This rhythm to our contemporary ears may be a bit too whimsical, reminding
us of a nursery rhyme or a jazz lyric by Cole Porter or even a more
recent rap-inspired lyric. But the fact is that Skelton was there first.
As critics have noted, there really wasn't any English verse quite like
Skelton's until Skelton. In poems like "The Tunning of Elinor Rumming"
and "Philip Sparrow" -- a mock-heroic poem that immortalizes the
pet bird of a young neighbor -- Skelton's robust rhythms create a pacing
that borders on the frantic. But Skelton's not a once-around-the track kind
of writer; he's not a sprinter. His best poems, most of them, are over five
hundred lines long, and many are over a thousand.
"A Ballad of the Scottish King," written
in early September of 1513, is one of Skelton's shorter poems: a tidy seventy-five
lines. But a revised and augmented version of the poem, "Against the Scots,"
runs more than twice as long. While neither poem is among Skelton's most reprinted,
"A Ballad of the Scottish King" is representative of Skelton in ways
that bear thinking about. Fiercely nationalistic, hectoring, sarcastic, the
"Ballad" dispenses with the aureate style of the times which signaled
a kind of detachment; the "Ballad" is a poem of involvement, and like
many of Skelton's poems, its subjects are topical and historically specific.
In 1513, Henry VIII went to France to try his hand at war for the first
time. Like many English kings before him, Henry believed it was his duty
to unite the two countries under a single crown -- his own. What Henry didn't
know was that even as he was preparing to conquer France, the Scottish king,
James IV, was preparing to invade England. Having earlier signed a treaty
with the French, James sent a message to Henry, demanding that Henry not
go to France. But by the time Henry got the message, he had already embarked
on his mission, and luckless, impatient James had invaded England and been
killed near Norham Castle.
Skelton must have intended the "Ballad" to serve a number of functions
-- some of them unfamiliar to readers in the late twentieth century. Poetry
as the vehicle for news? The fact that the "Ballad" was turned
out anonymously, in hundreds of copies only days after James had been defeated,
suggests that the poem was indeed a way of circulating information in timely
fashion. Of course, then as now, political news is never neutral. Thus while
the poem is concerned with "Jamie's" undeniably inept challenge
to the English king, the "Ballad" serves other purposes as well.
For as royal orator, Skelton was necessarily a sometime propagandist --
a "spin doctor" in today's parlance -- and a number of his poems,
whatever their many virtues, represented a kind of official correspondence
meant to elicit support for the king and his policies.
Skelton is well-known for heaping abuse on his enemies; his most famous
target was the arrogant, powerful Cardinal Wolsey. And as in the poems attacking
Wolsey ("Colin
Clout" and the less artful "Why Come Ye Not to Courte?"),
the "Ballad" pulls out the stops.
Skelton, after all, was not yet certain at the time he wrote the "Ballad"
whether James had been killed or was merely a prisoner --
Characteristically, then, Skelton is merciless in his mocking of James.
The "Ballad" alternately questions his judgment ("Knowe ye
not salte and suger asonder?), insults him ("Your wyll renne before
your wytte") and admonishes ("Before the Frensshe kynge, Danes
and other/Ye ought to honour your lorde and brother") -- all in exaggerated
ways. The skeltonic meter offers Skelton a linguistic freedom and simplicity
that make the poem both more powerful and more memorable than it might have
been otherwise. And yet, readers will note, in most ways the poem is extraordinarily
conventional.
It's difficult to fault Skelton for taking his contemporaneous commonplaces
seriously -- even if, as is sometimes true, his positions are incompatible
with our own sensibilities. For instance, the notion that political dissent
is the same as heresy drives the "Ballad" and other Skelton poems;
it's one of the ways, according to Skelton, that the here-and-now is intimately
linked to the hereafter. Could Skelton be a verbal bully? Certainly. Did
he sometimes proclaim instead of question? Yes. Did he moralize? Sure. Still,
Skelton more often than not found a way to complicate things for himself
(and his audience) as he explored the world of his time. About the faults
of both the Church and court life, he could sometimes be unsparingly frank.
In his elegy on Henry VII, Skelton asks: "Why were you shocked that
you had accumulated great riches?" At other moments, however, he could
only bluster.
Aware of the disparity between what he sees and what he wishes, between
what happens and what he believes should happen, Skelton rails, complains
and cries out. In the epigraph to "Against the Scots," he asks
in Latin: "If I am telling the truth, why don't you believe me?"
A defender of the faith, a late medievalist aware of corruption but not
especially receptive to the changes the coming renaissance would bring,
Skelton saw in the events of history a way of considering God's power.
Other poems by Skelton may be richer in their dramatizations and less
narrow in their approach, but "A Ballad of the Scottish King"
finds Skelton as he often must have found himself: a poet at the end of
an age. Caught in an enormous sea-change, fixed between feudalism and the
coming reformation, Skelton was left clinging to poetry itself as his hope
for salvation.