Scottish Text Society publications > Old series > Bibliography of Middle Scots poets

Ixxviii
INTRODUCTION.
of Douglas,1 and Tanner, follow the Dempster-Gibson
tradition. Watson’s second edition, without stating a
reason, and Ramsay on the authority of the Bannatyne
MS., give the poem to James I. So at first2 did Percy.
Later3 he changed his opinion. The reasons given by
Lord Hailes in his Notes on the Statutes of James I.
(1768) seem to have had much weight with those who
preferred James V. Among these was John Callander
of Craigforth,4 who in 1782 published an extraordinary
edition of the poem, along with The Gaberlunzie Man,
which a late and worthless tradition assigns to the same
author. It was Callander’s object to make his readers
“ acquainted with the true system of rational Etymology,
which consists in deriving the words of every language
from the radical sounds of the first, or original tongue,
as it was spoken by Noah and the builders of Babel.”
Four lines of text with their notes seldom occupy less
than two pages, and may require five.
The year following that of Callander’s edition was
an important one in the history of these poems. In it
Christ’s Kirk was twice printed (by Tytler and by
Pinkerton), and the other two were published for the
first time. The unique manuscript of The King’s Quair
had evidently been seen by Tanner and by Warton, for
the former6 quoted the first line, not given in earlier
notices, and mentioned the library and press-mark; and
1 It is scarcely fair to turn to controversial use a reference to “the Notes
published at Oxford some Y ears ago by a Celebrated Author, of the Famous
Poem of K. James V. intitled Christ’s Kirk on the Greene, and Drummond
of Hawthornden’s Polemo-middinia.”
2 Reliques, 2nd edition.
3 Reliques, 4th edition, and Pinkerton’s Select Scotish Ballads.
4 Died 1789. 6 Bibliotheca.