Huchoun
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Huchoun ("little Hugh") or Huchown "of the Awle Ryale" ('' fl.'' 14th century) is a poet conjectured to have been writing sometime in the 14th century. Some academics, following the Scottish antiquarian George Neilson (1858–1923), have identified him with a Scottish
knight A knight is a person granted an honorary title of knighthood by a head of state (including the Pope) or representative for service to the monarch, the church or the country, especially in a military capacity. Knighthood finds origins in the Gr ...
, Hugh of Eglinton, and advanced his authorship of several significant pieces of
alliterative verse In prosody, alliterative verse is a form of verse that uses alliteration as the principal ornamental device to help indicate the underlying metrical structure, as opposed to other devices such as rhyme. The most commonly studied traditions of ...
. Current opinion is that there is little evidence to support this.


Evidence

The little that is known about Huchoun comes from the Chronicle of
Andrew of Wyntoun Andrew Wyntoun, known as Andrew of Wyntoun (), was a Scottish poet, a canon and prior of Loch Leven on St Serf's Inch and, later, a canon of St. Andrews. Andrew Wyntoun is most famous for his completion of an eight-syllabled metre entitled, '' ...
, which mentions:
Hucheon,
þat cunnande was in littratur.
He made a gret Gest of Arthure
And þe Awntyr of Gawane,
Þe Pistil als of Suet Susane.
He was curyousse in his stille,
Fayr of facunde and subtile,
And ay to pleyssance hade delyte,
Mad in metyr meit his dyte
Litil or noucht neuir þe lesse
Wauerande fra þe suythfastnes.
:: (Cotton Manuscript book V. II, 4308-4318). Interest in the otherwise unknown figure of "Huchoun" - a diminutive form of "Hugh", i.e. "little Hugh" - was spurred largely by the work of George Neilson, a lawyer and antiquarian, who gave a series of lectures at
Glasgow University , image = UofG Coat of Arms.png , image_size = 150px , caption = Coat of arms Flag , latin_name = Universitas Glasguensis , motto = la, Via, Veritas, Vita , ...
in 1902 centred on the subject, and published a book the same year.George Neilson
, Dumfriesshire & Galloway Natural History and Antiquarian Society
Neilson, G. ''Huchoun of the Awle Ryale, the Alliterative Poet'', Glasgow, 1902. Of the works Andrew of Wyntoun mentions, the easiest to identify was ''Þe Pistil als of Suet Susane''. This has been fairly firmly associated with The Pistel of Swete Susan, an alliterative poem surviving in 5 manuscripts.Peck, R. A
Epistle of Sweet Susan
in ''Heroic Women for the Old Testament in Middle English Verse'', Kalamazoo, Michigan: Medieval Institute Publications, 1991
The ''Gest of Arthure'', also called ''Gest Historyalle'' and described by Wyntoun, has been more tentatively identified as the well-known '' Alliterative Morte Arthure'' (found in the Thornton manuscript of
Lincoln Cathedral Lincoln Cathedral, Lincoln Minster, or the Cathedral Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Lincoln and sometimes St Mary's Cathedral, in Lincoln, England, is a Grade I listed cathedral and is the seat of the Anglican Bishop of Lincoln. Constructio ...
). The ''Awntyr of Gawane'' (literally the "Adventure of Gawain") is less certain. Neilson advanced that it represented the great alliterative work ''
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight ''Sir Gawain and the Green Knight'' is a late 14th-century chivalric romance in Middle English. The author is unknown; the title was given centuries later. It is one of the best-known Arthurian stories, with its plot combining two types of f ...
'' and Huchoun was therefore also credited with ''
Patience (or forbearance) is the ability to endure difficult circumstances. Patience may involve perseverance in the face of delay; tolerance of provocation without responding in disrespect/anger; or forbearance when under strain, especially when faced ...
'', ''
Pearl A pearl is a hard, glistening object produced within the soft tissue (specifically the mantle) of a living shelled mollusk or another animal, such as fossil conulariids. Just like the shell of a mollusk, a pearl is composed of calcium carb ...
'', and ''
Cleanness ''Cleanness'' (Middle English: ''Clannesse'') is a Middle English alliterative poem written in the late 14th century. Its unknown author, designated the ''Pearl poet'' or ''Gawain poet'', also appears, on the basis of dialect and stylistic eviden ...
''. The fact that a later hand had written "Hugo de" at the head of the manuscript of these works was also taken as supporting evidence. The output of the
Pearl Poet The "Gawain Poet" (), or less commonly the "Pearl Poet",Andrew, M. "Theories of Authorship" (1997) in Brewer (ed). ''A Companion to the Gawain-poet'', Boydell & Brewer, p.23 (''fl.'' late 14th century) is the name given to the author of ''Sir ...
, however, is linguistically very distinct from what seems to be the oldest versions of the works more solidly attributed to Huchoun, and this attribution is nowadays dismissed. More likely is the suggestion that the ''Awntyr of Gawane'' represents ''
The Awntyrs off Arthure ''The Awntyrs off Arthure at the Terne Wathelyne'' (''The Adventures of Arthur at Tarn Wadling'') is an Arthurian romance of 702 lines written in Middle English alliterative verse. Despite its title, it centres on the deeds of Sir Gawain. The poem ...
'', an Arthurian poem in a rhymed alliterative stanza similar to ''Swete Susan'', which has several variants in multiple manuscripts.


Identity

Beyond the matter of what he may have written, who Huchoun was is uncertain.
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 i ...
, in his ''
Lament for the Makaris "I that in Heill wes and Gladnes", also known as "The Lament for the Makaris", is a poem in the form of a danse macabre by the Scottish poet William Dunbar. Every fourth line repeats the Latin refrain '' timor mortis conturbat me'' (fear of deat ...
'', mentions a poet called "gude Sir Hew of Eglyntoun", whose works are now lost. Hugh of Eglington was a knight who was brother-in-law to
Robert II of Scotland Robert II (2 March 1316 – 19 April 1390) was King of Scots from 1371 to his death in 1390. The son of Walter Stewart, 6th High Steward of Scotland, and Marjorie, daughter of King Robert the Bruce, he was the first monarch of the House of Stewa ...
. Following suggestions made by earlier antiquarians, Neilson argued that Huchoun, "little Hugh", could be the same figure: given Hugh of Eglington's close connection with the king, and the fact that he was given safe conduct to visit
London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...
, the epithet "of the Awle Ryale" could be explained, if it was interpreted as "Aula Regalis" or "Royal Palace". The biggest problem with this identification is that the poems ascribed by Neilson to Huchoun / Hugh of Eglington are of varying dialects, none of them Scottish. Even the poem most likely to be authentically Huchoun's own work, the ''Pistel of Swete Susan'', seems to be in a north
Yorkshire dialect The Yorkshire dialect (also known as Broad Yorkshire, Tyke, Yorkie or Yorkshire English) is a dialect of English, or continuum of dialects, spoken in the Yorkshire region of Northern England. The dialect has roots in Old English and is influen ...
overlaying a Midland source. ''Gawain and the Green Knight'' and the other three poems in the Cotton Nero A.x manuscript have a clearly north-western provenance, while the ''Alliterative Morte Arthure'' is considered to originate in the East Midlands. Two possibilities suggested by Neilson are that a Scottish poet wrote in a southern dialect, perhaps after being educated in England, or that the Scotticisms were "translated" by later scribes. It seems a more likely suggestion either that Andrew of Wyntoun's poet, Huchoun, was not Scottish (and therefore not Sir Hugh), or that the poems he mentions were in fact other works now lost, rather than the great alliterative poems Neilson claimed they referred to. Other candidates for Huchoun from different parts of England have much less detailed evidence to prove their case. Current academic opinion takes the line that Huchoun, if he existed, may have written ''swete Susan'' but that evidence to link the same poet to other major alliterative works is tenuous at best.


Notes


References

*Harvey, Paul. 1967. ''The Oxford Companion to English Literature.'' London: Oxford University Press. *Ward and Trent, eds. ''et al.'' 1907-1921.
The Cambridge history of English and American literature: An encyclopedia in eighteen volumes
Retrieved July 7, 2005.


External links

* {{authority control Middle English literature Scottish poetry Scottish male poets 14th-century births 14th-century deaths Writers of Arthurian literature 14th-century Scottish poets Early Scots poets