, in a dream, to ward off Dame Beauty's arrows by Reason's "scheld of gold."
The greater part of Dunbar's work is occasional — personal and social satire, complaints, orisons and pieces of a humorous character.
His best-known orison, usually remembered as Timor mortis conturbat me which is repeated as the fourth line of each verse, is titled Lament for the Makaris and takes the form of prayer in memory of the medieval Scots poets.
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.
In The Flyting of Dunbar and Kennedy, 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 Middle Scots-speakers in the Lothians and the Galwegian Gaelic-speaking population of Carrick, in the south of Ayrshire, where Walter Kennedy was from.
