Perhaps in no part of Scotland was there—even in the fourteenth century—pure Anglo-Saxon blood. The Lothians and the south-eastern shires had been a portion of the old kingdom of Northumbria, in which, with the Angles as a normal population, there had been large Danish settlements; and numbers of Normans also settled therein, both before and after the Conquest; whilst the descendants of the old Britons had peopled the south-western shires, from the Solway to the Clyde. Thus whilst the generally spoken language of the two countries was essentially the same, the literature of England would be more purely Teutonic; that of Scotland would include Celtic elements; but these elements would assert themselves more in qualifying the style of the literature than in the use of Celtic words.

Thus, Scottish poetry generally shows a passionate love of Nature; its picturesque descriptions and vivid colourings reaching or bordering upon exaggeration. Its humour is broad, and of coarsish fibre. And then the sentiment of patriotism has ever been more pronounced in Scotland than in England. As a rule, English Nationalism was, after the Norman Conquest, even in the most disastrous times, safe and self-assertive. On the other hand, Scottish Nationalism was at one period, for a time, entirely lost; it was often in extreme danger, and was saved only by extreme efforts,—as we might say, “by the skin of the teeth.” Can we wonder then that fervid patriotism pervades,—becomes obtrusive even, in Scottish literature; and that this literature almost deifies the National heroes?

Thus, amongst the earlier efforts in Scottish poetry replete with this glowing patriotism, we have Archbishop Barbour’s poem, The Bruce; Blind Harry’s History of Sir William Wallace; and Andrew of Wyntoun’s Chronykil of Scotland. We mentioned as a poet James I., he wrote The Kings Quhair (i.e., book); it is in Chaucer’s seven-line stanza, and contains the best poetry published in Great Britain, between that of Chaucer and the Elizabethan period. From a full heart he tells the story of his love; a love which brightened his life, and shone true at his death, when his queen did her best to save him from the daggers of the conspirators. The King,—whilst a prisoner in Windsor Castle,—saw from his window his future queen, walking in an adjacent garden.

Another king, James Fifth of the name, was also a poet; he may be called the originator of that satirical humour in verse which afterwards characterized so many Scottish poets, including Robert Burns, the greatest of them all.

After the union of the crowns, and the removal of the Scottish Court to London, in 1603, the old language came to be considered a provincial dialect. William Drummond, of Hawthornden (1585-1649), was the first notable Scottish poet who wrote well in modern English. He was imbued with true literary taste and feeling, and he ranks, as do subsequent Scottish writers, amongst British authors.

The Lowland folk-speech has really changed less from the Old English than the tongue of any other portion of the island; its glossary is very largely a key to Chaucer and Spenser, to Barbour and Andrew Wyntoun. As might have been expected, the folk-speech which is nearest to the English of modern literature is that of the more remote Highlands, as of Inverness and its surroundings. Where the old Gaelic has succumbed to book-learned English, there was no intermediate stage of the older tongue.

That the Scottish tongue is a fitting vehicle for pathos as well as for humour, scores of fine old songs are in evidence. Allan Ramsay’s Gentle Shepherd, a pastoral drama of the loves and lives of the Scottish peasantry in the beginning of the last century, is the best lengthy example we have of every-day folk-speech. Burns never hesitated, when it seemed to better suit his verse or his meaning, to introduce modern English words; Ramsay rarely does this. With Burns the Scottish dialect as the expression of high-class poetry, might well have ended; but it yet lingers on, chiefly in humorous songs and descriptions.