William Dunbar Poet
- Name : Dunbar
- Born : c. 1460
- Died : 1520
- Category : Poets
- Finest Moment : A Scottish poet and satirist at the English Royal Court of James IV.
Born, around 1460, and perhaps in East Lothian, William Dunbar remains one of Scotland's greatest poets, though lamentably known to less than he deserves. He graduated as a Bachelor of Arts from St Andrews in 1477. After university, he became a novitiate Franciscan; the restraints of this life probably irked him, though travel through France would have helped salve the otherwise tedious duties.
In particular, in Paris he met up with a right gang of expatriate Scots, all enjoying the cafe life of the late 15th century. Hector Boece, Bishop Elphinstone of Aberdeen, Gavin Douglas and other learned reprobates.
He joined the court of James IV as a salaried poet. This must have meant an advanced ability to entertain, both in person and as an official mouthpiece of the King. He certainly accompanied James IV to France and Scandinavia, while in December 1501 he was in London helping to arrange the marriage of James to Margaret Tudor. This latter event was addressed by Dunbar in The Thrissell and the Rois (1503). In this work, not only is he chuntering on nicely about heraldry and hierarchy, he also is warning the King against continued philandering, being now part of the Tudor stock.
In Lament for the Makaris (makaris: poets or creators), he uses the spooky device of a repeated line at the end of every verse: Timor mortis conturbat me, so that the first two stanzas read:
I that in heill wes and gladness, Am trublit now with gret seiknes, And feblit with infermite; Timor mortis conturbat me.
Our plesance heir is all vane glory, This fals warld is bot transitory, The flesche is brukle, the Fend is sle; Timor mortis conturbat me.
And so on. Read out loud, as it should be, it gains in stature and impact with every stanza. A favourite of the Queen, he gained a reasonable pension of some 80 pounds in 1510, shortly after fading from court life and probably enjoying his twilight in the gardens. It was in a garden that he set one of his masterpieces, The Tretis of the Tua Mariit Wemen and the Wedo, which uses unrhymed alliterative verse and a fair amount of down to earth language. There are indeed some lovely old words in his verse; a wallidrag is a weakling for example, while a bumbart is a drone. Try them out on your colleagues at work, but refrain from calling your boss a carll mangit - old dotard - it may not be appreciated!