[or Richard de Holande]. Scottish writer, author of the Buke of the Howlat, secretary or chaplain to the earl of Moray (1450) and rector of Halkirk, near Thurso. He was afterwards rector of Abbreochy, Loch Ness, and later held a chantry in the cathedral of Norway. He was an ardent partisan of the Douglases, and on their overthrow retired to Orkney and later to Shetland. He was employed by Edward IV. in his attempt to rouse the Western Isles through Douglas agency, and in 1482 was excluded from the general pardon granted by James III. to those who would renounce their fealty to the Douglases.
The poem, entitled the Buke of the Howlat, written about 1450, shows his devotion to the house of Douglas:
On ilk beugh till embrace | |
Writtin in a bill was | |
O Dowglass, O Dowglass | |
Tender and trewe! | |
(ii. 400403). |
Thus for ane Dow of Dunbar drew I this Dyte, | |
Dowit with ane Dowglass, and boith war thei dowis. |
The text of the poem is preserved in the Asloan and Bannatyne MSS. Fragments of an early 16th-century black-letter edition, discovered by D. Laing, are reproduced in the Adversaria of the Bannatyne Club. The poem has been frequently reprinted, by Pinkerton, in his Scottish Poems (1792); by D. Laing (Bannatyne Club 1823; reprinted in New Club series, Paisley, 1882); by the Hunterian Club in their edition of the Bannatyne MS., and by A. Diebler (Chemnitz, 1893). The latest edition is that by F. J. Amours in Scottish Alliterative Poems (Scottish Text Society, 1897), pp. 4781. (See also Introduction pp. xx.xxxiv.).