Scottish Text Society publications > Old series > Poems of Alexander Montgomerie

INTRODUCTION.
xxxm
Cherrie and the Slae.” Further editorial liberties are
taken with a number of the minor poems in the
Drummond Manuscript. In these, changes are made
(without acknowledgment) in the scribe’s order of the
lines, an interference which has the effect of altering
the structure of the stanzas. Thus in No. XLIV. of
the miscellaneous poems, the lines of the stanza are
arranged as follows in the manuscript:—
Remember rightly, vhen Je reid,
The woe and dreid,
But hope to speid,
I drie into despair.
My hairt within my breist does bleid
Vnto the deid,
Vithout remeid;
I’m hurt, I wot not vhair.
Alace ! vhat is the cause, think I,
But grace that I in langour ly ?
And so on throughout the poem. This in Laing’s text
becomes—
Remember rightly, vhen 3e reid,
The woe and dreid, but hope to speid,
I drie into dispair.
My hairt within my breist does bleid
Vnto the deid, vithout remeid ;
I’m hurt, I wot not vhair.
Alace ! vhat is the caus, think I,
But grace that I in langour ly?
The form of the stanza is here shortened; but in No.
XVI. the editorial arrangement has a precisely opposite
effect. The manuscript places the lines in the following
order:—