Page:Essays and studies; by members of the English Association, volume 1.djvu/115



Among the indications of date must be reckoned the curious, alliterative, political poem perhaps an allegory, the full historical significance of which has not been recovered the Douglas poem known as The Howlat, written by Richard of Holland, a cleric and notary in the service and under the patronage of a scion of the Douglas family, the Earl of Moray, in the middle of the fifteenth century, at the time of the culmination and fall of that ambitious house. Dated by its editor, my friend Mr. Amours, about 1450, it supplied Harry with material for his incident of Stewart of Bute taunting Wallace about his borrowed plumes, the 'fethrame' of a dignity of command which was not by right his own. Moreover, it has a value as practically convicting John Major of actually quoting Blind Harry, although professing to quote those Latin authors whom he so academically, though not without some of his frigid scholastic criticism, preferred to the minstrel as vouchers of history. Later passages reflecting current events and local circumstances, and making for an argument to fix the date of the poem, may reasonably be included, such as the episode of the squire, young Fehew, who, as the penalty of falsely assuming a herald's coat-arms and privileges, is beheaded by Wallace, while the herald who abetted Fehew has his tongue cut out for his falsehood to arms. This fierce proceeding will recall the episode in Scott's Quentin Durward, the suggestion for which was the actual sending of a false herald by Louis XI to Edward IV in 1475.