1995/01/01 by Jacqueline Simpson · 1 citation
Arts and Humanities · #Scottish History and National Identity #Historical Studies of British Isles #Medieval Literature and History
paper · doi:10.1080/0015587x.1995.9715888
openalex publication_date 1995/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/03
This paper arises from a remark made to me by Priscilla Bawcutt, a specialist on sixteenth-century Scottish poets, that no folklorist had ever discussed a certain section in The Flyting of Montgomerie and Polwart (c. 1580), even though this was full of allusions to folk beliefs. This turned out to be very nearly true. There are eight lines from the opening passage which have been repeatedly cited (Keightley 1850, 351; Murray 1933, 31; Briggs 1959, 24; Briggs 1967, 512; Briggs 1978, 43), but as far as I know the only folklorist who has shown any awareness of the poem as a whole is J.A. Macculloch (Macculloch 1921, 2323), and he only gives it two short paragraphs. The two major books by Katharine Briggs on traditional material in sixteenth-century literature (Briggs 1959; 1962) concern English writers; Scotland is hardly mentioned.