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Middle English Poetry (PCMEP)
PCMEP Text Information
The Execution of Sir Simon Fraser
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| Text name: | The Execution of Sir Simon Fraser |
| Alternative names: | Listeneth lordings a new song I shall begin; Lystneþ lordynges a newe song ichulle bigynne; On the Execution of Sir Simon Fraser; The Song on the Execution of Sir Simon Fraser |
| Content: | The poem puts into verse the execution of Sir Simon Fraser of Oliver and Neidpath, a Scottish knight who led a rebellion (1303) in the Wars of Scottish Independence (1296 – 1346), for which he was greatly despised in England. Stanzas 1-2 introduce. Stanzas 3-11 presents an emotive background over Scottish rebellions in the past. Stanzas 12-29 go into details about the person and life of Simon Fraser. He was a member of the Scottish nobility and had sworn allegiance to the English crown. He had trespassed against English barons more than once before his incitement of the rebellion of 1303. The Scots are portrayed as treacherous and vile. The narrator draws the reader's attention to the gruesome scenes of Fraser and his fellows being executed, their bodies drawn and quartered, their bowels burnt, and their corpses displayed on London Bridge for all to see. The negative sentiment towards the Scottish is brought back to the political realm in the last stanza 29, which also adds one additional line to refer to Edward Longshanks, i.e. King Edward III. A freely translated modern rendition of this stanza is given below: The traitors of Scotland among themselves in council met, To bring the barons of England to the dead; Charles of France, as many said then, With might and with strength would help them — His thanks! Pah! Scot! For your strife! Hang up your hatchet and your knife! While to him lasts life With the long shanks! (stanza 29, lines 224-233). |
| Genre/subjects: | historical poem, history, politics, political song, Sir Simon Fraser, Scotland, war, rebellion, political propaganda, death, execution |
| Dialect of original composition: | (Central) Midlands, South Bödekker (1878: 126) sees the original dialect as "purely Southern." He notes variation between the third person plural pronouns hii (hy) and hee (hue). Wells (1916: 212) concurs, writing "[t]he piece is in the Southern dialect." Brook (1933), on the other hand, finds a range of sometimes contradictory dialect features (e.g., he sees the rhymes to-drawe : yknawe : sawe : lawe (lines 9-12) as evidence of a "northerly origin" (ibid.: 40), but þrye[s] : lye (lines 37, 40) as evidence for the "Central part of the Midlands and South" (ibid.: 47) regions) and concludes that the original should be assigned to the Midlands (ibid.: 56, 60). |
| Date of original composition: | 1306 The poem can be dated fairly accurately to the years 1306. "It was composed after September 7, 1306, when Fraser was executed. It ante-dates November 7, 1306, the day of execution of the Earl of Athole, who at verse 218 is mentioned as not yet taken" (Wells 1916: 212, based on Bödekker 1878: 125). |
| Suggested date: | 1306 |
| PCMEP period: | 2b (1300-1350) |
| Versification: | 29 8-line stanzas. They consist of a monorhyming quatrain or couplets followed by an enclosing rhyme quatrain, aaaabccb or aabbcddc. The first four lines have five stresses. The fifth line has a single stress. The following two lines have three stresses. The final line has two stresses. A additional 2-stress line is added to the very end of the poem. |
| Index of ME Verse: | 1889 (IMEV), 1889 (NIMEV) |
| Digital Index of ME Verse: | 3111 |
| Wells: | 4.7 |
| MEC HyperBibliography: | Execution Fraser |
About the edition and manuscript base:
| Edition: | Robbins, Rossell H. 1959. Historical Poems of the XIV and XV Centuries. New York: Columbia University Press. 14-21. |
| Manuscript used for edition: | London, British Library, Harley 2253, ff. 59v-61v |
| Online manuscript description: | Manuscript Description, British Library Manuscripts of the West Midlands (item 27) Digitized folio 59v, first page of the poem eLALME |
| Manuscript dialect: | West-Midlands The scribe of the relevant part of the manuscript has been identified as a professional scribe working in Ludlow, in Southern Shropshire (Revard 1970). The manuscript is also linked to the West-Midlands in other ways. The binding incorporates fragments of financial accounts of a West-Midlands family called Mortimer, who had their main seat at Wigmore Castle in Herefordshire. Further, it also includes extracts from the ordinal of Herefordshire Cathedral (Ker 1965: xxii). |
| Manuscript date: | s. xiv-in, s. xiv-med The relevant section of the manuscript has been dated to the 1330s - 1340s (Ker 1965, Revard 1970). The manuscript was originally believed to have been copied around 1310 (Wells 1916: 314) based on references to the death of Edward I (1307) (Wright & Halliwell-Phillipps 1845: 261), then around 1320 because of references to the Battle of Bannockburn (1314). The MED used to list the manuscript date as "c1325." However, the scholarly consensus is now that it cannot date from before 1340 since the latest political poem mentions Edward III who left for the Hundred Years War in 1338 (Stemmler 1962). The online version of the MED re-dated the manuscript from "c1325" to "a1350" in November 2017. |
About the file:
| File name: | M2b.ExecFraser |
| ID: | ExecFraser,w.[Stanza_x].y.z: w=page, x=stanza 1-29, y=line, z=token |
| Word count: | 1,550 |
| Token count: | 115 |
| Line count: | 233 |
Other:
| General notes: | The address to the audience in the opening line, 'Lystneth, Lordynges,' has been interpreted as evidence for authorship by a minstrel (Bödekker 1878: 126, Wells 1916: 212). |
| Remarks on parses: | The line breaks follow the rhyming scheme as in Robbins (1959 : 14-21) edition. The parses are generally unproblematic. |
References
Bödekker, Karl. 1878. Altenglische Dichtungen des Ms. Harl. 2253: Mit Grammatik und Glossar. Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung. (available online)
Brook, George L. 1933. 'The Original Dialects of the Harley Lyrics.' Leeds Studies in English and Kindred Languages 2. 38-61. (available online)
Ker, Neil R. 1965. Facsimile of British Museum MS. Harley 2253. EETS o.s. 255. London: Oxford University Press.
Revard, Carter. 1970. 'Richard Hurd and MS Harley 2253.' Notes and Queries 224. 199-202.
Robbins, Rossell H. 1959. Historical Poems of the XIV and XV Centuries. New York: Columbia University Press. (available online)
Stemmler, Theo. 1962. 'Zur Datierung des MS. Harley 2253.' Anglia 80. 111-118.
Wells, John E. 1916. Manual of the Writings in Middle English, 1050-1400. New Haven, CT: Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences. (available online)
Wright, Thomas & Halliwell-Phillipps, James O. 1845. Reliquiae Antiquae. Volume 1. London: Smith. (available online)