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ROBERT HENRYSON, ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE: FOOTNOTES

1 Do you not know well I am your own true knight

2 In this way he [could] not his thirst to slake nor assuage

ROBERT HENRYSON, ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE: EXPLANATORY NOTES

Abbreviations: CA: Gower, Confessio Amantis; Consolation: Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy; CT: Chaucer, Canterbury Tales; DOST: Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue; Fox, ed.: The Poems of Robert Henryson, ed. Fox; Gray: Gray, Robert Henryson; MED: Middle English Dictionary; NIMEV: Boffey and Edwards, eds., New Index of Middle English Verse; Orpheus: Henryson, Orpheus and Eurydice; Testament: Henryson, The Testament of Cresseid; TC: Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde.

(NIMEV 3442)

Some confusion lingers over the title of this poem. In the last line of the moralitas to Henryson's retelling of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, the poet identifies the poem: "And thus endis the taill of Orpheus." In 1508, the poem was printed by the first Scottish printers, Walter Chepman and Andro Myllar, who provided the heading "Heire begynnis the traitie of Orpheus kyng." In his commentary to the opening sections of his translation of Virgil's Aeneid (1513), the Scottish poet Gavin Douglas cites the poem as the "New Orpheus" by "Maister Robert Hendirson" (Eneados 1.19n13). A few years later, the poem was inscribed into the Asloan Manuscript, where its heading reads "Heir followis the tale of Orpheus and Erudices his quene." Only late in the textual tradition did the poem acquire the title Orpheus and Eurydice, under which it has consistently appeared in its modern editions. As well as the virtue of consistency, the modern title offers a certain justice in giving billing to Eurydice: for one thing, the much-discussed double structure of the poem is thereby suggested.

Orpheus and Eurydice consists of two parts, the narrative proper and the Moralitas. Since this is the least familiar of Henryson's longer poems, a survey of its structure may be helpful. In the first part, seven stanzas of rhyme royal (the lineage of Orpheus; Eurydice's invitation to him to marry her; the death of Eurydice while fleeing her boorish attacker Aristaeus; Orpheus' departure into the forest) are followed by the lament of Orpheus (five ten-line stanzas) and then the story is completed in 33 stanzas of rhyme royal (in search of news about Eurydice, Orpheus rises to the sphere of the fixed stars and then descends through the spheres of the planetary gods; he hears the music of the spheres; he journeys into hell, where his music charms the torments of hell so that three victims — Ixion, Tantalus, and Tityus — are released; he enters the palace of hell, where he sees hosts of kings and prelates; finally he approaches Pluto and Proserpina, sees Eurydice, plays his harp beautifully, earns permission to leave with his wife under the condition that he not look back at her while she is following him, does so, loses Eurydice permanently, and utters a final complaint before he returns home). The remaining 219 lines, in pentameter couplets (at least one line is missing at 585), comprise the Moralitas, in which many of the characters and some of the events are given allegorical signification: first (lines 425–58) Phoebus, Calliope, Orpheus, Eurydice, and notoriously Aristaeus ("gud vertew," line 436); Eurydice's death, Orpheus' celestial journey; then some of the denizens of hell are given increasingly expansive, circumstantial allegorical treatment: Cerberus, the Furies, Ixion, Tantalus, Tityus; each of these vignettes except the last is concluded by noting that when reason (and/or sapience or intelligence) plays on the harp of eloquence, the torment ends; the final section of the Moralitas concerns Orpheus and his loss of Eurydice. Reason plays effectually on the harp of eloquence but cannot resist the call of "affection."

The principal source is the very widely distributed commentary on Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy by the thirteenth-century Dominican friar Nicholas Trivet (for the relevant portion, see Fox, ed., pp. 384–91; Johnson, "Hellish Complexity," p. 414), with its source in the Consolation itself (3m.12); less acknowledged but demonstrably pervasive is the influence of Chaucer, especially the dream poems. An inventive adapter, Henryson has produced "a poetic compendium of sorts, a tissue of familiar materials which stands in a densely mediated relationship to the text of the classical auctor, Boethius" (Copeland, Rhetoric, p. 228); Alessandra Petrina notes that "the convergence of literary modes, the conflation of genres, seems the key-note" for reading the poem ("Aristeus Pastor Adamans," p. 391). In recent considerations, two topics have been recurrent: the fraught relation between the tale and the Moralitas; and the celebration of learning, as revealed through the liberal arts of rhetoric, music, and astronomy, a celebration tinged with irony only inasmuch as the poet — and, by implication the reader — can get little more than a drily theoretical, jargon-ridden glimpse of the ideal perfections envisioned through these disciplines.

The most problematic aspect of the poem has to be the Moralitas, which several modern readers have viewed to be in conflict with the narrative. So uncomfortable has it made some readers that an attempt has been made to demonstrate on stylistic grounds that, in whole or part, Henryson did not write it (D. Strauss, "Some Comments," pp. 7, 10). The most influential principle of criticism has been that the first part has vernacular roots (romance, proverbs, courtly complaint), the second is steeped in the practices of scholastic commentary (see Petrina, "Aristeus Pastor Adamans," p. 390, and Johnson, "Hellish Complexity," pp. 412–13 for critical reviews of this approach); the narrative skill of the first part of the poem makes the second seem "dull and ineffectual" (Gros Louis, "Robert Henryson's Orpheus," p. 646; compare Friedman, Orpheus in the Middle Ages, pp. 199–200); it is worth noting in passing that the lack of alliteration that has been cited at the start of the Moralitas is also a factor at the outset of the narrative (Fox, ed., p. 392). Various attempts have been made to justify this conflict as significant tension: as in Ovid or Chaucer, "generic instability" — taken as an intrinsic virtue — results from the establishment of "one set of generic expectations, only to undermine them by shifting genre," and hence arises the "strain" between romance and allegory (Marlin, "'Arestyus,'" p. 143). A distorting consequence of seeking a simplistic dualism has been to read the poem in the light of subsequent cultural and literary developments, as if it were more like Gavin Douglas' Palis of Honoure or the Child ballads than it is.

More subtly, Orpheus and Eurydice has been read as very much a fifteenth-century poem, an implicit debate of genres marked by convergences of style and matter so extreme that they entail "outright contradiction" (Petrina, "Aristeus Pastor Adamans," p. 391). To restrict this principle to the relation between the narrative and the Moralitas is to miss some of its most striking effects. For example, two technical stanzas reviewing the elements of music Orpheus learned on his celestial journey lead into a first-person, colloquial admission of ignorance about the subject; as Fox notes (ed., p. 403), the moment is an amplification of a very Chaucerian gesture.

Arguably, the Moralitas pursues the narrative as Aristaeus pursued Eurydice: it does not quite catch its prey. On the one hand, the Moralitas comments outright on the meaning of the narrative, but on the other, the narrative "raises points which reflect critically on the moralitas' hermeneutic mode and which reconfigure and question the validity of the poem's patriarchal structuring of literary activity" (McGinley, "'Fenȝeit' and the Feminine," pp. 79–80). It is important to remember, as Ian Johnson has shown ("Hellish Complexity," pp. 414–15), that the source for the Moralitas, Nicholas Trivet's commentary on Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy, is also the source for the narrative: the commentary contributes episodes only briefly alluded to in Boethius' brief lyric on Orpheus; the stanzas on Tantalus are an obvious example. Evidently, the debate between the modes is ongoing; narrative and moral, for the time being, still mean too much to one another for one to overthrow the other.

1–7 The prologue opens abruptly with advice about addressing a noble audience; praise of high ancestry is to encourage emulation; underlying this beginning is a Boethian principle of nobility realized in the effort to live up to ancestral traditions of virtue (Consolation 3.6, qtd. Fox, ed., p. 391); but the emphasis on the poet's role in stimulating such ambition is a topic characteristic of late medieval literary prologues; Gray notes the same topic at the outset of the Scottish chronicle The Book of Pluscarden (tr. Felix J. H. Skene, 2 vols. [Edinburgh: T. and A. Constable, 1877–80]; qtd. p. 228).

8–14 After the conventional motives perfunctorily laid out in the first stanza, the particular concerns of the poem with debasement and "foule derisioun" begin to come into view; some complex, potentially troubling implications are presented, having to do with varieties of offense that will be given full exposition in the upcoming depiction of the denizens of hell.

12 This line is made arresting by its drastic juxtaposition between the archaic alliterative word for "man," renk (DOST renk n.2), and Henryson's latinate neologism rusticat; this is the first line in the poem in which alliteration is prominent.

13 The word monsture is used with reference to its Latin origin, monstrum, a portent or warning; the word will reappear in reference to Cerberus (lines 253, 461) and the Furies (line 475).

19–21 As in the first stanza, the emphasis shifts toward the role of the poet as an advisor to princes, comparable to Sir Gilbert Hay's depiction (1456; translated from Ramon Llull) of the "worthy wyse anciene knycht yat [that] lang tyme had bene in the excercisioun of honourable weris" who instructs a noble squire in the "hye and noble order of knychthede" (Boke of the Order of Knychthede, p. 3).

22–23 Fox suggests that the image of the wellspring may "be a reminiscence of the beginning of the Boethian metre which Henryson is following" (Consolation 3.12, qtd. ed., p. 392).

28 The poet's submission of the work to the correction of the reader is a conventional gesture, and Henryson offers it as if in passing; compare Fables, line 30.

29–30 Mount Helicon is in Boeotia, a region of Greece: from it sprang the Hippocrene spring, source of poetic eloquence; despite having been located in Arabia, the mountain thus provides an ideal location epitomizing the values of the noble audience envisioned in the opening lines, the protagonist (who is about to be introduced), and the poet.

36–63 Fox cites Dorena Allen Wright's discovery of the source for Henryson's list of the Muses in the widely distributed Latin grammar Graecismus by Eberhard of Béthune ("Henryson's Orpheus and Eurydice," p. 44; qtd. Fox, ed., p. 393; compare Testament, lines 209–17n). McGinley notes the gendered attributes in the etymologies (which Eberhard derived from the mythographer Fulgentius) provided for the Muses' names: for example, Euterpe ("delectatioun") and Melpomene ("hony swete") are rendered feminine, in contrast to Terpsichore ("'Fenȝeit' and the Feminine," p. 78).

69–70 Calliope's enspiriting lecour recalls Chaucer's use of the word (CT I[A]3; a further Chaucerian connection may be made to the eloquent praise performed by children "on the brest soukynge" (CT VII[B²]458); the image has associations with medieval depictions of the Madonna and Child, founded on Luke 11:27, "a verse not uncommon in religious lyrics on the Nativity theme" (MacDonald, "Robert Henryson, Orpheus, and the Puer Senex Topos," p. 119); compare Eneados 1.prol.463–70.

71 Considering the beginning of this line in the Asloan Manuscript ("Quhen he was auld"), MacDonald cites MED old 1a to adduce "a special sense of 'old,' as applied to children" and suggests that the word may further "express an intellectual sense of senex, implying that Orpheus was 'fully nourished in wisdom, to a level normally associated with an old man'" ("Robert Henryson, Orpheus, and the Puer Senex Topos," pp. 118, 119).

75–84 According to Charles Elliott, Eurydice "is given certain secular and sensual touches; she is haboundand in riches (line 75), and feels no shame (which suggests emotion raised above reason) in offering to Orpheus wordis sweit and blenkis amorus (line 81)" (Robert Henryson: Poems [Oxford: Clarendon, 1963], p. xviii). Fox suspects that the "account of the courtship is perhaps Henryson's invention" (ed., p. 396); the alluring glances Eurydice casts toward Orpheus are what he misses when he sees her in hell (line 355); compare Testament lines 226, 503.

92–98 Petrina notes the modulation into a lower style in the previous stanza, so that the scene already shows "affiliations with Middle English romance" ("Aristeus Pastor Adamans," p. 392); in this scene, the shepherd "is further from the princely Orpheus and nearer to the Robene of Robene and Makyne" ("Aristeus Pastor Adamans," p. 391); "rustic" qualities have already been deprecated as degenerate (line 12n).

95 Compare Testament, line 429n.

98 The setting recalls the hiding place of the fox in the Fables (lines 756, 2246).

100 Petrina observes that this line suddenly abandons "any pretence of Arcadian prettiness and establish[es] a rough and urgent tone of primal desire and flight for survival" ("Aristeus Pastor Adamans," p. 389). Ogling at "schankis quhyte, withouttin hois" rouses a lusty squire to assail a lady in Lyndsay's Squyer Meldrum (line 949).

110 Through Chaucer's Knight's Tale, Henryson alludes to a conjunction between Diana and Proserpina (compare Testament, lines 587–88n); Eurydice and Cresseid are richly comparable characters.

113 The detail of Eurydice's vanishing recalls the parallel moment in Sir Orfeo (lines 192–93); note, however, the deferral of the relation between Proserpina and the fary (with a precedent in CT IV[E]2236) until the maid's speech (lines 124ff.), where it takes on the quality of an unsophisticated, "'folk' interpretation" of the event (Gray, p. 222); compare line 359n.

127–33 Fox notes the translation "by Henryson or by a scribe" (ed., p. 397) of these rhyming words into English (compare sair, wa, mair, ga, fra, stane, mane).

131–32 In his Dirige to the King, Dunbar similarly depicts James IV doing penance in Stirling: "Solitar walking your alone, / Seing no thing bot stok and stone" (lines 17–18).

134–43 This stanza refines the ten-line ballade (aabaabcddc) in "The Compleint to his Lady" attributed to Chaucer; a ten-line stanza with the same rhyme-scheme as Henryson's appears in The Quare of Jelusy (Symons, Chaucerian Dream Visions and Complaints, lines 572–81).

135 Job 30:31.

143 The lamenting refrain stands "in stark contrast to the contemptus mundi approach of the moralitas" (McGinley, "'Fenȝeit' and the Feminine," p. 80). "The modulation in the central complaint of Orpheus, with its refrain not slavishly kept . . . is quite an extraordinary thing for a poet in the very dawn of his special dialect-division of literature" (Saintsbury, History of English Prosody, 1:272)

144–53 Henryson refines on his sources at this point: while the Boethian Orpheus plays sorrowful music, Henryson's plays a lively tune to relieve himself of his misery; though it delights the birds and trees, the "spring" fails to comfort its performer (compare line 268).

158 In the guise of a friar, the wolf wears the same humble cloth (Fables, line 679).

161 In effect, Orpheus anticipates living like the "bustuous hird" Aristeus (line 97; compare lines 92–98n).

186 Henryson, with daring originality, has Orpheus ascend into the heavens (for a discussion of the possible sources, see Gray, p. 231, note 51). Fox reports the suggestion of Russell Poole that "as sayis the fable may, like the reference to ane uther quair (Testament, line 61), be a reference to a pretended authority at precisely the point where the author is relying on his own invention" (ed., p. 399); compare Fables, lines 33–35n.

190 The key characteristic of Saturn is his bringing of stormy weather (e.g., Dunbar, The Goldyn Targe, lines 114–15); compare the more detailed portrait in the Testament, lines 155ff.n, 160–64n, 165n.

210 Of all the planetary deities, Venus is the only one who has any sense of where to seek Eurydice.

218–39 The "melody" learnt by Orpheus pertains to the Pythagorean concept of musica universalis, the "music of the spheres," by which the distances of the planets from the earth and their "proportionate speeds of revolution" were considered to be related according to musical intervals; Plato bases the concept of the world-soul on the Pythagorean proportions of the spheres (Haar, "Music of the Spheres"); the theory of this music is expounded in Macrobius, Commentary on the Dream of Scipio (pp. 73–74, 193). Given the prominence of Pluto elsewhere in the poem, the substitution of that name for the philosopher's in each of the witnesses is perhaps appropriate.

226–32 This stanza displays musical jargon but does so in order to give some substance to the musical intervals according to which the planetary spheres are related; six tones are named, corresponding perhaps to the six spheres in which Orpheus has spent time (lines 185–216), those of all the planets except the moon. As in Henryson's learned depiction of the mental process by which Troilus reacts unconsciously to the presence of Cresseid (Testament, lines 505–11n, 507n), a matter of fundamental significance can be approached by imperfect human understanding only through the abstruse complexities of jargon and theory.

233–39 This stanza has given editors much difficulty, especially if line 235 is taken to refer to a single, dissonant interval, disdiapente. A simpler reading finds the five intervals Henryson indicates: diatesseron, diapason, duplate, diapente, and dis. These are "of thre multiplicat" because they are all derived from three perfect intervals, the fourth, the fifth, and the octave — the foundations of consonance as expounded by Boethius in De institutione musica (2.18; Bower, "Boethius").

240–42 The admission of ignorance in the midst of a display of learning recalls the Franklin's self-deprecating gesture about rhetoric (CT V[F]717–27; compare Book of the Duchess line 1170); in this witty stanza, the alliterative tags gravis gray and wilsum wone appear as self-consciously naive (DOST grave 2n2; MED wilsom 1; see also lines 155, 290, and Fables 180–85n); following Henryson, the expression to "lay a straw" indicating a limit to a topic becomes idiomatic in Scots poetry (DOST stra n.1.4). Douglas ends a passage of musical theory with a comparatively exaggerated admission of ignorance (Palis of Honoure, lines 517–18).

248 Gray compares the style of this line to a recurrent motif in the ballads (p. 221; e.g., Child 2.2, 33.1); the female protagonist of "The Cruel Brother" (Child 49B) "harped both far and near / Till she harped the small birds off the briers / And her true love out of the grave" (lines 38–40).

256–58 The harp now comes into its own as a bringer of harmony; in De regimine principum bonum consilium, a Middle Scots poem of advice to princes (texts of which are preserved in the Chepman and Myllar prints and the Maitland Folio Manuscript), the analogy is made explicit between the sweet sound of a well-tuned harp (line 4) and a king's proper rule over a realm (line 9); compare lines 469–70.

259 The proportion of Orpheus to Cerberus the three-headed guard-dog of the underworld recalls that in The Lion and the Mouse, when the mice traverse the belly of the sleeping animal (Fables, line 1411); the protagonist is rendered insignificant in size.

272 Marlin notes an apparent anomaly here and again in lines 286 and 300: with his music, Orpheus is freeing those who are being justly punished; "If the tormented represent wrong desires, Orpheus' music actually quiets the guards that hold these desires in check — exactly opposite to the moralitas' interpretation" ("'Arestyus,'" p. 144). As in the Fables, mercy, reuth (Orpheus, line 286), outshines justice (lines 1461–66n; further, Johnson, "Hellish Complexity," p. 415).

275–88 Henryson is using details in Trivet to expand a mere two lines of comment about Tantalus in Boethius (lines 36–37) into two stanzas; as Johnson indicates, "Henryson adds to Trivet a more elaborated dramatic narrative, with appropriately uncomfortable details of the process of the torment" ("Hellish Complexity," p. 415); similarly, Thomas Rutledge comments that "The appetite is safely sated rather than repudiated. Orphic music seems to offer appetitive happiness rather than moral admonition. The balance of 'instruction' and 'consolacion' [lines 416–17], momentarily, has shifted" ("Henryson's Orpheus," p. 408).

284 Compare Fables, line 2346n.

286 Petrina notes that "The medieval treatments of the story frequently show a tendency to transpose it into courtly terms — a process certainly reflected in the protagonist, whose attempt to rescue Eurydice from Hades is easily ranged, along with Alcestis' sacrifice, among the supreme examples of devotion" ("Aristeus Pastor Adamans," p. 385).

288 This line, Johnson notes, "departs significantly from what both Boethius and Trivet say at this point in the metrum. They make no mention of the water standing, nor of Tantalus getting drink"; Henryson appears to have reapplied the detail in Boethius (Consolation, 3.m.12.7–9) that Orpheus stilled rivers ("Hellish Complexity," p. 415).

303–05 The slipperiness of the road to hell is conventional (Horstmann and Furnivall, Minor Poems, p. 616, line 149; qtd. Fox, ed., p. 406; compare Psalm 35 [34]:6).

310–16 In his depiction of the "painefull, poysonit pytt of hell," Sir David Lyndsay draws heavily on this passage (The Dreme, lines 189, 190–280).

321 As Fox points out (ed., p. 406), Hector and Priam of Troy are punished for upholding adultery (e.g., Lydgate, Fall of Princes, 1.6308–21).

322 For Gower, the conquests of Alexander the Great mark the passage from the age of silver to the age of brass (CA Prol.699–700).

323 Henryson could have read the story of Antiochus and his incestuous relations in Gower (CA 8.271–347); Chaucer also contributes to the notoriety of this story (CT II[B¹]82–83); see Archibald, "Incestuous Kings in Henryson's Hades."

324 Chaucer depicts Caesar as a bloodthirsty conqueror despite all the Roman hero's love of "honestee" (CT VII[B²]2671–726).

325 Herod married Herodias, his brother's wife, and was reproved by John the Baptist (Mark 6:17–18).

326 For Nero, the exemplar of imperial depravity, material was to hand in Chaucer (CT VII[B²]2463–2550) and, with emphasis on "glotonie / Of bodili Delicacie," Gower (CA 6.1151–1234; qtd. lines 1161–62).

327 Pontius Pilate broke the law by handing Jesus over for crucifixion even though he found no case against him (Matthew 27:24, Mark 15:12–15, Luke 23:20–24, John 19:4–6).

329–30 Gower depicts Crassus as a covetous emperor whom the Romans punished by making him drink molten gold (CA 5.2068–2224).

331–32 Pharoah's oppression of the Israelites results in the ten plagues (Exodus 7:14–12:34).

333–34 Saul, first king of Israel, disobeys God's command regarding the Amalekites and thereby breaks his allegiance; he massacres the priests (1 Samuel 15:7–23; 22:17–19).

335–37 Ahab and Jezebel, king and queen of Israel, coveted the vineyard of Naboth (who is not usually referred to as a prophet); Jezebel had Naboth stoned to death on trumped-up charges (1 Kings 21:1–16).

338–44 This stanza provided Lyndsay, circa 1526, with the source for a greatly expanded, forthrightly anticlerical depiction of the damnation of the religious in The Dreme (lines 162–238); Lyndsay's "In haly kirk quhillk did abusioun" (line 182) is identical to line 339 as it appears in the Bannatyne Manuscript. Fox points out that all the witnesses read bischoppis in line 343; he admits archbishoppis on Lyndsay's evidence for topical reasons: "There were no archbishops in Scotland until 1472, when Patrick Graham succeeded by simony in having papal bulls issued which raised St. Andrews, his see, to an archbishopric. Graham was widely attacked, and was deposed in 1478" (ed., p. 408). In line 342, "men of all religioun" is attested by Lyndsay, Dreme, line 181, "Thare was sum part of ilk religioun."

349–51 With her ghastly, withered, leaden appearance, in obvious contrast to her alluring appearance when she was on earth (line 75), Eurydice can be compared with Cresseid (Testament, line 461); compare Criseyde in the Greek camp (TC 5.708–14).

359 The connection between the fary and hell, previously articulated by a mere serving woman, is now confirmed by no less a personage than Pluto.

369–70 MacQueen notes that "Hypodoria and Hyperlydia were the lowest and highest of the fifteen classical Tonoi or Keys. . . . The choice of these tonoi implies that Orpheus in his playing utilised the full range from lowest to highest, and so by producing a 'proporcioun' which corresponds to the music of the spheres" ("Neoplatonism," p. 83); see also Caldwell, "Robert Henryson's Harp of Eloquence," p. 149.

377–83 Boethius gives this speech to Pluto (Fox, ed., p. 406); "Proserpine seems to get the last word in Henryson's hell, just as she does in January's garden" (Marlin, "'Arestyus,'" p. 146; CT IV[E]2236).

401–12 Johnson ("Hellish Complexity," p. 417) compares this "tragically tainted declaration" with Troilus' equally Boethian "despairingly determinist monologue of love-loss" (TC 4.974–1078) and notes the excessive pessimism of Orpheus' assertion that love's "bandis" are "unbrekable" (compare Consolation 3.m12.3–4).

405 Compare Consolation 3.12.47–48.

415–633 Copeland has argued for the dependency of the ensuing Moralitas on the "fable" of Orpheus, a dependency that she considers to operate in the Fables (Rhetoric, p. 228). The stylistic changes, Marlin notes, are "accompanied by a shift in address: the third-person narration that dominates the tale gives way to a direct address to the reader . . . suggesting a fictive rhetorical situation wherein a lecturer addresses several auditors" ("'Arestyus,'" p. 147); in this regard, Henryson's style diverges from the impersonal exposition adopted by Nicholas Trivet (for instances of the plural first person, lines 431, 437, 444, 451, 453, 455).

426 The association between Calliope and eloquence secures the allegorical connection between music and eloquence; in the narrative, Calliope is associated with "all musik" and "musik perfyte" (lines 44, 70); given the relation expounded between music, celestial harmony, and perfect proportion (218–39n, 226–32n, 233–39n), these are the values of Calliope's eloquence, uncompromised by Mercury's associations with lying (compare Testament line 252; compare Marlin, "'Arestyus,'" p. 142).

431–34 For Mann, interpreting Eurydice as the appetitive part of the soul clarifies the "downwards and inwards movement" of the the quest of Orpheus, "forced to descend from heaven to the depths of the earth to which its appetitive part, represented by Eurydice, is by nature confined" ("Planetary Gods," p. 96); Mann likens this movement to the way the "cosmos seems to be bearing down on Cresseid" in the parliament of the planetary gods (Testament, lines 143–264).

435–36 "Aristeus' 'lust' (line 101) is very far from the virtue he is supposed to represent" (Petrina, "Aristeus Pastor Adamans," p. 390); the distance is acknowledged in Henryson's protesting "noucht bot." As Petrina notes, this ethical clash has been prepared for by Henryson's apparently non sequitur insistence, at the poem's outset, on maintaining nobility against rustic degeneracy (lines 8–14; "Aristeus Pastor Adamans," p. 390).

445–46 Marlin notes a discrepancy at this point between the Moralitas and Nicholas Trivet's commentary: "while Nicholas' commentary mentions the intellect weeping for the affect, he figures it not as a sign of contrition; rather, he holds the intellect culpable" ("'Arestyus,'" p. 143).

456–57 "These 'breris' characterise the fallen condition of the affectus in this world, its fleshly attachments and its 'wrak'. Intriguingly, 'wrak' is glossed by Fox as 'worldly possessions' and also as 'rubbish' — a soundly Boethian pairing of senses showing Henryson's brilliant lexical tact" (Johnson, "Hellish Complexity," p. 416).

469–70 The harp is a ubiquitous figure of harmonious proportion, one that features in the Scots De regimine principum, texts of which appear among the Chepman and Myllar prints and in the Maitland Folio (Gray, pp. 229–33).

490 Marlin sees this as an indication of Henryson's emulation of Chaucer's bookishness ("'Arestyus,'" p. 146)

531–44 As he did in the narrative, Henryson treats Tantalus expansively: he "translates two clauses of Nicholas . . . into a fourteen line invective on miserliness" (Marlin, "'Arestyus,'" p. 147).

546 Rutledge observes that "Orpheus only loses Eurydice because he forgets, for a moment, to rely on his 'harp of eloquence' . . . It is male virtue rather than poetic power which fails" ("Henryson's Orpheus," p. 403).

559–76 Marlin finds Henryson's allegory of the myth of Tityus especially telling; in place of Nicholas Trivet's "dry, scholastic etymologies," here is an "outburst against divination, witchcraft, and sorcery," at the end of which the formula appears to be omitted that has ended each of the previous passages about monsters and their victims, namely that the harp of reason and eloquence allays the torment that has been described ("'Arestyus,'" pp. 147–48). Though the texts of this Moralitas are rife with lacunae, Marlin's conclusion deserves consideration: Henryson is inveighing against divination, at the very moment "he is striving to divine intellective meaning from a poetic text" ("'Arestyus,'" p. 148).

582 This recollection of Chaucer's "Goddes pryvetee" also recalls a warning against searching into secrets in the prologue to The Preaching of the Swallow (lines 1647–49).

616–27 The conclusion has elicited divergent responses. On the one hand, Marlin maintains a reading of the Moralitas that entails an ironically depicted narrator who "fulfils his own picture of Orpheus: a widowed reason (line 627), an intellect out of touch with its affections" ("'Arestyus,'" p. 148). On the other, Rutledge asserts that the poet succeeds, finally, in turning his attention to God and away from earthly things: "poetic eloquence (Henryson's, if not Orpheus'), bolstered by divine grace, is able to turn our 'affection' to heaven" ("Henryson's Orpheus," p. 404).

ROBERT HENRYSON, ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE: TEXTUAL NOTES

Abbreviations: A: the Asloan Manuscript; B: the Bannatyne Manuscript; Cm: the Chepman and Myllar Prints; DOST: Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue; Fox: Denton Fox, ed., The Poems of Robert Henryson.

Orpheus and Eurydice: Cm, A, B (base text); Fox

title Cm: Heire begynnis the traitie of Orpheus kyng and how he yeid to hevyn and to hel to seik his quene And ane othir ballad in the lattir end. A: Heir followis the tale of orpheus and Erudices his quene. B: Fable, VI. Orpheus and Eurydice (the script is later than that of the main scribe). In a new line underneath the title in Cm, the following appears in an early sixteenth-century Scottish hand: "Memento homo quod cinis es et in cinerem Reverteris"; this verse (“Remember man that you are ashes and to ashes you shall revert"; from the liturgy for Ash Wednesday) frames the first stanza and contributes the refrain to a moral poem by William Dunbar (Bawcutt, Poems of William Dunbar, poem 32, line 1, etc.). In the table of contents of A, the poem is referred to as The buke of Schir Orpheus and Erudices.

2 or. B: and.

14 foule. B: full.

19 ancient. B: anseane.

20 to the. B: to.

22 of a. Cm, A, Fox: or a.

23 of the. Cm, A, Fox: of his.

25 tarage. B: knawlege.

29 mountane. B: mount.
Elicone. B: electone. As emended, the word is trisyllabic in order to fulfill the meter.

31 in. Cm, A, Fox: of.

33 god. B: goddes. The reading in B makes grammatical sense but creates a metrical disturbance, adding an extra syllable to the fourth foot.

34 And. Cm, A, Fox: Quhilk.

38 clippit. Cm, A, Fox: namyt.

40 is. Cm, A, Fox: quhilk is.

50 was. B: is. The change in tense in B is not rhetorically justified and seems in error.

55 In. Cm, A, Fox: To.

58 oure. B: Greik. The variant in B is attractively precise but slightly illogical: the expounding will be done, not in Greek, but Scots.

59–175 Cm omits. The third and fourth leaves of the first gathering, on which these lines would have appeared, are lost.

64 is. B: wes.

65 and. B: and gud.

71 Incressand. A: Quhen he was auld.
up. A omits.

72 frely. A, Fox: farly. The collocation in B, frely fair, is typical of Scots and Middle English verse style (DOST frely).

73 His. B: Is.

75 Excellent. B: Excelland. See the textual note to Fables, line 1625.

76 this. B: that.

78 that. B: this.

79 And quhene. A, Fox: Quhen.

84 thay can. A, Fox: war at.

88 A, Fox: With myrth, blythnes, gret plesans and gret play.

89 I. A: we.

94 Bot. A: And.
in. B: untill.

95 dewe. B: air.

102 till hir can he. B: to his cave hir.

103 scaith. B: evill.

112 Ontill. A, Fox: And till.

116 Quhill. A, Fox: Till.
king. A, Fox: schir.

117 sone. A, Fox: than.

119 the. A omits.

123 Sperid. A, Fox: Speris.

125 on. A, Fox: in.

130 to the. B: on to.

133 he. B omits.

140 mony. A, Fox: thi. The reading in B scans metrically if pynnis, earlier in the line, is pronounced disyllabically.

141 pane foll. B: paine fell.

147 devoid. B: devod.
from. A, Fox: of.

148 that vailyeit him. A, Fox: thai comfort him. B: that vailyeit.

158 and. A, Fox: of.

166 barne. B: sone.

167 panefull. B: pelfull.

170 be. B: to be.

172 that. A, Fox: the.
nevir was. A, Fox: never was. B: was nevir.

177 I. B omits.

178 Till. Cm, A, Fox: Quhill.
for seke hir suth. B: forsuth seik hir.

179 na. Cm, Fox: no. A: nor.

180 gyde. B: grant.

182 King Orpheus thus. Cm, A, Fox: Thus king Orpheus.

183 weipand. Cm, A, Fox: wepit.

184 wer thir. Cm, A, Fox: was the.

190 to all the. Cm, A, Fox: of all thir.
stormis. Cm, A: sternis.

195 and. Cm, A, Fox: Than.

198 Than. Cm, A, Fox: Syne.

200 Bot. A omits.
he. Cm, A: that he.
awin. Cm, A omit.

201 that. Cm, A, Fox: it.

202 And. Cm, A, Fox: He.

203 his. Cm, A, Fox: that.

204 He. Cm, A, Fox: Than.
his. Cm, A, Fox: he.

210 Forsuth. B: sur. The idiom for sure is not recorded in Scots until the mid-sixteenth century (DOST sure adj).

214 knawlege gat he. B: gat he knawlege.

215 he passit. Cm, A, Fox: than passit he. The reading in the other witnesses produces a hypermetrical line.

217 on to. Cm, A, Fox: doun to.

223 throu. B: of.

225 Plato. Cm, A, B: Pluto.

227 emetricus. Fox: epetritus.

228 Emolius. Cm, A, B: Enolius. Fox: Emoleus.

229 Epogdeus. Cm, A: Epodyus. B: Epoddeus, altered from Epogdeus in the same hand.

230 Of all. Cm, A, Fox: And of.

234 dowplait. Cm: duplycate.

235 dyapente. B: dyapenty.
the. Cm, A, Fox: a.

236 Thir. Cm, A, Fox: This.
makis. Cm: mak.

238 of. Cm, A, Fox: with.

241 of. Cm, A, Fox: at.

245 our. B: with.
wone. Cm, A, Fox: wane.

246 allone. Cm, A, Fox: allane.

248 and ful fer and. Cm, A: and ful.

258 This. Cm, A, Fox: The.
doun on. Cm, A, Fox: unto.

259 Than. Cm, A, Fox: And.

261 He passit furth ontill. Cm, A, Fox: Than come he till.
ryvir deip. Cm, A, Fox: ryvir wonder depe.

264 Megera. B: mygra.

265 Turnit. Cm, A, Fox: Turnand.

273 away and. Cm, A, Fox: away than.

275 Cm, A, Fox: Syne come he till a wonder grisely flude.

276 that rathly. B: and rythly.

279 Quhen. Cm: Touch. A: Thocht. Fox: Thouch.

281 to slake. B omits.
no. A: nor.

283 tolter threde. B: twynid.

284 rokkit. B: rollit.

286 B: Quhen Orpheus thus saw him sufir neid.

287 He tuk. Cm, A, Fox: Tuke out.

288 gat drink. A, B: gat a drink.

292 fell. Cm, A, Fox: scharp.

293 As. Cm, A, Fox: And as.
blenkit. Cm, A, Fox: blent.

294 saw. B: saw lyand.
wonder. B omits.

295 Ticius. Cm, A: Theseus.
hicht. B: hecht.

296 grisly. B: gasly.

299 war. B: was.

300 thus saw him. Cm, Fox: saw hym this. A: saw him thus.

301 He tuke. Cm, A, Fox: Has tane.

302 fled and. Cm, A, Fox: fled.
Ticius. Cm, A: Theseus.

307 That. A: Thai.

309 and. Cm, A, Fox omit.

310 place and. B: place.

311 with. B: and.

314 to. B: and to.

316 may. B: sall.

318 of. B: with.
hate. B omits.

319 rycht. B: full.

320 And. Cm, A omit.
conquerouris. Cm, A: Conquerour.
land. Cm, A: of land.

323 als. Cm, A, Fox: thare.

324 And. Cm, A: Thare fand he.
his. B: his foull.

328 undir. A: efter.

329 that. Cm, A, Fox: the.

331 saw. Cm, A, Fox: fand.
for. B: for the.

333 eke. B omits.

334 Of. B: Was.

336 that. Cm omits.

337 mercy. Cm, A, Fox: pitee.

338 saw. Cm, A, Fox: fand.

339 dois. B: did. From the perspective of a reformed Scotland, Bannatyne writes as if ecclesiastical abuses are a thing of the past.

340 archbischopis. Cm, A, B: bischopis. “With some hesitation," Fox emends this word to fulfill the demands of the meter and in line with Sir David Lyndsay’s echo of the line in his Dreme, “And Archebischopis in thare pontificall" (line 175; ed., p. 408).

341 and. Cm, A: for.
intrusioun. Cm, A: ministration.

342 men of all. B: all men of.

343 placis. B: place and.

346 hiddirwart. Cm, A, Fox: thider-ward.

347 quhair. Cm, A, Fox: as.

349 peteous and. Cm, A, Fox: pitouse and. B: and peteous.

350 the. Cm, A: a.

354 your. Cm, A, Fox: thy. In B, Orpheus consistently uses the formal second-person plural pronoun when addressing Eurydice; see lines 355–56.

355 Your. Cm, A, Fox: Thy.

356 Your. Cm, A, Fox: Thi.

360 Scho hes. Cm, A, Fox: Thare is.

365 refete. B: revert. The reading in the earlier witnesses is well attested in Middle English and Scots (DOST refete) and is semantically more precise and apposite.
fax. B leaves an empty space in place of this word.

369 ypodorica. B: ypotdorica.

370 gemilling. Cm, A: gemynyng.

371 Quhill. Cm, A, Fox: Till.

372 and. A, B: or.

378 without. Cm, A, Fox: bot wyth.

383 to hell forevir. Cm, A, Fox: forevir till hell.

386 Till. Cm, A, Fox: Quhill.
outwart. Cm, A, Fox: utter.

388 with. Cm, A, Fox: in.

389 in hart apone his. Cm, A, Fox: apon his wyf and.

394 grete hartsare for. Cm, A: rycht grete hartsare. B: grit pety for.

396 How his lady that. Cm, A, Fox: Quhen that his wyf quhilk.

397 tane. Cm, A, Fox: hynt.

400 thus out on lufe can. A: thus out of lufe can. B: this out of lufe gan.

406 thay. Cm, A, Fox: he.

407 thay. Cm, A, Fox: he.

409 Hart on. Cm, A: Hert is. Fox: Hert.
handis. Cm, A, Fox: hand is.

410 mone turne. Cm, A, Fox: turnis.

411 wo is. B: wois.

414a B: Moralitas. Cm, A, Fox: Moralitas fabule sequitur.

415 Now. Cm, A, Fox: Lo.

420 poesie. B: poetre.

421 Trivat. Cm: trowit. A, Fox: Trevit.

428 intellective. B: intelletyfe.

429 and. Cm, A: in.

434 it settis. Cm, A, Fox: settis.

435 herd. B omits.

437 That. Cm, A, Fox: Quhilk.
is to. Cm, A, Fox: is ay to.

441 serpent stangis. B: serpentis stang.
the. Cm, A, Fox omit.

443 is. A: is it.

444 all. B: and all.

445 reson. B: wisdome.

446 thusgait our appetyte. Cm, A, Fox: oure appetite thusgate.

447 Cm, A, Fox: And passis up to the hevyn belyve. B: And to the hevin he passit up belyfe.

449 will. B: wit.
eik. Cm, A, Fox: als.

451 fundin. Cm, A, Fox: found.

452 within. Cm, A, Fox: in to.
bundin. Cm, A, Fox: bound.

456 in thir warldly. Cm, A, Fox: on this warldis.

458 small. B: full small.

461 pas. B omits.
the. Cm, A, Fox: yone.

469 our mynd is myngit with sapience. Cm, A: that resoun and intelligence.

470 And. Cm, A omit.

484 quhilk. Cm, A, B omit. Fox’s emendation provides an initial syllable for the third foot of the line.

485 Bot. Cm, A: That.

489 on. Cm, A, Fox: in.

490 yow. Cm, A, Fox: the.
tell. B: tell of.

491 of. Cm, A, Fox: on.

493 wald. Cm, A, Fox: wald noucht.
into. Cm, A, Fox: in.

495 on. Cm, A, Fox: in.

496 And socht. Cm, A, Fox: Sekand.

497 foull. Cm, A, Fox: full.

498 doun. B: one.

506 a. Cm, A, Fox: thair.

507 quhen. Cm, A: quhen that.
perfyte sapience. Cm, A: intelligence.

508 eloquens. Cm, A: conscience.

509–14 Cm, A omit.

517 affectioun. Cm, A, Fox: complexion. Though he selects complexion, Fox notes that affectioun “is the easier reading, but may be the right one" (ed., p. 419).

523 till his. Cm, A, Fox: to the.

525–26 Cm, A, B put these lines in the opposite order. Noting the illogicality of the variant readings in Cm and A and positing that in B the variants can be accounted for as an attempt to impose a logical order, Fox transposes these lines.
525 And. B: He.

526 Intill. B: Syne in.

534 tak. Cm, A, Fox: call.

535 him. Cm, A: thame.
thair. B: his.

536 thair. B: the.

537 fill. B: full.
fynd. B: fund.

541 on bed. Cm, Fox: and bed. A: bed.

542 othir. B: wyn.

543 thay may. Cm, A, Fox: may thai.

545 that. B omits.

546 conscience. Cm, A, Fox: eloquence.

547–50 Cm, A omit. Noting the resemblance of line 550 to Fables, line 120, Fox considers that the lines “seem genuine" (ed., p. 421).

552 tynt with grit. Cm, A, Fox: tynt is with. The repetition of grit from the previous line and again in the one subsequent makes the reading in B suspect; arguably, the repetition has rhetorical value.

553 avaris. Cm, A: avarice. B: grit avaris.

555 Of. Cm, A, Fox: And.
he. Cm, A, Fox: thair.

556 To. Cm: Go.

557 Cm, A, Fox: Bot he suld drink ineuch quhenevir hym list.

558 to. Cm, A: and.

559 Ticius. Cm, A: Theseus.

560 wyth. B omits.

563 lerit it unto the spamen. B: lyrit it unto the spyne.

566 to. B: unto.

569 in. B: of.

571–615 Cm, A omit. Noting G. Gregory Smith’s hypothesis, followed by H. Harvey Wood, that this passage, like lines 509–14 and 547–50, are not by Henryson and may have been added by Bannatyne, Fox remarks on the contrast in style between these passages and Bannatyne’s own verse (quoted, e.g., in the Explanatory Notes). Fox adds that omission of the present passage damages the structure of the poem: a moralization about “the effect of Orpheus’s harp on Titius is needed here" (ed., p. 422).

575 causis. B: caus.

588 An incomplete rhyme indicates the omission of a line or lines in B.

607 hell. B: hale.

616 Than. Cm, A: Bot.

620 wyse and warly. Cm, A, Fox: war and wisely.

623 fleschly. Cm, A, Fox: wardly.

624 syn. B: sone.

626 vane prosperite. Cm, A, Fox: sensualitee.

630 undirput. Cm, A: help us wyth.
hand. Cm: land.

631 mantenans. Cm: mane temance. Fox: manetemance.

633a Cm omits. A: Explicit the Buke of Orpheus. B: Finis quod Mr. R. H.