Alexander Montgomerie - Literary Assessment

Literary Assessment

Montgomerie’s poetic output of over 100 pieces is mostly known from just one witness, the Ker manuscript, presented to Edinburgh University Library by the poet William Drummond of Hawthornden. It is possible that this was assembled from Montgomerie’s papers soon after his death; it must, in any case, have been written soon afterwards.

The range of his work is extensive, from elegant court songs including Lyk as the dum Solsequium and Melancholie, grit deput of Dispair to the bitter, sometimes contorted word-play of the sonnets associated with the dispute over his pension, from witty pieces addressed to the king to the profound religious sensibility of A godly prayer and the extraordinary Come, my childrene dere. Montgomerie is one of the finest of Middle Scots poets, and perhaps the greatest Scottish exponent of the sonnet form (although the twentieth-century poets Robert Garioch and Edwin Morgan were also fine sonnetteers).

The Cherrie and the Slae, which he probably revised and completed shortly before his death, is an ambitious religious allegory, employing a demanding, lyrical stanza form which suggests that it was intended for singing, despite its considerable length. His poetry reaches back to the earlier makars, Henryson, Dunbar and Doouglas, but he also translates from Clément Marot and from Ronsard, and some of his work invites comparison with Baroque writers such as Marino, Góngora, Donne and Herbert.