Scottish Text Society publications > Old series > Poems of Robert Henryson > Volume 1, 1914

XXIV
INTRODUCTION.
In certain circumstances we may be less likely to find
two of the same name in a small community than in a
University drawing its membership from a wide area, but
we must not forget that in Dunfermline and its neighbour¬
hood, the homeland of the Hendersons, there might well
be more than one Robert Henryson, and more than one
of these who could claim to be notary.
The poems yield nothing that can be construed as
direct evidence of Henryson’s personal knowledge of
Dunfermline. Laing suggested that when the poet makes
Cresseid appeal to be allowed to go to “3one Hospitall
at the tounis end,” he may have been thinking of the
Spital at the east end of the burgh.1 Others, with Laing,
have found in the lines
“ AHone as I went vp and doun
in ane abbay was fair to se”2
an allusion to the famous Benedictine foundation. There
is perhaps more to be said for the clue supplied in the
title of a lost poem described in the Contents of the
Asloan MS. as “ Master Robert Hendersonis dreme, On
fut by forth,”3 which might well be the work of a Dun¬
fermline man who was in the habit of taking the air by
the Ferry Hills and Rosyth, as later generations have
done before the enclosure of the area as a naval base.
There is perhaps another hint in the absurd Practysis of
Medecyne? where the poet claims for his leechcraft that
there is nothing to equal it “fra lawdian to lundin.”5
1 See note to III. p. 16, 1. 382 infra. 2 III. p. 128, 11. 1-2.
s Specimens of Middle Scots, 1902, p. Ixxi. This appears in the list of ‘good
tales ’ or ‘ fables ’ in the Co7nplaynt of Scotlande, 1549 (ed. E. E. T.S., p. 63), as
“ On fut by fortht as i could found (as I did go).”
4 On the question of Henryson’s authorship, see infra, p. Ixxiv.
6 III. p. 152, 1. 61.