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"Christis Kirk on the Green" is an anonymous
Middle Scots Middle Scots was the Anglic language of Lowland Scotland in the period from 1450 to 1700. By the end of the 15th century, its phonology, orthography, accidence, syntax and vocabulary had diverged markedly from Early Scots, which was virtually ...
poem in 22 stanzas, now believed to have been written around the year 1500, giving a comic account of a brawl at a country fair. It was for many years mistakenly attributed either to
James I of Scotland James I (late July 139421 February 1437) was King of Scots from 1406 until his assassination in 1437. The youngest of three sons, he was born in Dunfermline Abbey to King Robert III and Annabella Drummond. His older brother David, Duke of Ro ...
or to
James V of Scotland James V (10 April 1512 – 14 December 1542) was List of Scottish monarchs, King of Scotland from 9 September 1513 until his death in 1542. He was crowned on 21 September 1513 at the age of seventeen months. James was the son of James IV of Sco ...
. It gave rise to a whole tradition of humorous poems on similar subjects by Scottish poets down the centuries, including Allan Ramsay and
Robert Burns Robert Burns (25 January 175921 July 1796), also known familiarly as Rabbie Burns, was a Scottish poet and lyricist. He is widely regarded as the national poet of Scotland and is celebrated worldwide. He is the best known of the poets who hav ...
, and is still one of the most frequently published works in Middle Scots. "Christis Kirk on the Green" has been called one of the finest performances in 15th-century British poetry.


Synopsis

The scene opens at Christ's Kirk where a dance is in full swing on the village green. While Tom Lutar plays the music and sings, the young women flirt with their suitors. Two of the men, Jock and Robin Ray, neither of whom has been having much luck with the girls, start to quarrel over one of them, and blows are struck. The fight begins to spread, and threatens to become serious as bows are produced and arrows shot, but the marksmanship of all the archers is so wild that no-one is hit. Then a general brawl develops as pitchforks, flails and laths of wood are seized, branches are torn off, and all these weapons are brought into play. The poet turns from one character to another, and details the blows delivered and the men struck to the ground. While the fight is still in progress the poem breaks off.


Transmission

"Christis Kirk" survives in at least seven manuscripts, including the
Bannatyne Manuscript The Bannatyne Manuscript is an anthology of literature compiled in Scotland in the sixteenth century. It is an important source for the Scots poetry of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The manuscript contains texts of the poems of the gr ...
, the Maitland Folio, and one of the Laing manuscripts; of these the Maitland Folio gives the best text. It was printed first in 1643 in a recension similar to that given by the Laing MS, and later in 1660, 1663, 1684, 1691 (by
Edmund Gibson Edmund Gibson (16696 September 1748) was a British divine who served as Bishop of Lincoln and Bishop of London, jurist, and antiquary. Early life and career He was born in Bampton, Westmorland. In 1686 he was entered a scholar at Queen's Coll ...
), and in 1706 (by
James Watson James Dewey Watson (born April 6, 1928) is an American molecular biologist, geneticist, and zoologist. In 1953, he co-authored with Francis Crick the academic paper proposing the double helix structure of the DNA molecule. Watson, Crick and ...
).


Date and authorship

The poet was certainly familiar with a tradition of Scots burlesque poems that included "Peblis to the Play" and the now-lost "Falkland on the Green", and he wrote for a sophisticated audience, or at least for one above the peasant level. These are almost the only reliable clues to his identity. In 1568
George Bannatyne George Bannatyne (1545–1608), a native of Angus, Scotland, was an Edinburgh merchant and burgess. He was the seventh of twenty-three children, including Catherine Bannatyne, born of James Bannatyne of Kirktown of Newtyle in Forfarshire and Ka ...
attributed the poem to
James I of Scotland James I (late July 139421 February 1437) was King of Scots from 1406 until his assassination in 1437. The youngest of three sons, he was born in Dunfermline Abbey to King Robert III and Annabella Drummond. His older brother David, Duke of Ro ...
, but in the next century an alternative attribution to
James V James V (10 April 1512 – 14 December 1542) was King of Scotland from 9 September 1513 until his death in 1542. He was crowned on 21 September 1513 at the age of seventeen months. James was the son of King James IV and Margaret Tudor, and duri ...
was made, and in the 18th and 19th centuries a war of words between literary historians failed to decide between these two candidates. At the beginning of the 19th century James Sibbald suggested
Robert Henryson Robert Henryson (Middle Scots: Robert Henrysoun) was a poet who flourished in Scotland in the period c. 1460–1500. Counted among the Scots ''makars'', he lived in the royal burgh of Dunfermline and is a distinctive voice in the Northern Renai ...
as a possible author, but this idea did not find favour. In 1964 Allan H. Maclaine argued for an early 15th-century date, without committing himself to James I as author, but in 1996 he acknowledged that linguistic evidence suggested a date of around 1500. This new date, which is now widely accepted, rules out both James I and James V, and leaves "Christis Kirk" as an anonymous poem.


Metre

The stanzas are each of ten lines rhyming ABABABABCD. The first eight lines alternate
iambic tetrameter Iambic tetrameter is a poetic meter in ancient Greek and Latin poetry; as the name of ''a rhythm'', iambic tetrameter consists of four metra, each metron being of the form , x – u – , , consisting of a spondee and an iamb, or two iambs. There ...
with
trimeter In poetry, a trimeter (Greek for "three measure") is a metre of three metrical feet per line. Examples: : When here // the spring // we see, : Fresh green // upon // the tree. See also * Anapaest * Dactyl * Tristich * Triadic-line poetry Triad ...
, the ninth is a two-syllable "
bob Bob, BOB, or B.O.B. may refer to: Places * Mount Bob, New York, United States *Bob Island, Palmer Archipelago, Antarctica People, fictional characters, and named animals *Bob (given name), a list of people and fictional characters *Bob (surname ...
", and the final line forms the refrain "At Christis Kirk on the green". Much alliteration is used, which, together with the recurring rhymes, gives the verse a headlong pace, while the bob line is useful in accentuating the humour. The combined effect is to make the poem well-suited to recitation or singing.


Setting

Most modern commentators accept the tradition, first reported in print by
William Tytler William Tytler WS FRSE (1711–1792) was a Scottish lawyer, known as a historical writer. He wrote ''An Inquiry into the Evidence against Mary Queen of Scots'', against the views of William Robertson. He discovered the manuscript the ''"Kingis Q ...
in 1783, that the Christ's Kirk of the poem is a ruined church in the parish of Leslie, near the village of
Insch Insch ( gd, An Innis or Innis Mo Bheathain) is a village in the Garioch, Aberdeenshire, Scotland. It is located approximately from the city of Aberdeen. Etymology The name of the village may have come from the Scottish Gaelic ''innis'', me ...
in
Aberdeenshire Aberdeenshire ( sco, Aiberdeenshire; gd, Siorrachd Obar Dheathain) is one of the 32 Subdivisions of Scotland#council areas of Scotland, council areas of Scotland. It takes its name from the County of Aberdeen which has substantially differe ...
. According to Tytler a fair was held by this church every May Day until the end of the 17th century. In 1715 Allan Ramsay proposed a different
Leslie Leslie may refer to: * Leslie (name), a name and list of people with the given name or surname, including fictional characters Families * Clan Leslie, a Scottish clan with the motto "grip fast" * Leslie (Russian nobility), a Russian noble family ...
in
Fife Fife (, ; gd, Fìobha, ; sco, Fife) is a council area, historic county, registration county and lieutenancy area of Scotland. It is situated between the Firth of Tay and the Firth of Forth, with inland boundaries with Perth and Kinross (i ...
as the site of the poem, and was seconded by
John Callander John Callander (1722–1789) of Craigforth in Stirlingshire was a Scottish antiquary and plagiarist. Life He was the son of James Callander, and Katherine Mackenzie, daughter of Sir Kenneth Mackenzie of Cromarty. He passed advocate at the Scotti ...
in his 1782 edition of the poem. However this identification is probably based simply on a confusion of place-names, and it is no longer believed to have any good evidence in its favour. James Sibbald identified Christ's Kirk with the church of St. Salvator's College, St. Andrews, but, as with his authorship theory, this idea has found no supporters.


Criticism

Critics agree that the main virtues of the poem do not lie in subtlety of descriptive detail, nor in coherence of structure, but in a fast-paced excitement and wild comic verve that suggest comparison with Dutch peasant paintings. Vividly described scenes of grotesque and earthy incident (possibly too earthy for some modern tastes) follow one after the other in rapid succession. As the literary historian
George Gregory Smith Prof George Gregory Smith (20 June 1865 – 3 March 1932) was a Scottish literary critic. He corresponded with Mark Twain, and also lived in Florence for a while. He died in London but is buried with his wife Mary east of the western path in ...
wrote, "Everybody is at fever-heat: the louder the women's voices and the harder the blows, the better the fun." This forms a striking contrast with the aureate manner of the poet's contemporaries, the Scottish Chaucerians. The exigencies of rhyme-scheme and alliteration that the poet faces are very rigorous, but he meets them with such inventiveness and apparent ease that it has been called a ''tour de force'' of mastery of technique.


Legacy

"Christis Kirk" and a similar earlier poem, "Peblis at the Play", exercised a noticeable influence on the
makar A makar () is a term from Scottish literature for a poet or bard, often thought of as a royal court poet. Since the 19th century, the term ''The Makars'' has been specifically used to refer to a number of poets of fifteenth and sixteenth cent ...
William Dunbar William Dunbar (born 1459 or 1460 – died by 1530) was a Scottish makar, or court poet, active in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. He was closely associated with the court of King James IV and produced a large body of work in ...
, some of whose poems use similar metrical and stylistic techniques to achieve a fast-moving effect. Similar traces of the two older poems can be seen in the anonymous 16th-century " Rauf Coilyear", "The Cursing of Sir John Rowell" and "Symmie and his Bruder". In 1718 the poet Allan Ramsay published "Christis Kirk" together with two additional
canto The canto () is a principal form of division in medieval and modern long poetry. Etymology and equivalent terms The word ''canto'' is derived from the Italian word for "song" or "singing", which comes from the Latin ''cantus'', "song", from the ...
s of his own composition. This work reached a 5th edition in only five years, and so popularized the poem that few others were reprinted so many times in the 18th century. A fourth canto followed in 1766, published in Alexander Nicol's ''Poems on Several Subjects''. One result of the poem's success was the emergence of a whole subgenre of comic poems set at fairs, country dances and similar merrymakings, and narrated by detached and amused observers, in which horseplay, practical jokes and drunkenness play a prominent part, and colourful scene-painting makes up for thin story-lines. Examples include
Robert Fergusson Robert Fergusson (5 September 1750 – 16 October 1774) was a Scottish poet. After formal education at the University of St Andrews, Fergusson led a bohemian life in Edinburgh, the city of his birth, then at the height of intellectual and c ...
's "Leith Races", James Orr's "Donegore Hill" and "The Passengers", Samuel Thomson's "The Simmer Fair" and "The Hawk and the Weasel" and
Robert Burns Robert Burns (25 January 175921 July 1796), also known familiarly as Rabbie Burns, was a Scottish poet and lyricist. He is widely regarded as the national poet of Scotland and is celebrated worldwide. He is the best known of the poets who hav ...
's "The Jolly Beggars", "The Ordination" and "The Holy Fair". The Christis Kirk tradition continued into the 20th century in such poems as
Robert Garioch Robert Garioch Sutherland (9 May 1909 – 26 April 1981) was a Scottish poet and translator. His poetry was written almost exclusively in the Scots language, he was a key member in the literary revival of the language in the mid-20th century ...
's "Embro to the Ploy".


Modern editions

* * * An edition of the Laing text. * Based on the Maitland text.


Notes


References

* * * * * *


External links


Maitland Manuscript text of the poem

Bannatyne Manuscript text of the poem
{{Authority control 1490s in Scotland 1490s works 1500s in Scotland 1500s works 15th-century poems 16th-century poems Fairs in Scotland Humorous poems Poetry of the Bannatyne Manuscript Scottish humour