Fur maist o history, anonymous wis a wumman

We commissioned Ashley Douglas to research the absences and erasure of women’s voices from the early times of published poetry in Scotland. Ashley also looks at the misattribution and denial of same-sex women’s writing.

This article is presented in Scots Language. An accompanying English translation follows after the Scots text.

Fur maist o history, anonymous wis a wumman

“Ah wid ettle at a guess that Anon, whae scrievit sae monie poems wioot signin them, wis aft a wumman.”
(I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.)
— Virginia Woolf

The 16th-century Maitland Quarto manuscript is hame tae 95 Scots poems. Aroond hauf the poems in this commemorative, faimily manuscript are attributit tae Sir Richard Maitland – statesman, judge, makar and Keeper o the Great Seal o Scotland – whae deed in Mairch 1586, the year the manuscript is datit.

A hantle ither poems in the manuscript are attributit tae a hantle ither men, aw faimily memmers or associates: John Maitland (a son o Sir Richard and chancellor tae King James VI); King James VI himsel; kirk figure Alexander Arbuthnot; court poet Alexander Montgomerie; and scriever-musicians associatit wi the court o James VI, Thomas Hudson and Robert Hudson.

Hooivver, cooried in atween these scrievins o the male great and guid o Scotland, and makkin up nearhaun a third o the manuscript, are mair than 30 poems wi nae attribution – and it’s here that Virginia’s jalouse that anonymous wis aft a wumman taks on muckle significance.

The maist staun-oot exemple o a wumman hidin in plain sicht is the anonymous poem 49. No jist scrievit explicitly in the voice o a wumman, it is a pooerfu and gey early expression o same-sex luve addressed tae anither wumman.

Oor female poet sets oot a wheen biblical, classical and mythological ‘auntient heroicis [ancient heroes]’ whase faur-kent devotion, she threaps, blaikens intae nocht comparit tae thon atween her and her beloved.

At the poem’s climax, she states her desire tae tak on the veil o male sex sae that the twa wimmen micht mairry. In the hinnermaist stanzas, hooivver, she accepts, awbeit wi dowie hert, that they cannae be thegither – resolvin insteid aye tae tak comfort in their ‘constancie’, which ‘sall […] mantein’ them ‘in perfyte amitie, for euer’.

The female voice is makkit explicit at monie points, no least in the smeddumfou championin o ‘oor sex’ in the final stanza: ‘thair is mair constancie in our sex / Then euer [ever] amang men hes [has] bein’.

The poem is ane o the earliest exemples o lesbian poetry in Europe since Sappho hersel wis scrievin mair than twa thoosan year syne. Its significance can haurdly be owerthreapit.

No that ye’d ken thon, hooivver, fae the existin scholarship on the Quarto. 

Pinkerton, whae furthset a hantle o its poems in the 18th century, didnae even print it, dingin it doon as  “a song of friendship from one lady to another of sufficient insipidity”.

And although in 2015, whan a new critical edition o the hale manuscript wis furthset, poem 49 wis recognised as “a lyric in celebration of the constancy of (erotic) love between women” – we were naetheless reassurit that it is “not impossible … that MQ 49 was composed by a male poet and ventriloquises the female voice”.

Likewise, the earlier A History of Scottish Women’s Writing (1997) gangs oot its wey tae stress in relation tae poem 49 that “a feminine persona does not entail female authorship”.

Occam wid be birlin in his grave at the haun-wringin and heelstergowdie mental gymnastics that gang intae reframin an unjoukably lesbian luve poem as the creative experimentation o an unkent heterosexual chiel.

Forby, poem 49 isnae the anely victim o this dingiein or dingin-doon o the obvious. The Quarto is stappit fou o ither anonymous luve poems, monie o which share themes and language wi poem 49.

Fur exemple, poem 89 is a hertsair lament in gender neutral voice anent absence fae a female lover, which micht be tholed anely through the comfort tae be fund in the ‘constancie’ o their luve.

The final twa stanzas in particular lowp oot as a keekin-gless image o the sentiment and phrasin o the final stanza o poem 49 .

89
Thocht absence be
The meladie
Tormenting me
With daylie grief,
ȝour constancie
May remedie
Gif not, I die
Without relief.

49
And thocht aduersitie ws vex
ȝit, be our friendschip salbe sein
Thair is mair constancie in our sex
Then euer amang men hes bein:
No troubill, torment, greif or tein,
Nor erthlie thing sall vs disseuer;
Sic constancie sall vs maintein
In perfyte amitie, for euer.

Though adversity/absence micht scunner them, it can be owercome through their ‘constancie’.

Nor is this the anely parallel wi poem 49; faur fae it. Fur exemple, Penelope is aince mair invokit as a figure o exemplary devotion; and, aince mair, oor poet states that her ain luve ootshines even thon o Penelope, bein even ‘constanter’:

To find ane trew Penelope
Quhair other sum hes wrocht in vaine
ȝit I beleif to find ȝow sa
And constanter for to remaine

Compare poem 49: ‘Nor 3it Penelope […] so luiffed Vlisses in hir dayis’.

Forby, poem 89 refers tae hoo their “constancie/deservis als great recompance”, which is gey evocative o the lines o poem 49 anent hoo their: “mair perfyte amitie/Mair worthie recompence sould merit”.

Sae, whit does the 2015 edition hae tae sae aboot poem 89?

“In this poem, the lover complains of his (?) separation from his lady, whom he hopes will be faithful and just towards him, despite his unexplained absence […]” 

“Absence”, the 2015 edition gangs on tae sey, is “a common theme in contemporary lyric poetry” – takkin nae tent at aw o the obvious affinities wi poem 49 o the same manuscript. Insteid, we are telt tae “Compare, for example, Montgomerie […]” – a male poet.

The anonymous poem 72, meanwhile, is scrievit halely in first person voice and addressed tae an unspecified “ȝou”. At nae pynt is gender referred tae.

Gif faithfulnes ȝe find,
And that ȝour mynd content,
Ane band heirby I bind
Of firme fayth and feruent

It concerns the theme o luve and devotion as expressed through the ‘band’ o mairriage, introducit in the first stanza abuin; cf. the ‘band of Hymen [Greek god o mairriage]’ referred tae in poem 49.

Mairower, the lines ‘As hostage in ȝour hand’ and ‘As plesis ȝow command’ are evocative o poem 49’s erotically-chairged ‘3e weild me holie at 3our will’.

As wi poems 49 and 89, we hae forby the theme o ‘constance’ and ‘loyaltie’ bein worthie o ‘recompance’: Gif loyaltie may love / Ane recompance procuire. And, like in poem 49, it is statit that truth shall pruive the veracity o their luve: as treuth sall try my pairt (compare poem 49 ‘That treuth sall try, sa far above’).

Although the gender neutrality o poem 72 is taen tent o, aince mair, the 2015 edition lowps – wioot onie mention o the parallels wi poems 49 and 89 – tae similarities wi the poetry o twa male poets, Montgomerie and Scott. Obviously, ane instance o the wird ‘recompence’ in a poem by Montgomerie is faur mair significant than the verra same wird and notion kythin repeatedly in ither anonymous poems o the same manuscript.

But whit wey wid Montgomerie, Scott, or onie ither chiel, coorie thairsels awa ahint anonymity? Indeed, the anely reason the 2015 edition is able tae threap that some male poets did experiment wi female voice is acause, whan they did – they pit their names tae it. Tae pit it simply, men in thon era had nae guid reason no tae pit their name tae their scrievin or tae limit its circulation. 

Taen thegither, anonymity plus female or gender neutral voice plus their unique kythin in jist ane faimily manuscript aw scream oot in favour o female scrievership o these poems.

Even warse, no anely is anonymous mair likely tae be a wumman, we hae in Marie Maitland an obvious candidate fur exactly which wumman. A dochter o Sir Richard Maitland, it is weel acceptit that the manuscript wis transcribit and pit thegither by Marie, whase name kythes twice on its title page.

Whit’s mair, ither o the anonymous poems explicitly name Marie and mak reference tae baith her scrievin o the manuscript and her ain literary talents – includin comparin her tae nae less than Sappho.

In poem 69, Marie kythes as pairt o a dream vision, which includes a pun on her surname. (Marie, I thocht, in this wod did appeir / Mait, land, and gold scho gave aboundantlie). Marie’s literary talents are heized, and a series o goddesses, includin Diana, are invokit.

Poem 85 names ‘Maistres Marie’ ootricht, compares her wi ‘sapho saige’ and states that, like thon female makar, Marie will be ‘a plesant poet perfyte [perfect]’ whan ‘this buik’ – i.e. the manuscript – is feenisht.

Follaen richt on fae this ane, poem 86 is an appeal tae the “goddis and goddessis” tae help its author “to end this worthelie” – ‘this’ siccarly the same ‘buik’ jist referred tae in poem 85. Specifically, Diana is cawed upon, linkin back tae poem 69 and its clear associations wi Marie. Scrievit in the first person and kythin at the verra end o the Quarto, there can be little doot that this ane is in the haun o Marie hersel.

This taks us forby tae poem 74 – an anonymous luve poem entitlet “In praise o ane Gentle Woman”, which contains the lines:

ȝe heavenlie goddis above, ȝe most celestiall,
Vnto my muse ȝour earis doe bend, and for ȝour help I call:

The 2015 commentary (o coorse) ascribes male authorship and states that these are ‘echoic’ o line 1 o poem 63, which is attributit tae (o coorse) Alexander Montgomerie. It reads:

ȝe hevinis abone, with heavinlie ornamentis.

But gin poem 74 is ‘echoic’ o Montgomerie (a shooglie threap in itsel), it is siccarly a 16th-century copy-and-paste o Marie Maitland’s poem 86:

ȝe heauinlie goddis and goddessis,
ȝe most celestiall,
Vnto my muse ȝour helpis doe bend,
And for ȝour aydis I call.

This unmissable wird-fur-wird similarity is (o coorse) completely dingied by the 2015 edition.

Marie isnae the anely wumman hidin in plain sicht, but whae finds a chiel choreyin credit fur her wirds. Poem 66 is ane elegy in female voice anent marital cruelty at the hauns o a husband. It is semi-anonymously signed wi the initials ‘G.H.’, which were identified in a 2012 thesis wi Grizel Hay o Yester, whase faimily wis connectit tae the Maitlands. The editor o the 2015 edition either wisnae awaur, or taks nae tent, o this thesis, o which there is nae mention. Insteid, it is threapit that it micht weel be “a male-authored female-voiced lyric”. A 2017 review o the 2015 edition hauds forrit wi this erasure, statin, “there is no compelling reason to assume female authorship”.

We could gang on. Commentary on the ither anonymous poems is drookit in  siblike dingiein or dingin doon o the obvious, whaurivver a wumman’s wirds are fund.

The same misogynistic doonhauds that stappit wimmen fae pittin their name tae their scrievin in the first place noo leads academic critics tae assume that anonymous poems maun hae been scrievit by men.

But anonymous wis, fur maist o history, a wumman. Whiles, we can even gie her a name. It’s faur rarer, hooivver, that we can pit a face tae the name forby.

Noo, gin Marie Maitland had been a man, we’d like as no hae a contemporary portrait o her. Siccarly, we hae portraits o her brithers, William and John.

In this ferlie imagined portrait, commissioned in 2021, her facial features draw on those o her brithers, while her dress is based on portraits o noblewimmen fae thon era.

Symbolically, she hauds a quill and a buik. Mairower, echoin in style the letterin on a portrait o her brither John, “1586” (the year the manuscript is datit) kythes alangside the epithet SCOTTIS SAPHO SAIGE – a fittin sentiment that wid hae been recognised by her female co-makars and beloved(s).

In the Maitland Quarto, anonymous wis aft Marie Maitland – and here she is.

This portrait of Marie Maitland: Scottis Sapho Saige, 1586 was commissioned – and is copyrighted – by Ashley Douglas.

Ashley Douglas is a multilingual (English, Scots, German, Danish, Gaelic) researcher, writer and translator, specialising in the Scots language and LGBT+ history.

She has been involved in various award-winning Scots projects, and has worked with bodies including the National Library of Scotland, the British Library, and the Edinburgh International Book Festival.

(English Translation)

For most of history, anonymous was a woman

“I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman”.
—Virginia Woolf

The 16th-century Maitland Quarto manuscript contains 95 Scots poems. Around half of the poems in this commemorative, family manuscript are attributed to Sir Richard Maitland – statesman, judge, makar, and Keeper of the Great Seal of Scotland – who died in March 1586, the year that the manuscript is dated.

A number of other poems in the manuscript are attributed to a number of other men, all family members or associates: John Maitland (a son of Sir Richard and chancellor to King James VI); King James VI himself; kirk figure Alexander Arbuthnot; court poet Alexander Montgomerie; and writer-musicians associated with the court of James VI, Thomas Hudson and Robert Hudson.

However, nestled among the verse of the male great and good of Scotland, and making up nearly a third of the manuscript, are more than 30 poems with no attribution – and it’s here that Virginia’s guess that anonymous was often a woman takes on great significance.

The most stand-out example of a woman hiding in plain sight is the anonymous poem 49. Not only is it written explicitly in the voice of a woman, it is a powerful and remarkably early expression of same-sex love addressed to another woman.

Our female poet sets out a series of biblical, classical and mythological ‘auntient heroicis [ancient heroes]’ whose exemplary devotion, she claims, pales into insignificance compared to that between her and her beloved.

At the poem’s climax, she states her desire to take on the veil of male sex so that the two women might marry. In the final stanzas, however, she resignedly accepts that they cannot be together – resolving instead always to take comfort in their ‘constancie’, which ‘sall […] mantein’ them ‘in perfyte amitie, for euer’.

The female voice is made explicit at many points, not least in the bold championing of ‘our sex’ in the final stanza: ‘thair is mair constancie in our sex / Then euer [ever] amang men hes [has] bein’.

The poem is one of the earliest examples of lesbian poetry in Europe since Sappho herself was writing more than two thousand years ago. Its significance can hardly be overstated.

Not that you’d know that, however, from the existing scholarship on the Quarto. 

Pinkerton, who published a selection of its poems in the 18th century, didn’t even print it, dismissing it as “a song of friendship from one lady to another of sufficient insipidity”.

And although in 2015, when a new critical edition of the whole manuscript was published, poem 49 was recognised as “a lyric in celebration of the constancy of (erotic) love between women” – we were nonetheless reassured that it is “not impossible … that MQ 49 was composed by a male poet and ventriloquises the female voice”.

Likewise, the earlier A History of Scottish Women’s Writing (1997) goes out of its way to stress in relation to poem 49 that “a feminine persona does not entail female authorship”.

Occam would be birling in his grave at the hand-wringing and heelstergowdie mental gymnastics that go into reframing an explicitly lesbian love poem as the creative experimentation of an unknown heterosexual man.

Moreover, poem 49 is not the only victim of this ignoring or undermining of the obvious. The Quarto is replete with other anonymous love poems, many of which share themes and language with poem 49.

For example, poem 89 is a pained lament in gender neutral voice about absence from a female lover, which might be tholed only through the comfort to be found in the ‘constancie’ of their love.

The final two stanzas in particular jump out as a mirror image of the sentiment and phrasing of the final stanza of poem 49.

89
Thocht absence be
The meladie
Tormenting me
With daylie grief,
ȝour constancie
May remedie
Gif not, I die
Without relief.

49
And thocht aduersitie ws vex
ȝit, be our friendschip salbe sein
Thair is mair constancie in our sex
Then euer amang men hes bein:
No troubill, torment, greif or tein,
Nor erthlie thing sall vs disseuer;
Sic constancie sall ws maintein
In perfyte amitie, for euer.

Though adversity/absence might scunner them, it can be overcome through their ‘constancie’.

Nor is this the only parallel with poem 49; far from it. For example, Penelope is once again invoked as a figure of exemplary devotion; and, once again, our poet states that her own love surpasses even that of Penelope, being even ‘constanter’. 

To find ane trew Penelope
Quhair other sum hes wrocht in vaine
ȝit I beleif to find ȝow sa
And constanter for to remaine

Compare poem 49: ‘Nor 3it Penelope […] so luiffed Vlisses in hir dayis’.

Poem 89 also refers to how their “constancie/deservis als great recompance”, which is highly evocative of the lines of poem 49 about how their: “mair perfyte amitie/Mair worthie recompence sould merit”.

So, what does the 2015 edition have to say about poem 89?

“In this poem, the lover complains of his (?) separation from his lady, whom he hopes will be faithful and just towards him, despite his unexplained absence […]” 

“Absence”, the 2015 edition goes on to say, is “a common theme in contemporary lyric poetry” – making no mention whatsoever of the obvious affinities with poem 49 of the same manuscript. Instead, we are told to “Compare, for example, Montgomerie […]” – a male poet.

The anonymous poem 72, meanwhile, is written entirely in first person voice and addressed to an unspecified “ȝou”. At no point is gender referred to.

Gif faithfulnes ȝe find,
And that ȝour mynd content,
Ane band heirby I bind
Of firme fayth and feruent

It concerns the theme of love and devotion as expressed through the ‘band’ of marriage, introduced in the first stanza above; cf. the ‘band of Hymen [Greek god of marriage]’ referred to in poem 49.

Moreover, the lines ‘As hostage in ȝour hand’ and ‘As plesis ȝow command’ are evocative of poem 49’s erotically-charged ‘3e weild me holie at 3our will’.

As with poems 49 and 89, we also have the theme of ‘constance’ and ‘loyaltie’ being worthy of ‘recompance’: Gif loyaltie may love / Ane recompance procuire. And, like in poem 49, it is stated that truth shall prove the veracity of their love: as treuth sall try my pairt (compare poem 49 ‘That treuth sall try, sa far above’).

Although the gender neutrality of poem 72 is acknowledged, once again, the 2015 edition jumps – without any mention of the parallels with poems 49 and 89 – to similarities with the poetry of two male poets, Montgomerie and Scott. Obviously, one instance of the word ‘recompence’ in a poem by Montgomerie is far more significant than the very same word and notion appearing repeatedly in other anonyous poems of the same manuscript.

But why would Montgomerie, Scott, or any other man, hide themselves away behind anonymity? Indeed, the only reason the 2015 edition can claim that some male poets did experiment with female voice is because, when they did, they put their names to it. To put it simply, men in that era had no good reason not to put their name to their writing or to limit its circulation.

Taken together, anonymity plus female or gender neutral voice plus their unique appearance in one family manuscript all scream out in favour of female authorship of these poems.

Worse still, not only is anonymous more likely to be a woman, we have in Marie Maitland an obvious candidate for exactly which woman. A daughter of Sir Richard Maitland, it is widely accepted that the manuscript was transcribed and compiled by Marie, whose name appears twice on its title page.

What’s more, other of the anonymous poems explicitly name Marie and make reference to both her writing of the manuscript and her own literary talents – including comparing her to no less than Sappho.

In poem 69, Marie appears as part of a dream vision, which includes a pun on her surname. (Marie, I thocht, in this wod did appeir / Mait, land, and gold scho gave aboundantlie). Marie’s literary talents are praised, and a series of goddesses, including Diana, are invoked.

Poem 85 names ‘Maistres Marie’ outright, compares her with ‘sapho saige’ and states that, like that female makar, Marie will be ‘a plesant poet perfyte [perfect]’ when ‘this buik’ – i.e. the manuscript – is finished.

Following straight on from this one, poem 86 is an appeal to the “goddis and goddessis” to help its author “to end this worthelie” – ‘this’ surely the same ‘buik’ just referred to in poem 85. Specifically, Diana is called upon, linking back to poem 69 and its clear associations with Marie. Written in the first person and appearing at the very end of the Quarto, there can be little doubt that this one is in the hand of Marie herself.

This takes us to poem 74 – an anonymous love poem entitled “In praise o ane Gentle Woman”, which contains the lines:

ȝe heavenlie goddis above, ȝe most celestiall,
Vnto my muse ȝour earis doe bend, and for ȝour help I call:

The 2015 commentary (of course) ascribes male authorship and states that these are ‘echoic’ of line 1 of poem 63, which is attributed to (of course) Alexander Montgomerie. It reads:

ȝe hevinis abone, with heavinlie ornamentis.

But if poem 74 is ‘echoic’ of Montgomerie (a shooglie claim in itself), it is a 16th-century copy-and-paste of Marie Maitland’s poem 86:

ȝe heauinlie goddis and goddessis,
ȝe most celestiall,
Vnto my muse ȝour helpis doe bend,
And for ȝour aydis I call.

This unmissable word-for-word similarity is (of course) completely dingied by the 2015 edition.

Marie isn’t the only woman hiding in plain sight, but who finds a man taking credit for her words. Poem 66 is an elegy in female voice about marital cruelty at the hands of a husband. It is semi-anonymously signed with the initials ‘G.H.’, which were identified in a 2012 thesis with Grizel Hay of Yester, whose family was connected to the Maitlands. The editor of the 2015 edition either wasn’t aware of, or paid no heed to, this thesis, of which there is no mention. Instead, it is argued that it might well be “a male-authored female-voiced lyric”. A 2017 review of the 2015 edition perpetuates this erasure, stating, “there is no compelling reason to assume female authorship”.

We could go on. Commentary on the other anonymous poems similarly ignores or undermines the obvious, wherever a woman’s words are found.

The same misogynistic notions that stopped women putting their name to their writing in the first place now leads academic critics to assume that anonymous poems must have been written by men.

But anonymous was, for most of history, a woman. Sometimes, we can even give her a name. It’s more rare, however, that we can also put a face to a name.

If Marie Maitland had been a man, it’s likely that we’d already have a portrait of her. Certainly, we have portraits of her brothers, William and John.

In this wonderful imagined portrait, commissioned in 2021, her facial features draw on those of her brothers, while her dress is based on portraits of noblewomen from the era.

Symbolically, she holds a quill and a book. Moreover, echoing in style the lettering on a portrait of her brother John, “1586” (the year the manuscript is dated) appears alongside the epithet SCOTTIS SAPHO SAIGE – a fitting sentiment that would have been recognised by her female co-makars and beloved(s).

In the Maitland Quarto, anonymous was often Marie Maitland – and here she is.