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

NOTES
TO
THE CHERRIE AND THE SLAE.
§ 1. Allusions to Classical Mythology. — In the annotations
appended to Dr Cranstoun’s edition of Montgomerie’s poems, the
various references to legendary story found in ‘The Cherrie and the
Slae’ are already traced to their classical sources. Allusions of this
kind, it ought, however, to be remembered, form a conventional feature
of the class of poem to which Montgomerie’s allegory belongs, and are
not to be taken as indicating a close acquaintance on the poet’s part
with the classical writers who first gave these legends currency in
Europe. His ‘mythological lore,’ which Dr Cranstoun inclines to
regard as too ostentatiously paraded, is, as a matter of fact, drawn
from a common stock, open and familiar to the romantic allegorists,
both in England and Scotland, during the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries. Montgomery, out of his own knowledge of the classics,
makes no fresh contribution to the ordinary round of these allusions.
With Chaucer, Gower, and Lydgate to draw upon, and the works of
their Scottish imitators, he had no occasion indeed to go farther
afield. The following notes, supplementing Dr Cranstoun’s, make
this clear :1—
7-14. Legend of Progne and Philomela. Told at length by Chaucer
in the ‘ Legend of Good Women’ (No. vii.). See also ‘Troilus,’ II.,
64 If.; Lydgate, ‘Temple of Glas’ (11. 97-99)—
‘ ‘ Ther sawe I writen eke lie hole tale
Hov Philomene into ny3tyngale
Iturned was, and Progne vnto a swalow.”
See also his ‘Falls of Princes’ (f. 9«.); ‘Reson and Sensuallyte’
1 Unless when otherwise stated, the notes refer to the expanded version of the
poem published in 16x5, represented in this volume by Wreittoun’s print of 1636.
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