Richard Holland’s Buke of the Howlat

This essay reassesses Chaucer’s influence on the Older Scots poem The Buke of the Howlat (c.1448), written by the Orkney poet Richard Holland (d. in or after 1483) in the mid-fifteenth century. The poem celebrates the virtues of the ‘Black Douglases’, one of Scotland’s most powerful magnate families at the time of the Howlat’s composition. Together with his dedication of the work to his patrons, Archibald Douglas and his wife Elizabeth, such explicit praise has led critics to regard the Howlat as a political poem. Yet there remains an element of ambivalence to the Howlat which works against such an interpretation, suggesting rather that Holland’s purpose in writing the poem might be less controversial than is commonly assumed. This essay argues for ways in which Holland is indebted to Chaucer in this regard, offering a broader perspective on the Chaucerianism of the Howlat than has generally been considered.