ALEXANDER

See also:

• ALEXANDER SCOTT (fl. 1550)
• SCOTT, DAVID (18o6-1849)
• SCOTT, MICHAEL (1789-1835)
• SCOTT, ROBERT (1811-1887)
• SCOTT, SIR GEORGE GILBERT (1811-1878)
• SCOTT, SIR WALTER, BART
• SCOTT, WILLIAM BELL (1811-1890)
• SCOTT, WINFIELD (1786-1866)

SCOTT (fl. 1550)  , Scottish poet, was probably a Lothian man, but particulars of his origin and of his life are entirely wanting . It is only by gathering together a few scraps of internal evidence that we learn that his poems were written between 1545 and 1568 (the date of the Bannatyne MS., the cnly MS. authority for the text) . Allan Ramsay was the first to bring Scott's work to the notice of modern readers, by printing some of the poems in his Ever Green . In a copy of verses ("Some Few of the Contents ") on;,the Bannatyne MS., he thus refers to Scott: " Licht skirtit lasses, and the girnand wyfe, Fleming and Scot haif painted to the lyfe . Scot, sweit tunged Scot, quha sings the welcum hame To Mary, our maist bony soverane dame; How lyflie he and amorous Stuart sing ! Quhen lufe and bewtie bid them spred the wing." The sketch is just, for Scott's poems deal chiefly with female character and with passion of a strongly erotic type . He is " sweit tunged," for his technique is always good, and his lyrical measures show remarkable accomplishment . In this respect he holds his own with the best of the " makars" represented in the Bannatyne MS . In what may appear excessive coarseness to present-day taste, he makes good claim to rival Dunbar and his contemporaries . The poems referred to by Ramsay are "Ane Ballat maid to the Derisioun and Scorne of Wantoun Wemen," " Ane New Yeir Gift to the Queen Mary quhen scho come first Hame, 1562," and some or all of his amorous songs (about 30 in number) . Of these " To luve unluvit," " Ladeis, be war," and " Lo, quhat it is to lufe " are favourable examples of his style . No early Scots poet comes nearer the quality of the Caroline love-lyric .

His Justing and Debait vp at the

Drum betwix W [illiam] Adamsone and Johine Sym follows the literary tradition of Peblis to the Play and Christis Kirk on the Grene . He has left verse-renderings of the 1st and 5oth Psalms . The first collected edition was printed by D . Laing in 1821; a second was issued privately at Glasgow in 1882 . The latest edition is that by James Cranstoun (Scottish Text Society, I vol., 1896) . (G . G .