Northern rebellion, 1570, 1513, war with Scotland, troubadour, debate poems, Wars of Independence, bardic traditions, satirical

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sixteenth century. Since such cross-cultural skirmishes arise primarily during times of international hostility it is again to be expected that extant examples will be spread across a wide historical period with substantial hiatuses between. I concentrate here upon Anglo-Scots flytings from the 1513 war with Scotland and the Northern rebellion of 1570, and two Anglo-French exchanges from the reigns of Henry VII and VIII.

Several remote Anglo-French exchanges of invective from the Middle Ages have survived including ones from the reigns of the Plantagenets, Richard I and Edward III. ¹⁶⁵ These are abusive, cross-cultural versions of troubadour debate poems such as the sirvente and tenson; described by A. R. Heiserman as poems that, like their Tudor equivalents, “attacked the enemies of the poet and his patron”. ¹⁶⁶ Like the Anglo-Scots invectives ¹⁶⁷ Such cross-cultural

¹⁶⁵ See, for instance, H. J. Chaytor’s discussion of an exchange of sirventes between Richard I and the Dauphin of Auvergne (c.1198) in The Troubadours and England (Cambridge: CUP, 1923), p.61. A text and translation of Richard’s contribution to this war of words appears in John Harvey, The Plantagenets (Glasgow: Fontana/ Collins, 1983), pp.214-16. Richard is also known to have exchanged sirventes with Henry of Burgundy and Hugh of Burgundy. See Harvey (1983), p.71 and Wilson (1970), p.188 respectively. In an appendix to their edition of Laurence Minot’s poetry, Thomas Beaumont James and John Simons provide a translation of a highly abusive Anglo-French exchange from the fourteenth century, The Poems of Laurence Minot, 1333-1352 (Exeter: Exeter UP, 1989), pp.97-9.

¹⁶⁶ A. R. Heiserman, Skelton and Satire (Chicago, IL: Chicago UP, 1961), p.247. OED, which has little to say on the subject of the sirvente, notices that the word has an unclear connection with the verb servir, to serve. Janet M. Smith describes “the sirvente (Provencal) or serventois (Old French) [as] a short personal invective, not a dialogue. With its jibes and insults, it contained just the same matter as flyting, but was often more seriously meant and might even lead to bloodshed. The tenso (Provencal) or tenson or débat (Old French), on the other hand, was a dialogue originating in Provence”, The French Background of Middle Scots Literature (London and Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1934), pp.53-4.

¹⁶⁷ Bawcutt (1992), p.236; Heiserman (1961), p.246.

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