Scottish Text Society publications > New series > Kingis quair; together with A ballad of good counsel

INTRODUCTION.
XXI
And below we have the lines:—
“ Quod lohne, howbeit thou thinkis my leggis lyke rokkis ....
Jit, thocht thy braunis be lyk twa barrow-trammis,
Defend the, man! Than ran thay to, lyk rammis.’
These lines are to be compared with the following lines in
Christ’s Kirk:—
“ His lymmis wer lyk twa rokkis ....
Ran apoun uder lyk rammis ....
Bet on with barrow-trammis.”
The obvious conclusion is that Christ’s Kirk belongs to the
reign of James V., though I doubt if it was composed by
him. And, in claiming this poem for James L, certain
critics have claimed too much. It may be granted that
Peebles to the Play and Christ’s Kirk are in the same
peculiar metre and nearly of the same date, but the safest
result is to assign Peebles to the Play to the sixteenth
century. In accordance with this, it may be mentioned
that the earliest mention of Christ’s Kirk is that by Banna-
tyne, in 1568 ; and the earliest certain mention of Peebles
to the Play is in the poem of Christ’s Kirk, as above. If
we are to have any regard at all to the language, style,
and metre of these poems, we cannot make them earlier
than half a century or more after 1437. The case is pre¬
cisely parallel to the assignment to Chaucer of the poem
called the Court of Love, which no philologist can admit
to be earlier than the very end of the fifteenth century.
It is needless to pursue the subject further; for no argu¬
ments will ever convince those who have adopted a notion
of the antiquity of these poems, whilst those who perceive
their lateness require no further argument.1
1 “ One can hardly suppose those critics serious, who attribute this song [of
Christ’s Kirk] to the moral and sententious James the First.”—Guest, Eng.
Rhythms, ed. 1882, p. 624. Still, it continues to be repeated, in defiance of
cogent philological considerations.