The Maitland Quarto and Poem 49

The anonymous, nine-stanza, female-voiced poem of 72 lines takes the traditions of idealised male friendship and idealised heterosexual marriage and deftly subverts them to articulate lesbian love. In this, it is doubly radical; not only does it extol the bond between two women rather than two men, but it does so in a way that is intensely homoerotic rather than simply platonic.

The initial stanzas of the poem are devoted to the unbridled praise and adoration of the woman being addressed.  Her ‘splendour […] dois onlie pas all feminine [surpasses that of all womankind]’, and the poet describes how her spirit is filled with ‘sa greit joy’ as she contemplates her ‘perfectioun’. The poem goes on:

3e weild me holie at 3our will [Ye govern me wholly at your will]
and raviss [ravish] my affectioun

3our perles vertew dois provoike
and loving kyndnes so dois move
My Mynd to freindschip reciproc

Although the woman’s ‘perles vertew [peerless virtue]’ and ‘loving kyndness’ are described as moving the poet’s mind to ‘freindschip reciproc [mutual friendship]’, the erotically-charged language strongly suggests a passion more sexual than platonic. The references to ‘ravishing my affection’ and the woman wielding her ‘wholly at her will’ would have been as loaded with sexual connotations in the 16th-century as they are when read today.

In stanzas 4 and 5, the poet lists a series of ‘auntient heroicis [ancient heroes]’ whose famed love pales into insignificance compared with her devotion to the object of her adoration.

In amitie, Perithous
To Theseus was not so traist [faithful]
Nor Till Achilles Patroclus
nor Pilades to trew Orest
Not 3it Achates luif so lest [lasting]
to gud Enee nor sic freindschip
Dauid to Ionathan profest
nor Titus trew to kynd Iosip

Nor 3it Penelope I wiss [advise/believe]
so luiffed Vlisses in hir dayis
Nor Ruth the kynd moabitiss [Moabitess]
Nohemie as the scripture sayis
nor Portia quhais worthie prayiss [whose worthy praise]
In romaine historeis we reid
Quha did devoir the fyrie brayiss [devour the fiery coals]
To follow Brutus to the deid

Although the citing of a catalogue of famous companions (biblical, classical and mythological) was a well-established trope in Renaissance rhetoric on male friendship, our poet radically yet subtly manipulates the ideals of male-centric friendship and heterosexual marriage to exalt lesbian love.

The poet first elevates their female love above that which existed between the most celebrated male friends of lore (whereby ‘friends’ should perhaps be in inverted commas, as these relationships were, it is worth noting, themselves charged with homoerotic undertones).

The poet then goes further, describing renowned exemplars of husband-wife pairings whose love is likewise eclipsed by that which exists between her and her beloved; it is greater than that of Penelope, who ‘so luiffed vlisses in hir dayis’ and that of Portia ‘quha did devoir the fyrie brayiss/To follow brutus to the deid’.

Strikingly, the poet includes in this stanza on idealised marriage a female couple: Ruth and Naomi, invoking for the reader – ‘as the scripture sayis’ – Ruth’s promise of ever-lasting fidelity, woman to woman, in the Old Testament. [‘And Ruth answered, Intreat me not to leaue thee, nor to departe from thee; for whither thou goest, I wil goe: and where thou dwellest, I wil dwell: thy people shalbe my people, and thy God my God. Where thou dyest, wil I dye, and there wil I be buryed. The Lord do so to me & more also, if oght but death departe thee & me’, The Book of Ruth 1:16-17, 1560 Geneva Bible].

Thus the poet situates the bond between her and the object of her affections both within and outwith the spheres of male friendship and heterosexual marriage. Their love blurs, combines and, ultimately, transcends these unsatisfactory categories in a way comparable perhaps only to the bond between Ruth and Naomi; who, significantly, are evoked in the context of exemplary marriage. It is a liminal love, which, in the poet’s words, truth shall prove ‘sa far above’ and ‘mair holie and religious’ than any other:

treuth sail try sa far above
The auntient heroicis love
as salbe thocht prodigious
and plaine experience sail prove
Mair holie and religious

It is in the sixth stanza, however, that the poem reaches its – explicitly sexual – climax:

Wald michtie Joue [Jupiter] grant me the hap [fortune]
With 3ow to haue [have] 3our Brutus pairt
and metamorphosing our schap
My sex intill his vaill convert
No Brutus then sould caus ws smart [hurt]
as we doe now, vnhappie wemen
Then sould we bayth with joyfull hairt
honour and blis [bless] the band of hymen

Here, with echoes of the myth of Iphis and Ianthe in Ovid’s Metamorphoses (in which Iphis is transformed into a man in order to marry the girl, Ianthe, that she loves), the author states unequivocally her desire to metamorphose into a man in order that the two women may be married: the ‘unhappie wemen’ would then no longer ‘smart [hurt]’ but ‘with ‘joyfull hairt/honour and blis [bless] the band of hymen [Hymen = the Greek god of marriage]’.

In this, the poem is wildly ahead of its time in giving explicit and heartfelt voice to lesbian love – to an impassioned desire for legally valid and binding marriage between two women. At the same time, however, it remains thirled to the strictures of 16th-century norms in conceiving of a realisable and permissible relationship only in terms of marriage between a man and a woman.

The poet wishes to have the ‘pairt [part]’ of the woman’s ‘Brutus [husband]’ and for her ‘sex’ to be converted into ‘his vaill [veil]’ in order that they may legitimately marry – and consummate their marriage. Interestingly, although ‘pairt’ could be read simply as ‘part’ or ‘role’, another definition as listed in ‘A Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue (up to 1700)’ is: ‘a part, member or organ of a human or animal body’, including ‘penis’. (It is perhaps worth noting that this double meaning is also present in other European languages: for example, the German word for ‘part’ (Teil) can also mean ‘penis’ in a colloquial context; which is played on, for example, in the Rammstein song, ‘Mein Teil’).

Yet – there is no sense that the poet actually wishes to be a man. Rather, she is a woman working within the confines of 16th-century heteronormative society, where assuming the veil of a male body appears to be the only way to legitimately marry the woman she loves.

The following stanza builds on the theme of the unique incomparability of their love, stressing how, if their marital union could be realised, their ‘mair perfyte amitie [more perfect amity]’ would eclipse that of any famed pair throughout history and ‘mair worthie recompence sould merit’.

3ea certainlie we sould efface
Pollux and Castoris memorie
and gif that thay desseruit place [if they deserved place]
amang the starris for loyaltie
Then our mair perfyte amitie
mair worthie recompence sould merit

The final two stanzas then represent a shift, accepting, albeit resignedly, the limitations imposed on their love by ‘nature’ – their female sex – and ‘hymen’ – the institution of marriage, which does not permit union between women.

And as we ar thocht [though] till our wo [woe]
nature and fortoun doe conjure [conspire]
and hymen also be our fo
3it luif of vertew [yet love of virtue] dois procuire
freindschip and amitie sa suire [so sure]
with sa greit feruencie and force [such great fervency and force]
Sa constantlie quhilk sall induire [which shall endure so constantly]
That not bot deid sall ws divorce 

Friendship is the only option open to them, and so to that ‘freindschip and amitie sa suire’ they will devote themselves unreservedly, with ‘sa greit feruencie and force’ that ‘not bot deid sall ws divorce’  – evocative not only, once again, of Ruth’s words to Naomi in the Old Testament (‘if ought but death depart thee and me’) but, of course, the commitment of marriage.

The final stanza ends the poem in similar vein, elevating their female friendship above any male friendship that has ever existed: no ‘erthlie thing’ shall ‘disseuer [sever]’ it, and its ‘constancie’ will ensure that they remain ‘in perfyte amitie for euer [in perfect amity for ever]’. However, the lamentation of the fact that ‘aduersitie ws vex [adversity vexes us]’ along with the intense passion articulated in the preceding verses leave it in no doubt that more will always be desired.

And thocht [though] aduersitie ws vex
3it be [by] our freindschip salbe sein [shall be seen]
Thair is mair constancie in our sex
Then euer amang men hes bein
no troubill, torment, greif, or tein [suffering/sorrow]
nor erthlie thing sall ws disseuer
Sic constancie sall ws mantein
In perfyte amitie for euer.
Finis.

Poem 49 is a powerful articulation, in Scots, of female same-sex desire. Although its breathtaking declaration of lesbian devotion ultimately defers to the heteronormative limitations of 16th-century Scotland, its heartfelt passion and beautiful lines still move more than 400 years later – and the poem remains as radical as it is rare.

Authorship

The poem is unambiguously written in the voice of a woman and addressed to another woman. The first stanza makes clear the female sex of the person being addressed – ‘Your splendour so madame I wein / dois onlie pas all feminine [womankind]’ – and its female voice is made explicit at various points elsewhere in the poem: ‘As we doe now vnhappie wemen’; ‘Thair is mair constancie in our sex / Then euer amang men hes bein’; ‘My [female] sex intill his vaill convert’.

Moreover, many other factors also support the poem’s female authorship. First, the poem is anonymous and occurs uniquely in this single family manuscript. Both of these factors support female authorship in this era; quite simply, men had no reason not to put their name to their writing or to limit its circulation. Further, there is comparable evidence from elsewhere in the Renaissance era of women covertly publishing through the anonymous inclusion of their poetry in manuscript miscellanies.

Second, numerous internal textual factors speak to a genuine female voice, such as the celebration of female constancy in the final stanza: ‘Thair is mair constancie in our sex / Then euer amang men hes bein’. Although the virtues of male friendship had long been eulogised, women in the 16th-century were believed to be emotionally inferior and thus incapable of forming meaningful friendships in the same way as men. These lines can therefore be read as a proto-feminist repudiation of this deep-rooted misogynistic notion, with the spirited championing of ‘our sex’ reflecting a strong sense of female identity.

Third, various other of the anonymous poems in the manuscript also speak to female experience in life and love. For example, there is a poem (66) on marital cruelty at the hands of a husband as well as two other potentially Sapphic – albeit more subtle than Poem 49 – poems (38 and 72), while others still allude to women as book owners and creative agents. As with Poem 49, their female themes together with their anonymity and unique appearance in the Maitland Quarto manuscript speak for female authorship. Indeed, the female-voiced Poem 66 is semi-anonymously signed with the initials ‘G.H.’, which have been strongly identified with Grizel Hay of Yester (born after 1560); daughter of William Hay, Fifth Lord Hay of Yester, whose family was connected to the lands of Lethington.

Taken together, this all points tantalisingly towards the potential existence of a community of women poets: to Marie Maitland, the likely compiler of the manuscript, as the centre of a group of women subverting the patriarchal conventions of Early Modern Scottish society and covertly slipping their poetry into a family manuscript. This brings us to the fourth argument in favour of female authorship of Poem 49; namely, that we have in Marie Maitland a remarkably strong candidate for its author.

Marie Maitland was clearly a highly educated and literate woman, and almost certainly the transcriber and compiler of the manuscript. Significantly, other of the anonymous poems in the manuscript (perhaps written by other women in the group?) not only allude to her role in compiling the manuscript but explicitly celebrate her own poetic talents.

In one poem (85), she is compared directly to other female poets, including the historical Greek poet Sappho of Lesbos – famous as a woman poet and (in)famous for her romantic entanglements with other women, as reflected in her poetry. Indeed, we can trace the roots of the words ‘Sapphic’ and ‘lesbian’ (of Lesbos) back to her. Poem 85 explicitly names ‘Maistres Marie’, associates her with ‘sapho saige’ and her ‘saphic songe’, and states that Marie ‘a plesant poet perfyte sall […] be’ when ‘this buik’ is finished: a clear reference, it would appear, to Marie’s dual function as both compiler of the manuscript and a poet in her own right – one in the image of Sappho.

If there is an abundance of evidence for female authorship, there is therefore also compelling evidence to suggest that we need look no further than Marie Maitland for our 16th-century Scottish Sappho. All in all, then, Poem 49 emerges as remarkable both for its female authorship in a suffocatingly male-dominated world, and for its powerful articulation of intense lesbian love in a society in which heterosexual union was the only form permitted.

Language

The poem is written in Early Modern Scots. It exhibits Scots grammatical markers such as the ‘-t / -it’ ending on weak verbs that we still see in Modern Scots verbs – for example, indewit (Modern English: endowed; Modern Scots: endowit); profest (professed; professit); desseruit (deserved; deservit). There is also the now historical Scots ‘-is’ inflection to mark possessives and plurals, as in spheris (sphere’s); vertewis (virtues); dayis (days); and goddis (gods). Similarly, we see the striking Older Scots marker of ‘quh-’ at the beginning of words that now start with ‘wh-’: as in, for example, quhais (whose); quha (who); and quhilk (which).

The fricative sound ‘-ch’, still present in Modern Scots, is seen represented in words such as ‘licht’, ‘hicht’, ‘thocht’ and ‘michtie’. The vocabulary of the poem also contains various words still in common currency in Modern Scots, albeit sometimes in an older form of spelling, from ‘amang’, ‘mair’ and ‘hairt’ to ‘sic’, ‘pairt’ and ‘bayth (baith).’ By contrast, other items of Scots vocabulary in the 16th-century poem have since fallen out of common usage; for example, the verb ‘tae wein’ meaning ‘to surmise, suppose, think, believe’; the adjective ‘traist’ meaning ‘faithful, trustworthy, reliable’, and the noun ‘tein’ meaning ‘suffering, sorrow, affliction’.

The Scots of the poem also exhibits the now obsolete ȝ (yogh ) as representing ‘y’ (3our – your; 3it – yet) and, less frequently, ‘th’ (3airtill – thereto; 3e – the). We also see ‘v’ and ‘u’ used interchangably (vnknawin; prove; vnhappie; deseruit; feruencie; ws; aduersitie; euer).

See the links below for further reading.

LGBT+ History Month

If the existence and worth of the Scots language throughout Scotland’s history is often overlooked and undervalued, so, too, is that of Scotland’s women – let alone queer women. This Wee Windae is about a magnificent 16th-century Sapphic poem in Early Modern Scots. Launched in LGBT History Month February 2021, it aims to shine a light on and celebrate the true richness of Scotland’s past in all its diversity.