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Robert Henryson:
‘Mankind… resembles beasts – in all too many ways’
 The Scottish poet, John Burnside, winning this year’s TS Eliot poetry
prize was a reminder of the Scottish contribution to the English poetic
tradition. This reaches back beyond Robert Burns to William Dunbar and
Robert Henryson, who were, in fact, the outstanding English poets of the
fifteenth century. The former was court poet at the Scottish court,
rather like Wyatt at the English court a century later. Henryson
(c1425-c1500) was a relatively obscure schoolmaster in Dunfermline,
Burnside’s birthplace.
Henryson’s outstanding works are ‘The Moral Fables’ and ‘The
Testament of Cresseid.’ The latter takes up the tale of these ill-fated
lovers where Chaucer left off in his own ‘Troilus and Criseyde’. Whereas
Chaucer focuses on Troilus, Henryson considers the plight of Cresseid
after she had abandoned Troilus for a Greek lover, Diomede. If Chaucer’s
poem is a tragi-comedy, Henryson’s is a tragi-morality for which his
introduction itself establishes the tone: “A dismal season to a tragic
tale Should correspond, and be equivalent. Right so it was when I began
to write This tragedy...” (I am using modernized English as Middle-Scots
is more difficult to follow than Middle-English.)
Pantheon of gods
We learn that Cresseid has been discarded by Diomede. She returns to
her father and proceeds bitterly to blame Venus and Cupid for her
plight. When she falls into a swoon, the pantheon of gods descends to
pass judgment on her. She is condemned to be a leper for the rest of her
life. This climax to the reversal of her fortunes is captured in her
father’s anguished realization of the irreversibility of her condition:
“He looked on her ugly leper’s face, The which before was quite like a
lily flower, Wringing his hands oftimes he said alas That he had lived
to see that woeful hour, For he knew well that there was no succour To
her sickness, and that doubled his pain. Thus there was care enough
between the two.”
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Robert
Henryson |
It is Henryson’s compassion which, without diminishing his moral
sense of the inevitability of Cresseid’s fate, elevates her experience
to the level of tragedy. This compassion is evident at the outset where
we are told: “When Diomede had all his appétit, And more fulfilled of
this fair lady, Upon another he set his all delight And sent to her a
bill of repudiation And her excluded from his company.” It is the
vulnerability to exploitation of her sex that she projects at this
point. One of poetry’s saddest moments comes towards the end when
Troilus rides past the lepers as they cry out for alms: “Then to their
cry noble Troilus took heed, Having pity, near by the place to pass:
Where Cresseid sat, not knowing who she was. Then upon him she cast up
both her eyes, And with one blink it came into his thought, That he
sometime her face before had seen, But she was in such plight he knew
her naught, Yet then her look into his mind it brought The sweet visage
and amorous blinking Of fair Cresseid sometime his own darling.”
Compassionately he flings her his purse and rides on.
It is when Cresseid learns of the identity of her benefactor that she
finally overcomes her self-pity and admits responsibility for what has
befallen her: “When Cresseid understood that it was he, Stiffer than
steel, there started a bitter wound Throughout her heart, and fell down
to the ground.. And ever in her swooning cried she thus: O false
Cresseid and true knight Troilus, Thy love, thy loyalty, and they
gentleness I counted small in my prosperity, So elevated I was in
wantonness…..None but myself, as now I will accuse.” On the heels of
this recognition, Aristotetelian in its climactic effect, comes the
anguished remembrance: “O Diomede thou has both brooch and belt, Which
Troilus gave me in token Of his true love.” Henryson has succeeded in
evoking both the pity and the fear that Aristotle in his ‘Poetics’ says
tragedy should properly do.
Moral fables
The thirteen Moral Fables are mainly derived from Aesop, but Henryson
completely recreates them in terms of his personal experience and the
context of the Scottish countryside and small town community of which he
was a part. In the introduction we are told: “Forbye, the reason for
their origin Is to reproach our human aberration By viewing something
else - the brute creation….Proof by example and similitude That mankind
often, so our Aesop says, Resembles beasts – in all too many ways.”
The fables take the forms of comic satire, savage satire and tragic
satire. The first is evident in the Tale of the Two Mice. The town mouse
is actually a “burgess”, whose mayor-like position brings him many
concessions and privileges. “No rates to pay, no taxes, more or less,
But freedom had to go where e’er she please, Into folk’s larders,
sampling the meal and cheese.” We are shown, however, that these come at
a cost, namely susceptibility to the impulses of superior authorities
and reversals of fortune. It is a reminder of the unreliability of
“perks of office” and the insecurity of those who depend on them. On the
other hand, the country or ‘uplands” mouse represents the peasant who,
though forced to scrape his living from the soil, maintains his dignity
despite his poverty through being self-sufficient and content.
Savage satire is to be seen in the ‘Fox and the Wolf’. The fox is the
inveterate voluptuary who makes use of religion to assuage his
conscience and further his self-gratification. The wolf is a friar who,
like the friar of Chaucer’s ‘Canterbury Tales’, is ready to dispense
religious favours in his own interest. The fox, when he comes to make
confession of his preying on the defenceless, not only declares his lack
of repentance but negotiates his penance: “I grant thereto you will give
me leave To eat sausages or lap a little blood Or head or feet or paunch
let me be permitted For I must have some flesh along with my food.” The
wolf is ready to comply: “I give thee leave to do it Thrice in the week,
for need may have no law.”
It is in the ‘Puddock (Toad) and the Mouse’ that we find the tragic
satire at work. The mouse, anxious but unable to cross the river to get
to the grain fields, is coaxed by the toad to accept being towed across
by the latter. Midway across the toad dives downwards to drown the mouse
and a desperate struggle ensues: “She (the mouse) saw death near, so was
in great distress, Fighting to save her life with might or main. The
Mouse upward, the Puddock down did press; Beneath the waves, then up on
top again, The hapless Mouse enduring fearful pain; Her strength gave
out, and all her struggling ceased, And at the last she called out for a
priest.”
Neatly caught
Then comes the awful conclusion: “Watching all this, a Gled (hawk)
was perched nearby, For, to the whole affair, he’d paid good heed; And
with a swoop, ere Toad or Mouse could spy, He with his talons neatly
caught the thread, And to the bank with both he flew with speed. Pleased
with his prize, he whistled and he blew This butcher then did gut them
with his bill, Pulling their skin off clean, though they were tight;
Though all their flesh would scarce his stomach fill,, Gleds have to
clean up after every fight; This sad affair was settled there outright.
This Gled then ate them up and off he flew, just ask of those that saw
if this is true.”
That last comment underlines the incredibility of this development -
a merciless assassin and his helpless victim both preyed upon and
annihilated out of the blue by a greater predator. I remember MI
Kuruvilla drawing our attention to the Frost’s poem ‘Design’ as
suggesting a clue to the meaning of it all: “What but design of darkness
to appall? – If design govern in a thing so small.” In his own Moral to
the Fable, Henryson explains that, “The Gled is death coming with sudden
start As thief in night; and swiftly cuts the cord. Therefore be
vigilant, and aye alert... against the day when Death shall strike us
down.” This does not, however, adequately explain the terrible cynicism
of Henryson’s ending, so it is best to follow Lawrence’s advice - “never
trust the artist, trust the tale” - and leave the matter tragically in
the air.
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