Mock Poem or Whiggs Supplication. Part iid.

. A manuscript volume of 35 leaves, the pages numbered 1 to 70, being a contemporary manuscript of the second part of Colville's popular seventeenth-century poem. The leaves measure 192 x 142 mms., with one blank leaf preceding the numbered leaves, which have manuscript text on both recto and verso. The hand is clear and legible, and the text has been bound in contemporary sheepskin, with gilt panels on both covers and gilt thistles within the panels, plus gilt thistles, projecting diagonally, at each of the eight corners of the two gilt panels on the front and back covers. The binding is in poor condition and has been crudely rebacked at some stage, with the latter part of the volume being difficult to open without cracking at the inner margin (gutter). A shelf mark, "B2.76," appears on the front paste-down endpaper, and loosely inserted is a folded, undated note in a 20th century hand citing several late seventeenth-century printed editions of Colville's poetry. � A verse satire on the Presbyterians, Samuel Colville's poem originally appeared in print anonymously in London under the title Mock Poem, or, Whiggs Supplication (1681). Later, in Edinburgh, it was published as Whiggs Supplication. A Mock-Poem in Two Parts. By S.C. (1687). Still later, a version appeared under the title The Scotch Hudibras: or, A Mock Poem the First Part. Corrected and Amended, with Additions and Alterations (London: Printed by T. B. and are to be sold by Randal Taylor near Stationers Hall, 1692). The poet's surname is sometimes spelled Colvil or Colvill. Colville's poetry was indeed modelled on Samuel Butler's Hudibras, which was first published in three parts in 1663 and 1664. Very popular for about fifty years, Colville's poem was produced both as printed text and as manuscript text. For those who value early Scottish manuscript culture, particularly manuscript poetry dating to the seventeenth century, the present manuscript could hardly be more relevant or more interesting. Samuel Colville, a mysterious seventeenth-century figure in literature for centuries, is understood now to have been the son of the early Scottish woman poet Elizabeth Melville, Lady Culross (fl. 1599-1631). S. M. Dunnigan in the Oxford DNB says that Lady Culross "had three sons", including "Samuel Colville, who sustained the literary preoccupations of the Melville family -- he was the author of The Scots Hudibras, or, The Whig's Supplication". The long Wikipedia article on Lady Culross regrets that information "about Elizabeth's children is far from plentiful", but adds that in "a letter of 1631 to John Livingstone, Elizabeth had commented that 'Samuell is going to the colledge in Sant Andrews, to a worthy maister thair, bot I feare him deadly', which indicates that her youngest child's behaviour had long been unpredictable … . In 1681 Samuel published the first-known of numerous editions of his Mock Poem, or The Whiggs Supplication, which is sometimes described as the Scottish Hudibras. … It is not known when he died." Wikipedia further says that Lady Culross "really began to register with contemporary scholarship only with Germaine Greer's inclusion and discussion of her work in the epoch-making Kissing the Rod: An Anthology of 17th-Century Women's Verse (1988)." When a monument to Lady Culross was unveiled in Edinburgh by Greer in 2014, the BBC remarked that a "memorial to one of Scotland's first female literary greats has been unveiled in Edinburgh", asserting that the poet "Elizabeth Melville, Lady Culross, became the first Scots woman to see her work in print in 1603" (<https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-27956682>). Similarly, scholarship on Lady Culross's son the poet Samuel Colville has taken its time to ripen. In volume two of Lives of Scottish Poets, published in 1822, it was said of Samuel Colville that "Of Colvil's personal history nothing is known" (p. 102). Forty years later, David Irving, in his History of Scottish Poetry (Edinburgh, 1861), was confident in stating Samuel Colville to be one "of Lady Culross's younger sons", and to be "likewise a poet of considerable reputation" (p. 483). Irving added that Samuel Colville's "popularity as a poet seems at least to have equalled his merit. His 'Whiggs Supplication' was circulated before it appeared in print, and manuscript copies of it are still to be found; it was published in the year 1681, and has passed through several editions. … The language of his poem was apparently intended for English, but is interspersed with many Scotish [sic] words and idioms" (p. 483). If Irving was right, it may then be that the item on offer is a manuscript version that pre-dates any printed version of the verses presented here. It could be, on the one hand, an authorial fair copy of the poem or, on the other hand, a manuscript publication of the poem, with the copy being created by a professional scribe. Whichever happens to be the case, the hand of this manuscript has marked similarity to the hand of a MS of the poem owned by the Clark Library of UCLA, whose curators have had the MS digitized in full and uploaded to their Calisphere website: <https://calisphere.org/item/ark:/21198/n1z326/>. It should be noted that the Clark cataloguer wonders whether their MS is in the author's hand: "It is unclear if this copy was actually made by Colvil, but it is written in a neat decorative hand throughout" (<https://calisphere.org/item/ark:/21198/n1z326/>). The present MS is similarly in a highly legible and calligraphic hand, with several touches (long drawn-out limbs to some capital letters, as well as intricate lattice-like flourishes) being shared characteristics. A comparison of the Clark MS and the MS on offer also shows, however, some interesting textual variants even on the first page of text, with our MS furnishing at least one word missing from the Clark version. What follows are a few selected variants, visible on the first page of text. On line 1, the Clark MS reads "chipp" where the present MS reads "Chipp". On line 3, the Clark reads "toasted" where the present MS reads "rosted". On line 4, the Clark reads "ride" where the present MS reads "rid". On line 6, the Clark reads "Geese" where the present MS reads "Gees". On line 7, the Clark reads, "Where poor folkes wer fil'd with Nettles", whereas the present MS provides an additional word, "potts", reading, "When poor folks potts wer fil'd with Nettles". On line 8, the Clark reads, "When Fish did dominere in Kettles", where the present MS has three of the six words exhibiting variance, "When fish did dominneir in Ketles". Historically, there is much to indicate that the second part of Colville's poem was sometimes issued separately in a bound manuscript volume, as an act of manuscript circulation, scribal publication, no doubt due to the sensitive political nature of the satirical elements of the verse. In addition to the Clark MS, and the MS on offer, there is, for instance, a bound MS volume of "Part Second" which survives in the Special Collections Library at the University of Leeds, which cataloguers date, interestingly, to "ca. 1680" (<https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/search/archives/60a6b5bf-a804-38ee-8da3-7d8d4f9c5fdb>). The two universities in the world most famous for their collections of manuscript poetry in English from the early modern period are Oxford and Yale, with the two publications treating the poetry therein being Margaret Crum's First-line Index of English Poetry, 1500-1800, in Manuscripts of the Bodleian Library, Oxford (1969) and Stephen Parks's First-line Index of English Poetry, 1500-1800, in Manuscripts of the James M. and Marie-Louise Osborn Collection in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library of Yale University (2005). Taking up the opening line of the present manuscript, "When bushes budded and trees did Chipp", we see that in Crum there are no hits for that opening, and that in Parks there is but one hit for one manuscript: the poem is found in Osborn MS b. 223 at the Beinecke. Whatever the total count of surviving manuscripts of Colville's verse, there is a notable lack of concerted study of the known contemporary manuscripts dispersed across the world. Such a study is no doubt sorely needed, not only for the literary importance of the endeavour (and for the biographical proximity to the pioneering Lady Culross), but also for the texts' lexical and orthographical riches, since Colville's poetry, as pointed out by Irving over a century ago, is "interspersed with many Scotish [sic] words and idioms" (p. 483). The OED takes several of its representative examples of the usage of rare Scottish words specifically from Colville's poetry, including his take on such staples as "heart", "ace", and "fool". Last but not least, I submit that even on the opening page of the text of the present MS there is likely a unique instance of English usage, a unique orthographical configuration: Has anyone ever encountered, in any other seventeenth-century manuscript, or in any printed book, the spelling "dominneir"? Google does not find a single instance -- from any time period.