“Dewgar, gud day, bone Senzhour, and gud morn!

* * * * *

Sen ye ar Scottis, zeit salust sall ye be;
Gud deyn, dawch Lard, bach lowch, banzoch a de”.

In “The Book of the Howlat”, written in the latter half of the fifteenth century, by a certain Richard Holland, who was an adherent of the House of Douglas, there is a similar imitation of Scottish Gaelic, with the same phrase “Banachadee” (the blessing of God).  This seemingly innocent phrase seems to have some ironical signification, for we find in the Auchinleck Chronicle (anno 1452) that it was used by some Highlanders as a term of abuse towards the Bishop of Argyll.  Another example occurs in a coarse “Answer to ane Helandmanis Invective”, by Alexander Montgomerie, the court poet of James VI.  The Lowland literature of the sixteenth century contains a considerable amount of abuse of the Highland tongue.  William Dunbar (1460-1520), in his “Flyting” (an exercise in Invective), reproaches his antagonist, Walter Kennedy, with his Highland origin.  Kennedy was a native of Galloway, while Dunbar belonged to the Lothians, where we should expect the strongest appreciation of the differences between Lowlander and Highlander.  Dunbar, moreover, had studied (or, at least, resided) at Oxford, and was one of the first Scotsmen to succumb to the attractions of “town”.  The most suggestive point in the “Flyting” is that a native of the Lothians could still regard a Galwegian as a “beggar Irish bard”.  For Walter Kennedy spoke and wrote in Lowland Scots; he was, possibly, a graduate of the University of Glasgow, and he could boast of Stuart blood.  Ayrshire was as really English as was Aberdeenshire; and, if Dunbar is in earnest, it is a strong confirmation of our theory that he, being “of the Lothians himself”, spoke of Kennedy in this way.  It would, however, be unwise to lay too much stress on what was really a conventional exercise of a particular style of poetry, now obsolete.  Kennedy, in his reply, retorts that he alone is true Scots, and that Dunbar, as a native of Lothian, is but an English thief: 

  “In Ingland, owle, suld be thyne habitacione,
   Homage to Edward Langschankis maid thy kyn”.

In an Epitaph on Donald Owre, a son of the Lord of the Isles, who raised a rebellion against James IV in 1503, Dunbar had a great opportunity for an outburst against the Highlanders, of which, however, he did not take advantage, but confined himself to a denunciation of treachery in general.  In the “Dance of the Seven Deadly Sins”, there is a well-known allusion to the bag-pipes: 

  “Than cryd Mahoun[27] for a Healand padyane;
   Syne ran a feynd to feche Makfadyane[28]
       Far northwart in a nuke.[29]
   Be he the correnoch had done schout
   Erschemen so gadderit him about
     In Hell grit rowme they tuke. 
   Thae tarmegantis with tag and tatter
   Full lowde in Ersche begowth to clatter,
     And rowp lyk revin and ruke. 
   The Devill sa devit was with thair yell
   That in the depest pot of Hell
     He smorit thame with smoke.”