Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 7.djvu/88

224

Bithidh muileann air gach alt.agus ath air gach cnoc; tombac aig na buachaillean, a's grungaichean gun naire." i. e. There shall be a mill on every brook, a kiln on every height; herds shall use tobacco, and young women shall be without shame.

In the introduction to Robert de Brunne's Annals, written about 1233, Thomas of Erceldoune is commemorated as the author of the incomparable romance of Sir Tristrem. Gottfried of Strasburg, also, a German minstrel of the 13th century, already alluded to, says, that many of his piofession told the tale of Sir Tristrem imperfectly and incorrectly; but that he derived his authority from "Thomas of Britannia, [evidently our Thomas,] master of the art of romance, who had read the history in British books, and knew the lives of all the lords of the land, and made them known to us." This work, of our poet was considered to be lost, till a copy of it was discovered among the Auchinleck MSS. belonging to the library of the faculty of advocates, Edinburgh, and published, with introduction and notes, by Sir Walter Scott.

From the opening lines of this copy, viz.

a doubt has arisen whether it be the identical romance composed by Thomas of Krceldoune, which was preferred by his contemporaries to every minstrel tale of the time. But the celebrated editor very satisfactorily demonstrated, from the specific marks by which Robert de Brunne, a contemporary of Thomas, describes the work, that this must be the genuine Sir Tristrem, taken, probably, from the recitation of a minstrel who had heard and retained in his memory the words of Thomas. The date of the MS. does not seem to be much later than 1330, which makes an interval of about forty years between it and the author's time, a period in which some corruptions may have been introduced, but no material change in the formation of the language. Accordingly, the structure of the poem bears a peculiar character. The words are chiefly those of the fourteenth century; but the turn of phrase is, either from antiquity or the affectation of the time when it was written, close, nervous, and concise, even to obscurity. The stanza is very complicated, consisting of eleven lines, of which the 1st, 3d, 5th, and 7th rhyme together, as do the 2d, 4th, Gth, 8th, and 1Oth. A single stanza will serve to show its intricate and difficult structure. This one speaks of the education of Tristrem by Roland: