Esther Inglis: A Franco-Scottish Jacobean Writer and her \u3cem\u3eOctonaries upon the Vanitie and Inconstancie of the World\u3c/em\u3e

This article draws attention to the hitherto ignored poetry of the Franco-Scottish Jacobean calligrapher and limner, Esther Inglis (c.1570 -1624). Inglis is the subject of a fast growing body of published scholarship, but though she left a small body of original prose and verse, she has been given no place in Scottish literature. The article falls into six sections. The substantial first section notes first that to date, there has been a tendency to shy away from dealing with her as a writer, and that Inglis’s formative Scottish background has been largely ignored. The second section looks at Inglis and her family in Edinburgh, as well-integrated Huguenot bourgeois immigrants. The short third section considers Inglis’s spiritual reading material, and the lengthier fourth contextualises and then analyses the three commendatory sonnets that preface several of her productions. The short fifth section briefly survey Inglis herself as an author, and the sixth introduces the fifty Octonaries upon the Vanitie and Inconstancie of the World, which are currently known in only three manuscripts she created before 1610. The article itself is followed by the first-ever printed text of Inglis\u27s Octonaries, textual notes with variants among the three manuscripts, and three appendices. NOTE: the current file (July 14 2023) represents the final corrected version; if you have consulted a previous version, you may need to refresh your browser. SSL Ed

Appendices to Inglis, Octonaries: Titles and Dedications from other MSS, MSS Containing the ‘G.D.’ and ‘Velde’ Sonnets, Who Was ‘G.D.’?

Three Appendices to the preceding article on Esther Inglis\u27s Octonaries: (1) transcribe the Titles and Dedications in other manuscripts; (2) record the five MSS containing the ‘G.D.’ and ‘Velde’ Sonnets discussed in the article; and (3) review possibilities for the identity of \u27G.D.\u27, proposing that it was George Douglas, a gifted vernacular poet and translator of Boethius.NOTE: the current file (June 25 2023) includes minor corrections. Please refresh your browser if you downloaded a previous version. SSL Ed

Posthumous Preaching: James Melville\u27s Ghostly Advice in Ane Dialogue (1619), with an Edition from the Manuscript

Discusses the use of the dialogue in Renaissance Scotland, and explores the background, themes, and dramatic art of Ane Dialogue (1619), concerning the Five Articles of Perth (1618), and resistance to the church policies of King James VI & I; gives character-sketches of the four speakers, James Melville, William Balcanquhall, Archibald Johnstone, and John Smyth, and of their satiric target, the Edinburgh minister William Struthers; concludes by providing an annotated edition of the dialogue transcribed from the sole manuscript, National Library of Scotland, Wodrow Quarto LXXXIV, ff. 19-25

\u27Upon the Decaying Kirk\u27: A Footnote to Ane Dialogue

Prints a short Scottish verse-fragment from the 1630s, Upon the Decaying Kirk, and discusses its relation to an earlier, longer workAne Dialogue (1619: see SSL 43:1) and to presbyterian protests in the Edinburgh High Kirk against the introduction of episcopalianism under King Charles I

Esther Inglis, Octonaries: Textual Notes and Glosses

These notes record variant readings from two further manuscripts of Esther Inglis\u27s Octonaries, Folger MS V.a.92, and New York Public Library Spencer Coll. MS. 14, collated against the text transcribed in the preceding item, Folger Library, MS V.a.91. The notes also indicate the places where the order of the octonaries varies between manuscripts and also include a few glosses on Scots words likely to be unfamiliar to non-Scottish students or scholars. NOTE: the current version (June 25 2023) incorporates minor corrections. Please refresh your browser if you downloaded an earlier version. SSL Ed

Esther Inglis, Octonaries, upon the Vanitie and Inconstancie of the World, edited from Folger MS V.a.91

This article provides the first-ever printed text of the poem-sequence discussed in the preceding article, Octonaries, upon the Vanitie and Inconstancie of the Worlde (1600), by the Franco-Scottish poet and calligrapher Esther Inglis (1571-1624). The text given here has been transcribed from one of two manuscripts of the Octonaries in the Folger Library, MS V.a.91. Variant readings from two further manuscripts, Folger MS V.a.92, and New York Public Library Spencer Coll. MS. 14, along with some glosses, are given in the following section. NOTE: The text here now (June 13) incorporates a few final editors\u27 corrections inadvertently omitted by the SSL editor when first uploading the article (June 11). P.G.S

Metrical Psalmody and the Bannatyne Manuscript: Robert Pont's Psalm 83

Cet article remet dans son contexte, ou plutôt dans ses contextes, la paraphrase métrique du psaume 83 écrite par Robert Pont pour le premier psautier métrique de l'Église reformée écossaise (1564). On y montre que cette paraphrase constitue le seul lien textuel entre les trois grands receuils de vers qui virent le jour dans l'Écosse des années 1560, après le triomphe de la Réforme, à savoir, les Gude and Godlie Ballatis, le Psautier officiel, et le manuscrit Bannatyne. Cet article décrit ces trois contextes fort différents, et montre que dans chacun d'eux, le psaume 83 incarne un concept bien différencié de la continuité au sein des bouleversements et les incertitudes de l'époque