till 1513 that Gawain Douglas, in the Prologue to the first book of
his translation of Virgil, claimed to have "writtin in the langage of
Scottis natioun"; though Sir David Lyndesay, writing twenty-two years
later, still gives the name of the "Inglisch toung" to the vulgar
tongue of Scotland, in his _Satyre of the three Estaitis_.

We should particularly notice Dr Murray's statement, in his essay on
_The Dialect of the Southern Counties of Scotland_, at p. 29, that
"Barbour at Aberdeen, and Richard Rolle de Hampole near Doncaster,
wrote for their several countrymen in the same identical dialect." The
division between the English of the Scottish Lowlands and the English
of Yorkshire was purely political, having no reference to race or
speech, but solely to locality; and yet, as Dr Murray remarks, the
struggle for supremacy "made every one either an Englishman or a
Scotchman, and made English and Scotch names of division and bitter
enmity." So strong, indeed, was the division thus created that it
has continued to the present day; and it would be very difficult even
now to convince a native of the Scottish Lowlands--unless he is a
philologist--that he is likely to be of Anglian descent, and to have
a better title to be called an "Englishman" than a native of Hampshire
or Devon, who, after all, may be only a Saxon. And of course it is
easy enough to show how widely the old "Northern" dialect varies from
the difficult Southern English found in the Kentish _Ayenbite of
Inwyt_, or even from the Midland of Chaucer's poems.

To quote from Dr Murray once more (p. 41):

"the facts are still far from being generally known, and I have
repeatedly been amused, on reading passages from _Cursor Mundi_ and
Hampole to men of education, both English and Scotch, to hear them