Scottish Text Society publications > Old series > Treatise callit The court of Venus

INTRODUCTION.
XXXI
spring of the year 1574 there was a great scarcity of food
in Scotland, and Rolland says :—
“ Some richt sair feird to put ouir the deir symmer,” 1
apparently with reference to the threatened famine.
VI.
HISTORY OF THE POEM.
The poem was “ imprentit at Edinburgh be Johne Ros,
1575.” There is only one copy of it known to be extant.
It is a quarto, and consists of A to I in eights, or 72 leaves.
The Prologue is printed in Roman letters, and the rest of
the poem, with the exception of most of the proper names,
in black-letter type. Time has dealt somewhat hardly with
the book, and the text now published gives only too many
proofs of the unkind hand of time. On the title-page there
is a woodcut representing a man holding in his hand a
volume, with Verbum Dei printed on it, and round the
woodcut are the words Veritas Vincit Tandem, and the
letters J. R. respectively on the left and right sides. The
volume is in the British Museum.
The text now issued is an exact reprint of the original.
It was copied by Miss Marx, whose name is a guarantee
for accuracy. The proofs were revised by her. Brackets
mark the lacunae caused by the ravages of time. I have
tried to supply the lacunae as far as I was able, but many
of them have baffled me.
The notes are all new, and an attempt has been made to
carry out the ideal of what I set before myself in establish¬
ing the Scottish Text Society—to illustrate the authors
1 ‘Court of Venus,’ Prologue, 1. 167; and note on the line, p. 148.