The Buke of the Howlat

In a mission to address his plight Howlat goes to the Pope who represented by the peacock in his colourful plumage. The Holy Father then summons his offices to council –  swallows for messengers, cranes for cardinals, swans as bishops, while magpies, plovers and partridges are abbots. The curlew is chancellor by virtue of being able to write with his beak in the sand. In further pursuit of the matter the secular powers are called on, among them emperor eagle, king erne and the sparrow-hawk knights. The herald is represented by the specht – the green woodpecker.

Thereon the tale diverges into a considerable digression on the powerful Douglas family arms and cause, while relating the story of the Douglas knight carrying the heart of Robert the Bruce to the Crusades. Returning to the tale, it is decreed that each bird will give one of its feathers to Howlat in an effort to improve his looks and standing. Made beautiful and puffed up with conceit, new look Howlat blows his own trumpet and struts his stuff, but only to the dismay of the other birds who promptly retrieve their feathers leaving him crestfallen and dishevelled.

‘The Buke of the Howlat’ stands as an important moment in Scottish literary history. The poem is alliterative in form, consisting of 13-line stanzas, or ‘rouncefallis’, a distinctive feature of Early and Middle Scots literature. The rouncefallis was later identified in King James VI’s book ‘Some Reulis and Cautelis to be observit and eschewit in Scottis poesie’ where he writes: ‘For Flytings, or Invectives, use this kynde of verse following, callit Rouncefallis or Tumbling Verse.’

While written in a script that might prove challenging to the general reader, the text contains a wealth of Scots words and pronunciations that might be familiar in the present day. Among these are:

• lang (long)
• warld (world)
• sicht (sight)
• neb (nose)
• dicht (strike)
• deid (dead)
• speir (inquire)
• kirk (church)
• scaith (trouble)
• corbie (crow)
• wee (small)
• ettle (intend)
• kenned (known).

There are also words such as ‘laith’ which might be familiar from literary references such as in Robert Burns’s ‘To a Mouse’: ‘I wad be laith tae rin an chase thee / Wi murd’ring prattle!’

‘Specht’, the heraldic green woodpecker of the tale is the contemporary name for a woodpecker in Dutch.

It is unrecorded as to whether ‘The Buke of the Howlat’ was performed in the great hall at Darnaway Castle or elsewhere. However, given its structure and alliterative form as well as its dedication to the Douglas family, it can be regarded as following the bardic or court poem tradition. In ‘The Cambridge history of medieval English literature’, editor David Wallace writes:

‘The attention devoted to feasting and entertainment and the theatrical display of the Douglas heraldic arms strongly suggests the poem was commissioned for a specific court entertainment.’

In the 2014 edition published by the Scottish Texts Society and edited by Ralph Hannah, the editor cites the interest ‘The Buke of the Howlat’ would hold for Middle Scots makars such as William Dunbar and Robert Henrysoun, the latter of whom would uphold themes of nature an morality in his ‘Morall Fabillis’, a revived Classical tradition popular in Europe that would later be upheld by Allan Ramsay in his animal fables written between 1720 and 1730.

Published in 1507 by Chepman and Myllar in Edinburgh from the surviving fragment of a 15th century manuscript, ‘The Buke of the Howlat’ was preserved in both the Asloan and Bannatyne manuscripts. An 1823 edition in Gothic copperplate was published by the Bannatyne Club. ‘The Buke of the Howlat’ was one of the first printed books in Scotland and is the oldest known example of alliterative verse in Scottish literature, while being a poem which both entertains and provides clues to speech patterns still extant in 21st Century Scotland. In September 2016 a children’s version of ‘The Buke of the Howlat’ was published by BC Books, with text by James Robertson and illustrations by Kate Leiper.