Towards the close of the sixteenth century, while the pages of English poetry were receiving their richest contributions from the pens of Spenser, Shakespeare, and their comrade Elizabethans, the most famous, almost the sole singer left in the north was the author of “The Cherrie and the Slae.” Amid the moroseness and ecclesiastic strife which shadowed those closing years while James the Sixth still ruled at Holyrood, this voice still sang sweetly of love and laughter, of dewy nights and the lark’s morning song.

Alexander Montgomerie was a younger son of Montgomerie of Hazelhead, in Ayrshire, a scion of the noble house of Eglinton. The date of his birth remains uncertain; beyond that it was, as he himself says, “on Eister day at morne;” but he is believed to have first seen the light at Hazelhead Castle about 1545. According to references in his works, it appears that he was educated somewhere in Argyleshire. In any case it is certain that he was a man of culture and refined tastes. Of good social position, related by intermarriage with the Mures of Rowallan and the Semples of Castle Semple, he was the professed admirer of Lady Margaret Montgomerie, eldest daughter of Hugh, third Earl of Eglinton, to whom he addressed several compositions in the “despairing lover” tone fashionable in his time. He is recorded to have held some place at Court, first under the Regent Morton, and afterwards under James VI., from which, and not from military or naval rank, he appears to have derived the title of Captain. For a time he stood high in favour with the king, for whose Essayes of a Prentise in the Divine Art of Poesie, he wrote a commendatory sonnet by way of preface. James, moreover, in his Rewlis and Cautelis of Poesie, quotes several of Montgomerie’s verses as patterns, and is recorded to have been greatly diverted by the recitation of the “Flyting betwixt Montgomerie and Polwart.” Later, however, the poet shared the fate of other courtiers, and for some unknown reason fell into disgrace. Nor does any authority exist for the supposition that he regained the royal favour and accompanied the king to England. More probability attends the belief that he settled at Compton Castle, near Kirkcudbright, in Galloway, close by which, at the junction of the Dee and the Tarffe, tradition points out the scene of his chief poem, “The Cherrie and the Slae.”

In Montgomerie there appears a curious reflection, though in fainter colours, of the fate and character of Dunbar. Like the great makar of James the Fourth’s time, he was the scion of a noble house. In his verse appear the same eager efforts to secure favour at Court, the same bitterness at disappointment, and the same succeeding rancour against rivals and enemies. Here is the same oppression under insufficient means, and the same eager and thirsty heart continually mocked by “wicked weirds” and “thrauard fates.” Even his pension of 500 marks a year, chargeable on certain rents of the archbishopric of Glasgow, was withheld for a time, and only regained, by writ of privy seal, in 1588, after a vexatious law-suit. And on undertaking a foreign tour, for which he received royal leave of absence in 1586, he found himself for a time, upon what charge is unknown, thrown into prison. In one of his sonnets he records his sorrows—

Like Dunbar, Montgomerie appears to have become serious in his later years, “the productions of which,” to quote his latest editor, “breathe a tender melancholy and unaffected piety, inspired with hopes of a fairer future, in strange contrast to some of his earlier work.” To the spirit of these years must also be attributed a metrical version of Psalms, fifteen in number, apparently part of a complete metrical paraphrase which he, in conjunction with some other writers, offered to execute for the public free of charge.

It is gathered from the anonymous publication of this collection of Psalms, entitled “The Mindes Melodie,” and from his series of epitaphs, that the poet was still alive in the year 1605; but he was dead before 1615, according to the title-page of a new edition of “The Cherrie and the Slae,” printed by Andro Hart in that year.

According to his own poetic statement, he was small of stature, fairly good-looking, and afflicted with the painful disease of gravel.

Most of Montgomerie’s poems have been preserved respectively in the Drummond, the Maitland, and the Bannatyne MSS. After many separate editions of the chief pieces, the whole of the poems were for the first time collected into one volume (Edinburgh, 1821) by David Laing, with a biographical notice by Dr. Irving, the historian of Scottish poetry. The only other complete edition is that by Dr. James Cranstoun (Scottish Text Society, 1885–87). The latter, in the present volume, is regarded as the standard text.

“The Cherrie and the Slae,” Montgomerie’s chief effort, has ever since its composition been one of the most popular of Scottish poems, no fewer than twenty-three editions of it having been printed since 1597. The intention of the allegory, according to Pinkerton, was to show that moderate pleasures are better than high ones. But Dempster, who translated it into Latin, considered it to be, first, a love allegory, picturing a young man’s choice between a humble and a high-born mistress, and afterwards the pourtrayal of a struggle between virtue and vice. Most readers are likely to agree with Dr. Cranstoun in considering Dempster’s solution correct, believing with him that “what the poet began as an amatory lay he ended as a moral poem; what he meant for a song turned out a sermon.” Thus, probably, it comes about that the allegory is of small account, the chief value and charm of the poem lying in its passages of description, its freshness of imagery, and its mother-wit. The opening stanzas present by far the best part of the composition. The remainder possesses but secondary interest, notwithstanding the many pithy sayings introduced; and no climax is reached even when the cherry is attained at the end of the piece.

Of the poet’s other works the longest extant is “The Flyting betwixt Montgomerie and Polwart,” a tournament of Rabelaisian humour in the style of the famous “Flyting of Dunbar and Kennedie.” Its chief interest, for poetic qualities it has none, is as a specimen of a class of composition—the mock duel of vituperation between good friends—which was in those times considered an amusing literary performance. His sonnets, “characterised by great poetic skill and singular felicity of diction,” furnish no mean contribution to the stores of a verse-form then greatly cultivated, while his miscellaneous poems, nearly all amatory, exhibit mastery of a great variety of measures. Sometimes, however, the tone of these appears affected to a modern ear, and their imagery apt to descend into conceits.

There remains, preserved by the Maitland MS., another poem, “The Bankis of Helicon,” a love lyric of great charm, which long enjoyed the reputation of being the earliest piece written in the stanza of “The Cherrie and the Slae.” Laing thought it possible that Montgomerie might be the author of this, and Dr. Cranstoun establishes the opinion with a fair amount of certainty, considering it one of the series of compositions addressed by the poet to his kinswoman, Lady Margaret Montgomerie, and pointing out the frequency with which sets of expressions and even whole lines from the other pieces of the series are repeated in it. Even if ascertained beyond doubt, however, the authorship of “The Bankis of Helicon” would add nothing to Montgomerie’s reputation, which is likely to live and die with the reputation of his greatest work, the lyrical allegory of “The Cherrie and the Slae.”

Greater in manner than in matter, Montgomerie’s verse owes its charm to finish and grace rather than to vigour and imagination, affording rather a late reflection of the early glories of the century than the glow of a new inspiration; nevertheless it has remained constantly popular, a surprising number of its lines having become household words in the shape of proverbs; it claims the credit, along with Dunbar’s work, of furnishing models both to Allan Ramsay and to Burns; and, beyond all its Scottish contemporaries, it possesses intrinsic qualities which assure it an enduring fame.