gallows, retribution, treachery, heresy, throne, adversary, nom de guerre, satire, libeller

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107

right to the throne and presents himself as the champion of the king and his regent. Their detractor, presumably one of Mary’s supporters, is “ane papist loun” and a “Blasphemus baird and beggeris get!” whom Sempill will flush out of hiding with his rhyming and drive onto the gallows in retribution for his treachery and heresy (l.6 and l.11):

To flyt with thee and fyle my lippis, [...]
Thay hound thee to the hangmanis grippis,
Quhair mony better man hes bene. (ll.26-30)

By way of contrast to the criminal caricature he paints of his adversary, Sempill stresses his own probity and straightforwardness. The libeller hides his identity to avoid punishment (“Bot, knew I the, thow sould recant”, l.54), whereas Sempill stresses with righteous conviction that he faces his adversary in the open (“Mark weill my name”, l.58), and challenges him to open combat.

There are numerous broadsides attributed to Sempill (or Symple) that speak out fervently on the behalf of the regent. ¹⁹⁷ Although this is the poet’s real name, it sounds akin to the sort of pastoral pseudonyms that Kernan argues are used to suggest simple, ingenuous critics of society in satire prior to the 1590s. ¹⁹⁸ His name functions conveniently as a nom de guerre, complementing his insistence upon his openness, honesty and plain speaking, and provides him with a doubly apt means of defining himself against his opponent’s surreptitious scurrility.

A third exchange, this time from the Sir Richard Maitland Manuscript, is much less characteristic of the sort of vituperation that might be expected from flyting. It consists of two pro-Northern Rebellion poems, one written from an English perspective (‘Ane Exclamatioun Maid in England vpone the Delyuerance of the Erle of Northumberland furth of Lochlevin quho Immediatly Thairefter wes Execute in Yorke’), and the answering verse

¹⁹⁷These are collected together in The Sempill Balletes, ed. Thomas George Stevenson (Edinburgh, 1872).
¹⁹⁸ Kernan (1959), pp.40-52 (see especially p.43).

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