James I of Scotland: The Kingis Quair: A Modern English prose translation

By Jenni Nuttall

James I’s The Kingis Quair is a hidden gem of medieval poetry, written in 1424 by a Scottish king held prisoner in England from the age of eleven until almost thirty years old. The poem narrates his capture and imprisonment, and how he fell in love one beautiful spring morning with an English noblewoman, Joan Beaufort. In a dream vision, we find out what King James learned about good and bad fortune from the goddess Minerva and from Fortune herself, and how he discovered the nature of true love. The poem was influenced by Chaucer’s dream visions, but also has its own whimsical charms.

This ebook offers an accurate yet very readable prose translation of The Kingis Quair by University of Oxford academic Dr Jenni Nuttall, Fellow and Lecturer at St Edmund Hall. This version of the poem in contemporary English is designed for students and for readers wishing to explore fifteenth-century poetry who might find the original Middle Scots language difficult to understand. This translation is presented stanza-by-stanza so it can be easily read alongside the original text.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jenni Nuttall
• Release date: Jan 11, 2017
• ISBN: 9780995719408

Book preview

Introduction

In March 1406, an eleven-year-old Scottish prince set sail for France in order to escape the clutches of his father’s political enemies. His ship was captured by pirates off the Yorkshire coast, and the young prince thus became a prisoner of the English Crown for the next eighteen years. The future James I of Scotland was detained first in the Tower of London and then in various castles, but later he became a member of the English royal household and joined Henry V and his army in France. During his time in captivity, James won the hand in marriage of an English noblewoman, Joan Beaufort, second cousin of Henry VI and granddaughter of John of Gaunt. Following long years of negotiations, he was freed in the spring of 1424 after the payment of a large ransom and returned to Scotland as king. He was assassinated by political opponents in February 1437.

Whiling away his months and years of imprisonment, James was a consumer of the newly fashionable English poetry, reading Gower, Chaucer and Lydgate during his time in England. The Kingis Quair (‘the king’s book’) is the result of his reading and education at the English court. Though we cannot be certain, most scholars agree that James wrote the poem and that it describes, sometimes obliquely and sometimes directly, the events of his life. It alludes to his capture, his captivity and the day on which he fell in love with Joan Beaufort, though it tells us little about the realities of their courtship or the machinations that led to his release. It was probably written shortly before or after his marriage in February 1424 and his return to Scotland in April 1424.

The poem’s autobiography is filtered through the conventions of pre-existing literary genres and responds to several literary antecedents. The poem begins with the narrating first-person reading Boethius’s De consolatione philosophiae [‘the consolation of philosophy’]. This is an appropriate choice, as Boethius too was imprisoned by his political enemies. Boethius consoles himself on the loss of his status and prosperity by imagining a dialogue with Lady Philosophy. Through their conversation he re-learns how humanity should cope with the vicissitudes of ever-changing fortune. He is re-taught what can be a source of true contentment. Philosophy also reminds him how God’s divine plan and foreknowledge of all humankind’s actions can coexist with individual free will. All of these Boethian materials find their way into James’s poem, both in its subject matter and in its literary forms (especially dialogue, complaint and consolation).

The Kingis Quair is also a courtly love vision. It displays many of the conventions and motifs of this genre: the beautiful formal garden and later the marvellous dream landscape, the spring morning, the moment of love at first sight, birds whose songs can be understood as courtly lyrics. James relishes these rhetorical and lyrical set pieces, describing his lady’s beauty, her rich clothing and jewellery, his own lovesick despair and sorrows in love. As love visions often do, the poem debates, in various ways, what love is and how lovers should behave. The narrator first marvels at why the birds celebrate springtime and love as they do. Then in his dream, he travels to Love’s palace where he sees different groups of lovers ranked and described according to the type of love they experienced or chose in their lives.

Once he has been educated about love, the narrator must also grow wise about his own choices in life and learn about the operations of Fortune, the accidents and mishaps which have so shaped his own biography. Venus sends him on to visit Minerva, goddess of wisdom, accompanied by Good Hope (a significant change from the despair he feels in the poem’s opening lines). Minerva teaches the dreamer that his love must be virtuous rather than lustful and that he must put all his faith in the Christian God. His behaviour must be humble, prudent and cautious. Finally she educates him about the true nature of Fortune.

Having heard about Fortune from Minerva, he next encounters Fortune in person, witnessing the turning of her wheel. The sudden movements of the wheel symbolise the unpredictability of fortune and the way in which one person’s fall into misery allows another to ascend to the heights of prosperity and worldly power. Nonetheless, James sees many people keen to clamber on the wheel. The vision ends just as he himself is mounting Fortune’s wheel (signalling that his own fortune is about to change) and he suddenly awakens. Yet the waking world (as