"Christis Kirk on the Green" is an anonymous Middle Scots poem in 22 stanzas, now believed to have been written around the year 1500, giving a comic account of a brawl at a country fair. It was for many years mistakenly attributed either to James I of Scotland or to James V of Scotland. It gave rise to a whole tradition of humorous poems on similar subjects by Scottish poets down the centuries, including Allan Ramsay and Robert Burns, and is still one of the most frequently published works in Middle Scots. "Christis Kirk on the Green" has been called one of the finest performances in 15th-century British poetry.
Synopsis
The scene opens at Christ's Kirk where a dance is in full swing on the village green. While Tom Lutar plays the music and sings, the young women flirt with their suitors. Two of the men, Jock and Robin Ray, neither of whom has been having much luck with the girls, start to quarrel over one of them, and blows are struck. The fight begins to spread, and threatens to become serious as bows are produced and arrows shot, but the marksmanship of all the archers is so wild that no-one is hit. Then a general brawl develops as pitchforks, flails and laths of wood are seized, branches are torn off, and all these weapons are brought into play. The poet turns from one character to another, and details the blows delivered and the men struck to the ground. While the fight is still in progress the poem breaks off.
Transmission
"Christis Kirk" survives in at least seven manuscripts, including the Bannatyne Manuscript, the Maitland Folio, and one of the Laing manuscripts; of these the Maitland Folio gives the best text. It was printed first in 1643 in a recension similar to that given by the Laing MS, and later in 1660, 1663, 1684, 1691 (by Edmund Gibson), and in 1706 (by James Watson).
Date and authorship
The poet was certainly familiar with a tradition of Scots burlesque poems that included "Peblis to the Play" and the now-lost "Falkland on the Green", and he wrote for a sophisticated audience, or at least for one above the peasant level. These are almost the only reliable clues to his identity. In 1568 George Bannatyne attributed the poem to James I of Scotland, but in the next century an alternative attribution to James V was made, and in the 18th and 19th centuries a war of words between literary historians failed to decide between these two candidates. At the beginning of the 19th century James Sibbald suggested Robert Henryson as a possible author, but this idea did not find favour. In 1964 Allan H. Maclaine argued for an early 15th-century date, without committing himself to James I as author, but in 1996 he acknowledged that linguistic evidence suggested a date of around 1500. This new date, which is now widely accepted, rules out both James I and James V, and leaves "Christis Kirk" as an anonymous poem.
Metre
The stanzas are each of ten lines rhyming ABABABABCD. The first eight lines alternate iambic tetrameter with trimeter, the ninth is a two-syllable "bob", and the final line forms the refrain "At Christis Kirk on the green". Much alliteration is used, which, together with the recurring rhymes, gives the verse a headlong pace, while the bob line is useful in accentuating the humour. The combined effect is to make the poem well-suited to recitation or singing.
Setting
Most modern commentators accept the tradition, first reported in print by William Tytler in 1783, that the Christ's Kirk of the poem is a ruined church in the parish of Leslie, near the village of Insch in Aberdeenshire. According to Tytler a fair was held by this church every May Day until the end of the 17th century. In 1715 Allan Ramsay proposed a different Leslie in Fife as the site of the poem, and was seconded by John Callander in his 1782 edition of the poem. However this identification is probably based simply on a confusion of place-names, and it is no longer believed to have any good evidence in its favour. James Sibbald identified Christ's Kirk with the church of St. Salvator's College, St. Andrews, but, as with his authorship theory, this idea has found no supporters.