Table Of ContentComplete and
Full with Numbers
Scottish Cultural Review
of Language and Literature
Volume 5
Series Editors
John Corbett
University of Glasgow
Sarah Dunnigan
University of Edinburgh
James McGonigal
University of Glasgow
Production Editor
Gavin Miller
University of Edinburgh
SCROLL
The Scottish Cultural Review of Language and Literature publishes new
work in Scottish Studies, with a focus on analysis and reinterpretation of
the literature and languages of Scotland, and the cultural contexts that have
shaped them.
Further information on our editorial and production procedures can be
found at www.rodopi.nl
Complete and
Full with Numbers
The Narrative Poetry
of Robert Henryson
John MacQueen
This mery musik and mellifluate,
Complete and full with nowmeris od and evyn,
Is causit be the moving of the hevyn
(The Tale of Orpheus 32: 237–39)
Amsterdam - New York, NY 2006
Cover design: Gavin Miller
The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “ISO
9706: 1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents -
Requirements for permanence”.
ISBN: 90-420-1749-X
©Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam - New York, NY 2006
Printed in The Netherlands
Contents
Note 7
Introduction 9
Tragic Fable
Chapter One. The Testament of Cresseid: Justice, the Virgin and the Prison of the
Planets 41
The Aesopic Fables
Chapter Two. The Jasp of Wisdom: Prologue and The Cock and the Jasp 79
Chapter Three. Of Mice and Men (1): The Paddock and the Mouse 89
Chapter Four. Of Mice and Men (2): The Two Mice 103
Chapter Five. Justice and Retribution: The Sheep and the Dog, The Wolf and the
Wether, The Wolf and the Lamb 113
Chapter Six. Prudence and Imprudence: The Preaching of the Swallow 131
Chapter Seven. Prudence, Pity and Piety: The Lion and the Mouse 153
The Beast Epic
Chapter Eight. The Equivocation of the Fiend: The Fox, the Wolf and the
Husbandman 175
Chapter Nine. The World, the Flesh, the Devil and Lent: The Nekhering (The Fox,
the Wolf, and the Cadger) 185
Chapter Ten. The Process of Degeneracy: The Talking of the Tod (The Cock and
the Fox, The Fox and the Wolf, The Trial of the Fox) 197
Platonic Myth
Chapter Eleven. The Descent of the Soul: The Tale of Orpheus (Orpheus and
Eurydice) 251
Conclusion 273
Appendix A 279
Appendix B 283
Bibliography 291
Index 301
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Note
Henryson quotations are from Fox ed. 1981. I have substituted y for ȝ, and treated
Fox’s punctuation with some freedom. Occasionally I have substituted or adapted a
variant reading, always acknowledging the fact in the notes. References are by stanza-
number in the individual poem, followed by the line-reference in Fox ed. 1981.
For Henryson’s bibliography, see Gray 1996; also the appropriate sections of The
Year’s Work in Scottish Linguistic and Literary Studies, until 2000 issued annually by
the Association for Scottish Literary Studies as a supplement to Scottish Literary
Journal. Critical assessments of earlier scholarship will also be found in Gray 1979
and Kindrick 1979. The best study of Henryson’s sources is Jamieson 1964.
Biblical quotations are from the Authorized or King James version, save where that
differs substantially from the Latin Vulgate familiar to Henryson. For such passages I
have made my own translation. Where the Vulgate reference differs from that in AV,
both are given. Chaucerian references are to Robinson ed. 1957; Shakespearian to
Craig ed. 1943. For the Divina Commedia I have used Sayers tr. 1949, 1955, 1962
(the final volume completed by Barbara Reynolds). Sayers’ English maintains a close
lineal correspondence with the Italian. For works in Greek or Latin (with Plato the
chief exception) I have usually referred to editions in the Loeb Classical Library,
where text and translation appear on facing pages; for Plato I have used Hamilton and
Cairns eds 1961, also giving the customary references to the pagination of the
Stephanus edition (1578).
I am grateful to the many people and groups with whom I have discussed Henryson
over the years, and in particular to Dr Ian Jamieson, the late Dr Tom Scott, the late
Professor Denton Fox, Professor R.D.S. Jack, Dr Sally Mapstone, Mr R.W. Smith, Dr
Sarah Dunnigan, Professor Jim McGonigal, Dr John Corbett, my former colleagues in
the School of Scottish Studies, University of Edinburgh, and the members of the
Robert Henryson Society. I am grateful to Dr Gavin Miller for assistance and advice
in the preparation of this book, and to Dr Sergi Mainer, who has compiled the index.
The staff of the Edinburgh University Library and the National Library of Scotland
have been unfailingly helpful. My wife has assisted me in more ways than I can
enumerate. The faults of the book are entirely my own.
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Introduction
1. Henryson: Life, Times and Works
The working life of Robert Henryson occupied the middle to late
years of the fifteenth century (see Fox (ed.) 1981: xiii–xxv; Gray
1996: 155–60; and my own article in Oxford DNB). We know nothing
of his date of birth or place of origin, and details of his education are
sparse. On 10 September 1462, when he was incorporated in the
recently founded University of Glasgow, presumably as a teacher of
law, he is described as licenciate in Arts (i.e., he held the degree of
MA) and bachelor of Decreits (Canon Law) (Munimenta 1854: 2: 69);
the latter, as a higher degree, following on the first. He is also called
vir venerabilis, “a venerable man”, a phrase which suggests that by
then his first youth was already well past. His degrees he did not
obtain from any Scottish or English university. In the Aesopic fable
The Lion and the Mouse, he makes Aesop claim to be a Roman and to
have studied canon and civil law in the schools of Rome, a claim
elsewhere unparalleled. Rome maintained schools of canon and civil
law for poor foreign students throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries and it is at least plausible that Henryson projected elements
of himself onto a character in his poem, and that he had himself
obtained his bachelorship from the Roman schools (Encyclopaedia
Britannica 1957: s.v. “Universities”). The poems provide abundant
evidence that he had completed the various stages of a medieval
professional education, the trivium (grammar, rhetoric and logic), the
quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music), philosophy,
and finally canon and civil law.
Henryson may have written at least one of his longer poems, The
Tale of Orpheus, during his time at Glasgow. The narrative is based
on the version of the legend found in bk.3, metrum 12 of the
Consolations of Philosophy by Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
(c.480–524); the long Moralitas on the gloss to the text written by the
English friar Nicholas Trivet (1258–1328). Liber Boetii cum glossa
Treuet is one of the items held during the fifteenth century in the
library of Glasgow Cathedral (Registrum 1843: 2: 334–39). Glasgow
University, the founder of which had been the bishop of Glasgow,
William Turnbull (c.1410–54), was closely associated with the
cathedral and its chapter.
