Vulgar History - Marie Maitland, Scotland's Sixteenth-Century Sappho

00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome to Vulgar History, a feminist women's history comedy podcast. My name 1.00

00:00:15.200 is Anne Foster. I'm a historian and an author, and I've been curious about the Tudor era

00:00:19.180 since I was a small child. This season on the podcast, we're talking about the notorious

00:00:23.940 Tudors, who they were, the times they lived in, and what was happening elsewhere in the

00:00:27.660 world at the same time. And this week is one of those elsewhere in the world at the same time

00:00:31.600 episodes, because we're talking about Scotland. And we kind of set the stage, if you listened to

00:00:36.740 last week's episode about the witches of Scotland, we talked a bit about what's happening in that

00:00:41.480 sort of chaotic time, the Tudor era, moving into the Stuart era up in Scotland. And this week,

00:00:46.080 I'm so excited to have a very special guest on the podcast, who is historian, translator,

00:00:51.380 and author, Ashley Douglas, who has got a new book that's called With My Own Hand,

00:00:56.060 The Secret Life of Marie Maitland, Scotland's 16th century Sappho. This book is such a treat,

00:01:02.080 and it's such a treat to get to talk to Ashley about her research, because it's like the dream

00:01:06.540 of so many historians to discover, to unearth somebody who the historical record has not really

00:01:12.840 talked about to be the first person to really put together what this person's story is. I don't want

00:01:17.140 to spoil anything for you. I'm going to let Ashley explain the story. So please enjoy this conversation

00:01:21.800 I had with Ashley Douglas about Marie Maitland. So I'm joined today by Ashley Douglas, author of

00:01:31.800 the new book, With My Own Hand, The Secret Life of Marie Maitland, Scotland's 16th century

00:01:37.020 Sappho. Welcome, Ashley. Thank you so much for having me. I'm very excited to speak to you today.

00:01:42.700 I'm really excited to speak to you as well. And partially, well, I mean, this is such an

00:01:46.900 interesting story and i'm just like such a nerd for other people's research and you have done

00:01:51.900 like a historical like police detective level investigation just to unearth marie maitland

00:01:59.380 um could i just ask you first to share the story of how you first encountered her sure and it was

00:02:06.340 by complete chance as you say it's like a historian's dream to come across a genuinely

00:02:11.840 unknown story and to be discovering documents that nobody has seen for centuries so it was

00:02:16.900 complete serendipity that I ended up researching and writing this story. My main academic background

00:02:22.960 is in languages in history so I'm a Scots language specialist. Scots, just as a little bit of

00:02:29.180 background, was the language of the Scottish nation in the 1500s in my period. Obviously in

00:02:35.680 modern Scotland today English is our official language and all of that but we still speak

00:02:39.180 Scots as a spoken language, but back in the 1500s, the Scots language was the unquestioned

00:02:45.680 language of church, state, court, parliaments, kings, queens. And I was working on a little

00:02:52.020 historical series for the National Library of Scotland, writing about famous Scots language

00:02:56.220 texts. So I'd written about, for example, Barber's the Bruce, which is the sort of epic medieval

00:03:01.200 poem about the wars of independence and Robert the Bruce. And I was just working my way through

00:03:05.600 the centuries and it was getting to the 1500s and I was aware of this manuscript called the

00:03:10.760 Maitland Quartal Manuscript which is known among academics as not well known in the public

00:03:15.600 consciousness but if you're sort of 16th century Scottish historian and you're into Scots language

00:03:19.920 you've definitely heard of this Maitland Quartal Manuscript that contains poems in Scots by as far

00:03:24.960 as I was aware at that point men including King James VI of Scotland he's the one that's later

00:03:30.060 also James I of England but at this point he's just still James VI of Scotland and he was also

00:03:35.080 a scots language poet big champion of the scots language actually before he also became king of

00:03:40.500 england that's a whole other discussion but he's very fascinating example of um shifting linguistic

00:03:46.000 loyalties depending on political and social situation but when he's king of scotland

00:03:49.560 he's praises the scots language as distinct from english and writes poems and everything

00:03:53.660 and there's also poems in this manuscript by sir richard maitland of lessington who was a poet at

00:03:59.540 this time and a judge and keeper of the privy seal to Mary Queen of Scots and so I had decided

00:04:05.480 I was going to write about this manuscript to tell people about this significant source of

00:04:09.800 Scots language poetry. So I went into the National Library of Scotland and I took out a modern

00:04:14.680 edition not the original manuscript I would come to that later but at this point it was just like

00:04:18.720 a 1920 modern print edition of the manuscript of this poetry and I thought I was going to be

00:04:24.040 reading the poems of men of the male great and good of 16th century Scotland and I was excited

00:04:29.000 enough about that that was going to be a good day and instead I opened this edition and on the front

00:04:33.760 page of this manuscript I saw a woman's name twice emblazoned in decorative fronts I had Marie

00:04:39.500 Maitland 1586 not once but twice and I was immediately thinking who is this woman I didn't

00:04:44.960 know there was anything to do with a woman with this manuscript I thought it was just

00:04:48.500 male poetry so I'm immediately thinking okay this is different to what I was expecting

00:04:52.660 and then as I was going through the manuscript right enough there were poems by various

00:04:57.580 high and mighty Scottish men of the 16th century and there was a poem by King James VI. I found

00:05:02.420 all of that but I also kept coming across anonymous poetry, unsigned poetry and I started

00:05:09.220 reading one of these anonymous poems and it was quite clearly a lesbian love poem in the voice

00:05:13.600 of one woman to another. So if I wasn't expecting to find a woman's name on the front of the

00:05:18.340 manuscript, I wasn't expecting to find 30 anonymous poems and I certainly wasn't expecting

00:05:24.300 to find a lesbian love poem in a 16th century Scottish manuscript so this was the chance

00:05:29.160 discovery this was in like 2020 and of course I immediately knew that this was hugely significant

00:05:35.340 because this is 16th century Scotland I know your listeners have heard some of that context

00:05:39.360 but it's a very um the church is like overseeing everything stomping down anything that they don't 0.97

00:05:46.380 like and I would presume they don't like lesbians they absolutely do not like lesbians or sodomites

00:05:53.800 as they would have called them so that this manuscript was completed in the year 1586 as

00:05:58.340 I said that's on the the title page along with Marie Maitland's name completed in the year 1586

00:06:03.060 but a lot of the poems in a date also from the years leading up to that so the poems some of

00:06:07.600 them are written even in the 1570s and earlier and in 1570 we have the date of the first recorded

00:06:13.380 execution for sodomy in Scotland so we've had the Scottish Reformation of 1560 a very extreme and

00:06:20.580 austere form of Calvinism church and state clamped down on all forms of what's perceived to be

00:06:26.160 immoral and deviant behaviour including sodomy 1570 we have the first recorded execution of two

00:06:31.680 men for sodomy in 1625 we also have in Scotland a conviction of two women for sodomy as well so

00:06:38.640 this is the context in which this manuscript was written and in which this love poem from one woman

00:06:44.980 to another was written by Marie Maitland the woman whose name's also on the front of the manuscript

00:06:50.060 so yeah seeing this this poem in this time period I was immediately aware this is huge this this is

00:06:57.440 astounding that this poem was written at all let alone that it was hidden away in a manuscript

00:07:01.780 anonymously and survived the present day until I came upon it and started sharing it it was not

00:07:07.120 widely known its its true significance had not been meaningfully recognized and sung about so I

00:07:12.460 immediately went back to the National Library and said I know I was going to just write about

00:07:16.360 scots language history but this this piece is going to be a wee bit different this is going to

00:07:20.020 actually be about lgbt history as much so we ended up bringing out this article on the manuscript

00:07:25.780 in lgbt history month february 2021 so it was sharing both scots language history but also

00:07:31.760 lgbt history so it's so important and of course at the same time as already beginning to share

00:07:37.080 about the manuscript and this one the first lesbian love poem i discovered amongst its pages

00:07:43.060 we might go on to it later

00:07:43.860 I actually ended up

00:07:44.700 discovering a further two

00:07:45.680 but the first one

00:07:46.620 I discovered

00:07:47.200 the most explicit

00:07:48.900 the most in your face

00:07:50.100 this is a screaming 0.99

00:07:50.780 lesbian love poem 1.00

00:07:51.700 it's called Poem 49 0.93

00:07:52.600 just because it's

00:07:53.480 the 49th poem

00:07:54.440 in the manuscript

00:07:55.020 I immediately started

00:07:56.360 sharing about that

00:07:57.180 but of course

00:07:57.940 at the same time

00:07:58.760 I needed to know

00:07:59.460 more about this manuscript

00:08:00.640 and more about

00:08:01.460 the woman whose name

00:08:02.460 was on the front

00:08:03.100 and who'd clearly

00:08:03.740 written it

00:08:04.300 and there's so little

00:08:05.700 out there about her

00:08:06.520 you kindly mentioned

00:08:07.860 my book at the start

00:08:08.620 of the episode here

00:08:09.780 and it was published

00:08:11.480 in July 2026

00:08:12.620 And it was the first time, like my book is literally the first time her story has ever been told.

00:08:18.080 So when I first had come up on this name in the manuscript, obviously went looking for information about her.

00:08:23.080 All I could find was a tiny Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entry, very little information.

00:08:29.100 And some of it is actually wrong. I now know, having gone away and done original archival research, very little information out there about Marie Maitland.

00:08:36.460 And even the stuff that is out there is not always entirely accurate.

00:08:39.040 so I exhausted the available print sources secondary sources that are already out there

00:08:45.220 very quickly and decided I'm going to have to just undertake primary archival research and

00:08:50.640 I do have a master's in Scottish history from the University of St Andrews so fortunately between

00:08:55.780 my Scots language expertise remembering that historical Scots is the language of the nation

00:08:59.560 at this time so all the sources are in historical Scots and my Scottish history degree I was in a

00:09:04.000 position to go looking and so I then spent five years doing original archival research and mostly

00:09:11.280 national records of Scotland so looking through things like the the register of deeds of the

00:09:15.840 court of session privy seal records all that sort of thing and various other manuscripts that are

00:09:21.180 held in special collections at the National Library of Scotland and other sources elsewhere

00:09:25.760 and archives in the UK and across Scotland but it was really just a case of starting from zero

00:09:31.060 I've got this name of this woman

00:09:32.420 we'll come on to this won't we

00:09:34.440 like Marie Maitland

00:09:35.160 I knew she was part of the family

00:09:36.400 the Maitlands of Lethington

00:09:37.380 her father's got poetry in the manuscript

00:09:39.040 so I knew the family she was part of

00:09:41.340 we know quite a bit about her brothers

00:09:42.520 I know you are familiar with

00:09:44.120 Secretary Lethington

00:09:45.320 oh yes

00:09:46.160 yeah so as some of your listeners will know

00:09:49.380 Secretary Lethington being

00:09:50.800 Mary Queen of Scots's famous secretary

00:09:52.980 so Marie is his sister

00:09:54.520 so it's quite good 0.98

00:09:55.940 because the Maitlands of Lethington

00:09:57.140 men are quite well known

00:09:58.300 I kind of knew exactly who her family were

00:10:00.640 and what was going on in scotland at this time sure but in terms of constructing her life as a

00:10:05.260 woman it was a case of starting from scratch and just go and look in in the archives what primary

00:10:10.000 records are there and fortunately i found tons i might you might not have found anything do you

00:10:14.300 know i might have found very little and instead i found a historian's dream as i say to actually

00:10:19.940 come across so much archival material that nobody knows about that is not in any print source and to

00:10:26.400 be the person transcribing it from first of all these records are in secretary hands that was my

00:10:31.620 question so the way like yeah did you have to learn how to read this kind of handwriting i had

00:10:39.580 that from my degree already oh perfectly yeah yeah but but you're right without that you would first

00:10:44.760 need to do paleographical training yeah this this this script is like if you don't know it's like

00:10:50.340 trying to read hieroglyphs or something it's totally impenetrable it's a it's a different script

00:10:54.580 like the only modern equivalent I can think of is like shorthand you know that people might use

00:10:58.920 so a symbol that means a word is it that sort of thing things like that yeah you've got

00:11:02.860 abbreviations in there like some of the letter forms are even are even different so yeah in

00:11:07.760 some cases letter forms are different so you have to learn letter forms and then you'll also have to

00:11:11.420 learn all their abbreviations for common words like they'll often do if they're writing with

00:11:15.860 they'll just do a w a secretary hand w and then a little superscript t is with they'll often

00:11:21.440 abbreviate like place names like Edinburgh will be will end up looking like three squished letters

00:11:26.120 together with the little t so yeah you have to learn individual letters and then the abbreviations

00:11:31.220 so you're first of all transcribing from secretary hand scripts into like normal Latin letters and

00:11:38.420 then the text you've got is in historical Scots so then it's a case of translating from historical

00:11:43.340 Scots to modern English so it's first of all transcription and then translation and then you

00:11:48.380 can begin to hopefully decipher what it actually says and put it all together so yeah I did five

00:11:53.000 years of original archival research transcription translation and then had like massive sources in

00:11:59.060 front of me and from that pieced together Marie Maitland's quite remarkable life well and that's

00:12:04.140 that's the thing I'm just picturing like the steps of first like finding the sources that she's

00:12:09.060 mentioned in transcribing them and then like you just described it's kind of then you have a put

00:12:14.160 these in order and like okay well why would she do this and then this and like why would this

00:12:17.980 so just I described it to to like investigative work it's almost like like so it's solving a

00:12:23.940 mystery really and the mystery is who is yeah in the middle of the research process obviously I'm

00:12:28.580 now in the position where I've published this book and there's a coherent biography but

00:12:31.520 obviously when you're like two years in and you've found some sources but you're still looking for

00:12:35.360 others and it's like almost like the pinboard without your main characters and she was here

00:12:39.860 then it really was like that and trying to you know working out here's what here's what I know

00:12:45.120 here's like the facts that I know about what was happening in Scotland at that point you know

00:12:48.380 Mary Queen of Scots is just is deposed in this year and the Maitlands of Lettington the family

00:12:53.120 Marie's family have their castle confiscated from him and this year so therefore she can't

00:12:57.500 possibly have been there in this year you know so you're working from known historical facts about

00:13:02.040 Scottish history writ large known historical facts about the Maitlands of Lettington as a family

00:13:06.660 about her father about her brothers and then gradually piecing in the documents that were

00:13:13.180 specifically about marie maitland oh and this year she did this and this year she had this income

00:13:17.320 and slotting all of that together to get to the the coherent narrative that we've now got of her

00:13:23.100 life it's so impressive to me like as someone who's read your book i read the book and that

00:13:27.080 would because it's a unknown historical figure so i was just like i don't know what's going to

00:13:31.520 happen next so it's it's very exciting for me to read that but i can only imagine what it was like

00:13:35.820 for you to piece it together to figure out to figure this whole story out it's it's incredible

00:13:41.540 work i'm i'm like in awe and also a little jealous that you got to to do this because like to be the

00:13:48.920 one to to put it all together it's amazing no it is it is such a privilege as a historian because

00:13:54.320 as you say most like figures of this significance and about whom there are so many records really

00:14:00.900 they've all been found by now right or been written about by now um it's almost like a good

00:14:06.420 thing the fact that we've so overlooked women's history and sapphic history which is why it was

00:14:11.500 still there for me to find because obviously historians of previous generations have not been

00:14:16.580 interested in seeking out her story even though her name is right there on the manuscript it's

00:14:20.040 right there these records are right there in all the archives and I'm the first person to have

00:14:24.520 gone she sounds like somebody worth looking into and I'm always saying it's both it is both an

00:14:29.960 honour as you say and very exciting and a real privilege to be the historian getting to uncover

00:14:35.160 these records for the first time in centuries and tell the story and at the same time it is a source

00:14:39.840 of great regret and almost anger that it has taken until 2026 those records have been there

00:14:45.920 the whole time why has nobody else decided to tell this woman's story or to look into this

00:14:51.260 piece of sapphic history do you know it's kind of like a bit of a double-edged sword for me how i

00:14:55.100 feel about it i'm like really it shouldn't have fallen to me in the 2020s as a lesbian woman

00:15:01.340 myself to care enough to recognize the significance enough of the manuscript in the poem to go and

00:15:07.020 look for it but you know the world being what it is I'm glad that somebody has done it eventually

00:15:10.860 and I'm so excited to share this story with the world. So if we can just let everybody just to

00:15:15.860 sort of like put Marie in a time and a place well specifically her family the Maitlands can you

00:15:20.480 explain kind of at the time she's born as the youngest of countless siblings I you could tell

00:15:25.980 me it's a huge family her older siblings are much older than her but who are the Maitlands at the

00:15:31.600 time that she's born what is their importance to scottish society sure so the maitlands of

00:15:37.140 lessington are a significant family of the scottish elite the landed elite um in the lowlands they

00:15:42.720 have their main castle home at lessington which is just outside the royal borough of haddington

00:15:48.300 which is just down the coast from edinburgh that will maybe allow people to orient themselves so

00:15:52.040 east coast of scotland just down from edinburgh and the maitlands of lessington as i say they're

00:15:56.280 quite an important family or at least the men because this is 16th century scotland the men

00:16:00.080 get to play important roles so marie's father sir richard maitland of lessington as i mentioned

00:16:05.580 is a judge also a poet a historian a collector but in terms of his professional roles he's he's

00:16:11.440 a judge and he is a keeper of the privy seal to mary queen of scot straight away it is clear that

00:16:18.280 this is not a normal family this is a family that is right next to royalty they are at the right

00:16:24.260 hand side of kings and queens so yeah marie's father serves mary queen of scots her brother

00:16:29.520 her eldest brother William Maitland

00:16:31.280 who's Secretary Lettington

00:16:32.680 the Scottish Machiavelli indeed

00:16:36.940 so he's tied up in everything to do with Mary Queen of Scots

00:16:41.360 that whole dramatic reign

00:16:42.460 he is at the heart of all of that

00:16:43.900 he's never far from the action

00:16:45.520 and then Marie's next eldest brother John Maitland

00:16:50.200 almost the next chapter of Scottish political history

00:16:52.780 he will serve as Chancellor to King James VI

00:16:55.420 so the son of Mary Queen of Scots

00:16:58.200 There is also another brother called Thomas Maitland

00:17:00.480 who unfortunately dies early

00:17:02.160 when he's out on a diplomatic mission

00:17:04.640 to get support for the Queen's Party in the civil war

00:17:08.040 that follows Mary Queen of Scots' deposition.

00:17:10.660 So he unfortunately dies early.

00:17:12.380 Otherwise, I'm sure he would also have gone on

00:17:13.900 to have a glittering political career.

00:17:15.940 He was kind of already in the middle of one.

00:17:17.980 And then he got some sort of fever

00:17:19.000 when he was travelling on the continent and died.

00:17:22.740 And then there are also four Maitland girls.

00:17:25.440 as you mentioned, a lot of the siblings

00:17:27.920 as ever we know much more about the men

00:17:29.740 than we do about the women, we know about

00:17:31.840 her brother's illustrious political careers

00:17:33.640 they all obviously studied at the University of St Andrews

00:17:36.260 they went off to pursue

00:17:37.780 their studies on the European continent, Marie and her

00:17:39.840 sisters did not get to do this, all that we know

00:17:41.900 about Marie's sisters, like most

00:17:43.940 women of the time, is the name

00:17:45.880 of the man that they married and the children 0.88

00:17:47.760 that they bore because that was really

00:17:49.660 the only expectation of 1.00

00:17:51.500 women at this time, it was to obviously 0.99

00:17:53.800 And even more so when you were off the elite, it was to marry well for social and political connections and then bear as many children, i.e. as many legitimate heirs as you can.

00:18:03.620 And of course, this is only intensified in the immediate aftermath of the Reformation, where you can't even be a nun anymore.

00:18:11.300 So Marie actually was born in about the late 1540s in East Lothian.

00:18:15.340 So she would have grown up in the shadow of a magnificent abbey just outside Haddington, which was overseen by a formidable prioress.

00:18:24.520 So perhaps Maria's the youngest of four daughters had harboured hopes of becoming a nun.

00:18:28.500 And then she is like a teenager when the Reformation happens.

00:18:31.740 And this is such a dramatic transformational moment for Scotland.

00:18:35.160 It's like an overnight revolution.

00:18:37.320 And literally walls come crashing down.

00:18:38.980 You know, the landscape changes, like buildings that were there, cathedrals, monasteries, nunneries.

00:18:43.540 these buildings are destroyed and going to mass is now illegal if marie had ever harbored hopes

00:18:50.840 of becoming a nun not an option anymore for women because her family was they were catholic right 0.78

00:18:55.900 they were they were very clever and canny and and tried to evade taking an extreme side because

00:19:04.920 this is always a very fraught time where most people or many people are either very very

00:19:09.980 reformist or very very loyal to the old church the maitlands the maitland men are certainly quite

00:19:15.640 canny and try to play both sides as long as possible and then when the reformation occurs

00:19:20.880 they go along with it they don't resist it but they certainly are not a family that come across

00:19:25.280 as passionate puritanical reformers i think they're more pragmatists so they're they were

00:19:32.000 they weren't clamoring to to tear the old church down they weren't part of that crew

00:19:36.220 um but once it was once catholicism had been replaced by protestantism they didn't then

00:19:42.700 be rebels and stick to catholicism do you know they kind of just go along with it this is the

00:19:47.640 world that marie is born into so she is born into a world where scotland is still a protestant nation

00:19:51.580 and by the time she's entering her early teens the reformation has happened so now she is reaching

00:19:57.300 the age of womanhood and marriageable age and a world where the option to be a nun is not even

00:20:02.220 there anymore it's marriage or marriage we see in the records how her three older sisters have

00:20:07.660 all been married off to good first sons of local landed families and really this should have been

00:20:13.300 Marie's path as well it's the only path available to her she can't even be a nun anymore and instead

00:20:18.960 as you know because you've read the book a twist of fate happens and just as Marie is reaching

00:20:24.340 marriageable age and what we should find in the record is another contract of marriage just like

00:20:28.720 her three sisters instead her father goes blind in the year 1561 so this is the year after the

00:20:35.440 reformation it's the year that Mary Queen of Scots returns to Scotland from France to take up her

00:20:40.600 role as Queen of Scotland and this year Marie's father goes blind and this misfortune for him

00:20:46.780 is really the opportunity for her to sidestep the otherwise inevitable fate of marriage because she

00:20:54.120 becomes her blind father's secretary and this is the twist of fate that redetermines her life in a 0.87

00:21:00.720 way that would otherwise have been unthinkable there is no way she wouldn't have had to marry 0.50

00:21:04.660 that's the only option and instead by her father going blind she she gets to eschew marriage and

00:21:10.960 instead pursue you know in the context of the time a meaningfully independent life and as a woman

00:21:16.960 remain unmarried for most of her adult life and serve as her blind father's secretary increase

00:21:21.900 her education and have an enhanced education even beyond what her elite sisters would have had 0.99

00:21:26.880 and amass financial wealth independent financial wealth and social privilege so this is like this

00:21:32.960 sounds like it's fictional doesn't it like it's such an amazing story and this is her real life

00:21:38.380 this is a real woman in 1500 Scotland. Well and to me as the youngest sibling I'm excited when

00:21:45.580 it's like this kind of happened to her because she was the youngest she was the only child

00:21:48.800 left it's not just like he looked at all of his children and was like you're the one who'll be

00:21:52.280 my scribe it's like she's the only one left but it just so happens that she takes to this so well

00:21:58.840 obviously like she learns another person maybe wouldn't have wouldn't have taken to this wouldn't

00:22:04.320 have started writing their own poetry and stuff as she does so it's clearly like a twist of fate

00:22:09.860 but she was the perfect person to be there at that time it seems like i completely agree with

00:22:14.720 you it's like chance upon chance upon chance chance one her father goes blind chance two

00:22:19.000 she happens to be the youngest daughter who's still at home the only unmarried one and then

00:22:23.600 yeah also as you say she was probably the best suited to it because we know from her poetry and 0.98

00:22:29.200 from other um the whole story of her life that she was definitely a woman who loved other women 0.94

00:22:34.400 um and assuming she was a woman who loved exclusively other women i.e. a lesbian in 0.99

00:22:39.340 modern terms who would have had very little interest in marrying a man this is such the 0.88

00:22:44.060 perfect opt-out you couldn't dream of this sort of opt-out in 16th century Scotland to not have

00:22:49.300 to marry and instead get to remain independent and pursue your romance with another woman that 0.96

00:22:56.740 level of freedom would have been unthinkable if she wasn't in this role as her blind father's

00:23:01.340 secretary and it's also why as you suggested she hasn't resisted this at all because you could

00:23:06.540 imagine a different character say a woman who was heterosexual and actually wanted to marry a man

00:23:11.900 and start a family and all of that because those did exist as well of course queer people existed

00:23:15.660 in the past so did heterosexual people so cool and if marie had been heterosexual maybe you know

00:23:21.020 she would have not liked the idea of sacrificing her whole life essentially to just being her

00:23:27.300 elderly father's secretary and instead what we get through the records is she is enthusiastically

00:23:32.360 committed to this to this opt-out to never marrying um which to me is just further evidence of the

00:23:38.460 fact that she was absolutely a woman who loved probably exclusively other women that she showed 0.76

00:23:43.060 no issue at all with completely forfeiting marriage, children, that whole thing. She was

00:23:49.060 like, no, no, it's totally fine. It's totally fine. I'm really happy to just do the secretary

00:23:52.680 role instead. Honestly, don't worry about me. Well, and I think also in terms of her personality

00:23:57.300 and her skill, as you find in the poetry, which we will talk about, the fact that her father was

00:24:02.560 somebody, he could have hired a man to come and be his scribe. He could have thought like, well,

00:24:08.420 this isn't appropriate, I don't.

00:24:09.580 Like, he was a man who seemed to have supported her

00:24:12.280 and wanted her to continue to be independent.

00:24:15.060 Like, you find that in some of the other legal paperwork 0.78

00:24:17.120 where she's given sort of her dowry back to invest.

00:24:23.020 Like, so her father was supporting her in this,

00:24:25.280 which not every father would have, I would imagine.

00:24:28.680 Completely.

00:24:29.240 It seems she was genuinely useful to her father

00:24:31.700 because you're correct, he's a wealthy, well-connected man.

00:24:34.240 He would have had court clerks at the court and everything,

00:24:36.400 but I suppose what he gets from his dutiful

00:24:38.260 youngest daughter is that 24-7

00:24:40.460 in-house support

00:24:42.560 and she's very clever

00:24:44.620 we see this from her poetry

00:24:45.740 she can write in secretary hand

00:24:48.200 as well, she learns secretary hand as well

00:24:50.480 because generally this was a script used

00:24:52.360 predominantly by men because it was used for

00:24:54.380 things like court clerks and

00:24:56.060 ambassadorial roles that only men performed 0.96

00:24:58.360 so Marie would have initially

00:25:00.440 been taught italic script as part of her 1.00

00:25:02.220 standard elite women education 1.00

00:25:04.140 but as she steps into role as her father's secretary she also has to learn secretary 1.00

00:25:09.120 hand and then a couple of years later we've got documents almost certainly in her hand and fluent

00:25:14.560 secretary hand script we get from her poetry how how educated and classically educated biblically

00:25:21.320 educated and erudite she was there obviously as you know both poems by her and poems about her 0.97

00:25:27.580 by other women there's obviously a group of women around her who think she walks on water the way

00:25:32.220 that they write about her in poetry comparing her to Sappho comparing her to Olympia Mirata who's a 0.70

00:25:37.560 famous Italian reformer and also very intelligent and renaissance educated women so yeah she's a

00:25:44.860 special character and you're absolutely right her father could have married her off at any point 0.67

00:25:50.660 and gained assistance he could have hired a male person to do that job and instead Marie's obviously

00:25:56.700 doing such a good job and so happy to stay in the role that instead she serves her father all the

00:26:02.300 way up until his death so you know that phrase like living in interesting times like she is

00:26:09.040 this is happening she she's being her father's scribe she's supporting him and then for various

00:26:13.800 reasons that you explain in the book the family kind of goes into exile the family just in terms

00:26:20.860 of like sometimes the the people in power support them sometimes they don't so there are these

00:26:26.580 years where she and her father are they're not able to live in Lethington Castle they have to

00:26:32.300 go elsewhere what was it like tracking down that information like from those years yeah that is

00:26:38.640 tricky these these are almost the the absence of evidence so what I can say for sure is they were

00:26:44.080 not at Lethington Castle during this year and this year because it was confiscated from them

00:26:48.040 where precisely they were is harder to pin down but we have records of them being certainly at

00:26:53.780 Dundas Castle which is just north of Edinburgh for some of the time and also as a judge and

00:26:59.680 somebody very closely connected to the court. Sir Richard would definitely also have had lodgings

00:27:04.000 in the centre of Edinburgh so it's like we can say they definitely weren't at their own castle home

00:27:08.880 because it was confiscated. They were at Dundas some of the time, they will otherwise have been

00:27:15.460 around Edinburgh maybe staying with other landed friends and then around Edinburgh maybe at her

00:27:19.580 father's court lodgings in the centre of town we sometimes also have we're writing letters like

00:27:25.600 there's a letter that gets written to Elizabeth I it's in the voice of Sir Richard Maitland but

00:27:30.540 he obviously wasn't writing it because he's completely blind by this point he must have

00:27:34.100 dictated it to somebody Maria is by far the most likely candidate for the actual author the scribe

00:27:38.780 of the letter and we know that this letter was written at Edinburgh it's very helpful when they

00:27:43.360 write that obviously they weren't doing it so the future historians could pinpoint where they were

00:27:46.420 but it's very helpful when they say at Edinburgh 1571 and you're like okay so they were we can

00:27:51.000 locate them in Edinburgh here yeah so it's just a case of getting what information you can from

00:27:55.140 primary documents working on almost by exclusion well they can't have been here so here are the

00:27:59.680 places they might have been and sometimes you actually do get oh they were definitely here at

00:28:02.700 this particular time and in the just looking at her life so she's born at Lettingham Castle then

00:28:08.980 she's spending some years away at what point do you think she started putting together the quarto

00:28:14.520 this book yeah so uh my very very strong sense is that the quarto the manuscript began to be

00:28:21.860 compiled during these years of exile so this is the exile takes place following the civil war

00:28:28.560 that ensues after mary queen of scots's deposition and the maitland boys the brothers not the father

00:28:35.460 crucially but mary's brothers all go in big time for the queen's party for mary queen of scots's

00:28:40.460 party and unfortunately they're not victorious the king's party representing the young james the

00:28:45.140 six um is victorious and then the earl of morton who's the leader of that party punishes the

00:28:51.720 maitlands because they've they've backed their own political horse they lose and then the victorious

00:28:55.480 region really really comes down hard on them and he it's him that confiscates lethington castle but

00:29:01.560 from the father even though sir richard maitland took no side um in the conflict he's like a very

00:29:08.800 studious neutral calm judge and he famously says like he just thinks civil war is terrible for the

00:29:16.600 nation he just wants everyone to come together for the welfare of the nation and he's disappointed

00:29:21.240 in his sons for going into politics he more pursues the law and history and poetry and all

00:29:27.200 of his sons go like straight into politics proper messy politics where sometimes you're up and

00:29:32.300 sometimes you're down and even though he himself has completely issued that life and chosen the

00:29:36.780 quieter life of literature and the law he is punished the regent morton confiscates lethington

00:29:42.540 from him and therefore marie because she is still part of her father's household and so what we have

00:29:47.820 is a letter to elizabeth the first that's one of the examples i mentioned earlier and it's richard

00:29:52.360 maitland writing to elizabeth the first the queen of england because we obviously in scotland don't

00:29:56.220 have an adult monarch at this point we have civil war and regents and all of this and baby king

00:30:00.600 James is not in a position to be mediating this so Richard appeals to the Queen of England and says

00:30:07.420 I took no part in this war and you know I give this letter in quite some detail in the book

00:30:12.260 because I think it just is so evocative of this this is the situation this is the world

00:30:16.580 that Marie's living in this is her life and it's quite a pained letter to read it's like so

00:30:23.300 just desperate it is and he says I took no part in this civil war I was completely neutral and

00:30:29.720 surely it is not correct that the father should be punished for the the crimes of the sons like

00:30:34.600 this is this does not accord to any law of god or man this is just so unfair and i'm begging you

00:30:40.780 renowned queen of england famed for your justice and everything to intervene and have my lands and

00:30:47.280 property restored to me i mean unfortunately for him elizabeth did not intervene um she never

00:30:52.920 replied to the letter as far as we're aware uh we know it arrived with her because it's held in the

00:30:57.380 state archives in england so we know it definitely arrived with her down there but there's no record

00:31:02.820 of any response and indeed the castle home was not returned to them until much much later so

00:31:07.180 it seems that i mean to be fair to elizabeth the first you might take one look at that and say why

00:31:10.900 would i get myself involved in scottish domestic problems like but the rich sir richard was

00:31:17.220 obviously desperate you know and it wasn't it was a completely unfair situation it was not a just

00:31:22.000 thing to do to confiscate the father's castle for the crimes of the son but that's what happened so

00:31:27.260 the blind elderly Sir Richard who'd taken no side and done nothing wrong and his wife and his

00:31:33.080 remaining daughter at home are homeless they do not have their castle home and instead they're

00:31:38.480 relying on the hospitality of friends or his lodgings in the town of Edinburgh and it is in

00:31:44.360 this time this this long period of exile following the civil war a very dark time for the Maitland

00:31:50.100 family that I believe that Marie embarked upon creating this manuscript to offer herself and

00:31:56.960 her father like a source of comfort in these very dark and chaotic times like a sense of comfort

00:32:02.360 control and order and as I mentioned as well as being a statesman the keeper of the privy seal

00:32:08.820 to Mary Queen of Scots and a judge Richard is also a passionate historian and poet and collector

00:32:14.520 and we see that in a lot of the other records he collects like early law reports of the the

00:32:19.620 Court of Session in Scotland he collects poetry by older Scottish poets for even from even earlier

00:32:25.040 centuries and he's also a poet himself

00:32:27.380 and until the manuscript that

00:32:29.200 Marie creates, his poetry

00:32:30.880 is quite messy the way it's recorded

00:32:33.220 in other sources, it does appear in other

00:32:35.000 contemporary sources but not in full

00:32:36.900 there's sometimes errors in the copying

00:32:39.000 of it, it's obviously been copied by people who are not as intimate

00:32:41.140 with it so they sometimes make scribal errors

00:32:43.020 in putting it into a different source

00:32:44.860 and there's not a complete record

00:32:46.520 so it's very easy to imagine with knowing the

00:32:49.040 character of this man, it's easy to

00:32:51.080 imagine that he would have really liked the idea

00:32:52.940 of all of his poems being really neat

00:32:55.040 and collected together in one place chronologically, no errors, and who is better placed to undertake

00:33:01.460 this task than Marie, his dutiful daughter who's been his scribe and secretary for many

00:33:06.920 years at this point, who's very well educated, very skilled scribe by this point. And indeed,

00:33:13.360 after his blindness, when he continues writing poetry, he will have dictated these poems

00:33:17.020 to Marie in the first instance. So she is so well placed to create this record of his

00:33:22.360 poetry but of course amazingly for us she doesn't just record her father's poems she certainly

00:33:27.340 records her father's poems beautifully and in full it is the most complete collection of his poetry

00:33:31.420 that we have to this day but in the collection she also puts in some poems by other court figures

00:33:37.740 men including the King James who's older by this point obviously and I think this is to reflect

00:33:44.400 just like the status of her father and the connections of the Maitland family and also

00:33:48.740 and amongst this poetry of the male great and good of 16th century Scotland she of course also

00:33:53.660 includes unsigned poems so-called anonymous poems but I like the Virginia Woolf quote

00:33:57.900 anonymous was often a woman certainly in this case she also includes about 30 anonymous poems

00:34:03.800 so many of which are obviously by women some are by Marie some are by women around Marie and three

00:34:09.140 of these poems are lesbian love poems so I find it an interesting consideration as to whether she

00:34:15.000 always started out with that goal or whether you know she started off creating genuine I'm going

00:34:19.220 to create a manuscript of my father's poetry and then it occurred to her in the process

00:34:23.120 opportunistically to start including some of her own poems sneak some of these in yeah yeah or

00:34:28.380 whether that was always the goal whether that was the goal from the off either way we ended up with

00:34:32.840 this manuscript of all her poems in it but it's it's one of those things that we'll never know

00:34:36.840 for sure right whether that was always the goal from the start or whether it was something that

00:34:40.540 occurred to her as as she began because her the anonymous poems don't start appearing until quite

00:34:45.080 late in which perhaps suggests it was more opportunistic that she started to slip them in

00:34:50.120 so take us back to when you were first going through the manuscript that you were first

00:34:55.760 looking at when you first discovered Marie herself and you found this poem and you're like oh this is

00:35:00.900 a lesbian love poem what made that describe the poem and why it's so obviously a lesbian love

00:35:07.020 poem oh of course so it's like well first of all it is definitely in the voice of one woman to

00:35:12.340 another woman that is completely clear from from several references within the poem one line of

00:35:17.420 which for example says we unhappy women referring to the the speaker of the poem and the subject of

00:35:24.020 the poem refers to them as we as women so there you go and no there's a whole chapter of the book

00:35:30.720 which goes through the poem and the nine stanzas detail and i would i would take up like the next

00:35:34.420 two hours on this podcast if we did the whole poem but let's let's do it in summary poem 49

00:35:38.600 is a poem of love from marie to the woman who had her heart and in this poem marie among other

00:35:46.380 things states her explicit desire to marry this woman it does not get clearer than that in terms

00:35:53.120 of this being a love poem not a friendship poem a love poem she wants to marry the woman it's also

00:35:58.680 very erotic one of the lines for example says um you will be holy at your will and ravish my

00:36:04.860 affection again this is not platonic this is deeply erotic um and this poem marie just gushes

00:36:11.880 about this woman she says she's like the most beautiful woman the most intelligent woman she's

00:36:16.520 ever seen she surpasses every other woman who's ever existed and then she goes on to talk about

00:36:21.980 their bond and why they should be able to be married and she says that their bond of love outdoes

00:36:28.680 any such romantic bond that's ever existed in any place or time, mythological and real.

00:36:33.800 And she gives examples, yeah, right?

00:36:36.000 She does, yeah.

00:36:36.780 And some of these examples are so fascinating as well,

00:36:38.960 because a lot of these examples are so homoerotically coded. 0.88

00:36:41.640 If we needed yet further evidence that this is a lesbian love point from a woman to another,

00:36:45.140 we've got the I want to marry you bit, which is kind of enough in and of itself. 1.00

00:36:48.900 But we've got, yeah, she wants to marry her. 0.99

00:36:50.860 There's eroticism.

00:36:52.120 And then some of the examples that she lists out as other, you know, 0.83

00:36:55.940 idolised romantic couples are very homoerotic for example Achilles and Patroclus and David and 0.75

00:37:03.140 Jonathan from the Old Testament and then also Ruth and Naomi from the Old Testament there's a whole

00:37:07.460 section of the poem where she is listing out idealised married couples who symbolise the

00:37:13.060 bonds of marriage in the best way possible and every time Marie lists them out she says not even

00:37:17.800 these people who were so famed for their devotion come close to us and there's heterosexual married

00:37:22.800 couples that she lists out from the classical world like Portia and Brutus but in amidst this

00:37:27.120 stanza on idealised marriage um amidst this stanza on idealised marital couples including

00:37:34.900 heterosexual ones she places a female female couple Ruth and Naomi clearly positioning that

00:37:39.680 as also like a sapphic same-sex marriage so it's an absolutely astounding poem on on so many

00:37:46.060 different levels especially in the context as we've said of this post-reformation Scotland 0.97

00:37:50.780 the church clamping down on all such so-called deviant behavior and here we have a reformation

00:37:57.520 era woman actually appealing to the bible in defense of her sapphic love it is absolutely

00:38:04.200 astounding i find that's interesting because you mentioned too earlier on about like she obviously

00:38:09.440 in the course of being her father scribe like she would have gotten i don't know self-directed but

00:38:14.060 educated like she would have read she's clearly fluent she knows about the classics she knows

00:38:17.660 like the minutiae of like people from the Bible that maybe not everybody would have heard of. 0.93

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00:42:43.020 So just the fact that she has,

00:42:45.080 that she can pull out all of these references

00:42:46.960 really speaks to just the depth of her knowledge of literature,

00:42:50.760 that she can say, we're like this and we're like this,

00:42:53.220 like we're better than them.

00:42:54.160 Like, it's just impressive to me

00:42:55.780 how many examples she goes through in this poem.

00:42:58.520 Completely, yeah.

00:42:59.160 she's so erudite and I think it also speaks to something really significant which is the

00:43:03.100 validation that there is to be found in history or in literature of seeing yourself reflected back

00:43:08.960 right so Marie as a woman who loved other women in 16th century Scotland she wasn't falling over

00:43:14.060 herself with examples positive examples of of same-sex relationships was she but she managed

00:43:19.880 to find some she found some in her bible she found some in the classics and she found it in

00:43:25.280 Sappho. Sappho, obviously, I'm sure as your listeners will know, the so-called original

00:43:29.700 lesbian, the ancient Greek poet who immortalised her love for other women in verse, thereby giving

00:43:35.940 us the very words we still use to describe women who love women today, namely Sapphic from Sappho

00:43:41.380 and lesbian from Sappho of Lesbos. And she's as much a lesbian icon in the 16th century and the

00:43:46.540 Renaissance, which is obviously about a new flowering of interest in Greek and Roman literature

00:43:52.700 in the classical world this is the world that marie's also living in she's the sort of two

00:43:56.800 facets of her her world and her education is like reformation era scotland so the bible

00:44:01.980 and then the renaissance so renewed interest in the classics and she manages to find positive

00:44:08.060 validating examples of herself as a woman who loved other women in both of those places um

00:44:14.260 and it's also so significant that marie is compared to sappho in a later poem a poem

00:44:19.280 probably written by women who knew her she's compared to Olympia Murata who yeah was a

00:44:24.560 protestant reformer a female protestant reformer in Italy and also a very famous learned woman

00:44:30.640 of the renaissance and Marie's compared to her reflecting her own learnedness and her own

00:44:36.360 protestant faith and also she is compared to Sappho the ancient Greek lesbian poet so again

00:44:41.320 in terms of evidence that Marie was a woman who loved other women you're there's so much of it

00:44:46.240 you've got the poem in her own voice that we just referred to where she's saying she wants to marry

00:44:51.160 another woman and then you've got a later poem by somebody else where maria is compared to sappho

00:44:55.900 she's literally compared to the iconic lesbian poet and then there's two other lesbian poems

00:45:00.260 and there's other poems where maria is positioned as a sort of modern diana the goddess diana again

00:45:05.220 famed for her virginity and chastity when it comes to men at least you know the manuscript is just

00:45:09.820 full of this picture of like this is a woman who loves other women yeah and there's a poet in the

00:45:14.320 image of Sappho a woman in the image of the virgin goddess Diana that is the picture of Marie

00:45:18.420 Maitland that comes forth from the manuscript of poetry and then also from the historical records

00:45:24.220 that I've only just mentioned things there from the the poems you've then also got the the records

00:45:30.040 and the historical records related to Marie's independent finances and everything where again

00:45:35.060 we get this picture coming through she's referred to as a chaste virgin goddess Diana again the

00:45:40.420 imagery always important to see a chaste virgin in terms of heterosexuality right so it's it's

00:45:47.100 so fascinating to me I love the like the comparison to Sappho it's like as a woman who loves women but 0.86

00:45:52.340 also as a poet like both of which I'm glad that she knew that Sappho existed like you were saying

00:45:58.600 just so she could know like I'm not the first person to ever be like this like this is this

00:46:02.540 rich history and that's that's why I think it's so important and so wonderful that you've unearthed

00:46:08.280 her story so that people I think it's so important for people to look back in history especially

00:46:12.680 queer people to see like here's examples like it's not and for her and here's an example of

00:46:18.700 somebody who clearly was like living she's living this independent life it's not a sad story you

00:46:24.540 know it's like she figured this out for herself she fell in love like she wrote these poems she

00:46:29.920 was living independently it's such an interesting example and so so so different from what you would

00:46:35.840 expecting Reformation Scotland to be going on.

00:46:38.380 You're so right and I'm so glad you've made 0.99

00:46:39.920 that point because when you're studying 1.00

00:46:41.880 LGBT history a lot of it is by

00:46:43.840 necessity depressing because for so much of

00:46:45.880 history we have been persecuted and criminalised

00:46:47.840 and executed and all of that so a lot

00:46:49.820 of the time LGBT history as important

00:46:51.720 as it is, it's quite depressing and it's quite 0.92

00:46:53.660 sad stories. This is a rare

00:46:55.840 example of a positive

00:46:57.540 uplifting, as empowered as you

00:46:59.720 can be story of a woman who

00:47:01.800 loved other women and who loved herself

00:47:04.020 despite that.

00:47:05.840 in this era, which I've always found so empowering as a lesbian myself, but Marie Maitland fascinates

00:47:12.880 me because she definitely had a more secure sense of herself as a lesbian in 16th century Scotland

00:47:17.880 than I would have had in my 20s. I've always been really inspired by the strength of character

00:47:24.720 that she had and the self-love that she had to live in John Knox's Reformation Scotland,

00:47:30.300 where sodomy is like the worst sin you can imagine and there's executions and convictions

00:47:35.660 and she is like so unapologetically and proudly declaiming her love for another woman appealing

00:47:42.620 to the bible in support of this relishing comparisons to Sappho you know it's hard for

00:47:50.380 many of us today to be quite so joyous and bold in being people who love people of the same gender

00:47:58.720 and she was doing it with such class and flair in the 1500s in Scotland and I like to think that by

00:48:06.100 writing this book and giving queer people today and especially women who love other women

00:48:10.900 a figure that they can feel validated and inspired by in the same way that Marie could look back to

00:48:16.320 Sappho and Ruth and Naomi and the Old Testament Achilles Patroclus we need to see ourselves

00:48:21.440 reflected in history and in the stories that were told or we can feel alone and wrong that's why it's

00:48:26.820 so important to tell this story like yes it's involved academic research and I've got academic

00:48:30.780 historical training otherwise I wouldn't have been able to do the research and write the book but

00:48:34.480 it's also a deeply personal thing for me to have written this book and I really hope it helps

00:48:40.160 people and inspires people and validates people because it's proof positive that women who love

00:48:45.820 other women have always existed we know that as you say we know that but it's really powerful to

00:48:50.680 have examples to have clear examples well and exactly like the just the the situation that she

00:48:58.420 was in her life like as her father's scribe where she's able to live independently like i'm sure

00:49:02.060 who knows her sisters or other they were in a culture where it was kind of like today's like 0.99

00:49:08.820 trad wife where it's just like the expectation of scotland reformation of women it's like their job 0.94

00:49:13.760 was to get married and have as many children as possible maybe die in childbirth whatever at least 1.00

00:49:18.980 you had children so who knows how many of those women who got married and had children wouldn't 0.85

00:49:23.760 have chosen that for themselves they didn't have a choice but the fact that she and so I think

00:49:29.220 there's some narratives that maybe are like it's like this sort of like sad it's like oh they were

00:49:32.980 forced into this or whatever but she's just like what are your ideas about the other poems by

00:49:38.320 women that are in this quarter like I like to picture her with sort of like a group of

00:49:42.080 like a little writer's circle or a little reading group or something just like women who like to

00:49:46.400 just talk about the classics together like who do you think they might have been yeah I think

00:49:51.100 that's what was going on like a small close-knit circle of women so certainly her lover was part

00:49:56.000 of this circle right and yeah talking about the mostly sad stories obviously Marie's lover was

00:50:01.240 also a woman who loved other women but she gets married off and indeed the poem that I've referred

00:50:05.760 to a lot already the one where Marie is declaring that she wants to marry her my strong sense is

00:50:10.360 that the impetus for that poem was her lover being married off because unlike Marie she didn't have

00:50:16.560 some convenient opt-out a blind father who needed a secretary so my strong sense is Marie and her

00:50:21.420 had been involved romantically intensely for quite some time and then this is shattered at the point

00:50:28.640 at which her lover has to marry another has to marry a man of course she does eventually what

00:50:32.840 for what reason would she not um because that that is the the part of Marie's poem that says

00:50:38.280 i want to marry you it's it's not abstract it's in the context it's like i wish that i were married

00:50:43.840 to you instead of the husband that you are married to it's pain you can feel it and that's the line

00:50:48.900 where she says and if we could be married then we would not hurt as we do now unhappy women

00:50:53.940 so that that's that stanza which i invoked earlier in terms of how we know it's a poem from a woman

00:50:59.140 to a woman she says we unhappy women and the reason they're unhappy is because her lover has

00:51:03.400 been married off so yeah even for marie in that sense although she herself wasn't forced to marry 0.60

00:51:08.040 as soon as she came of manageable age she still has to deal with the fact that she certainly can't

00:51:13.580 marry the women she loves the woman has to be married to a man so there's still that wee bit of

00:51:17.800 sadness in there um so yeah her and and her lover obviously um would have been aware of the poems

00:51:25.100 that marie would they're for her right they're for her so and then there's a one of the other

00:51:30.380 lesbian poems that i uncovered there's this iconic poem 49 one which we've referred to

00:51:34.200 there's another lesbian love poem which is really fascinating i'm actually really interested for

00:51:39.000 readers to start to get their hands on the book and read it and see what people start to think

00:51:43.280 because poem 72 in the manuscript is certainly another lesbian love poem from one one to another

00:51:48.360 um echoes a lot of the themes of this very punchy lesbian poem uh poem 49 um but the voice is just a

00:51:56.740 bit more cautious and it makes you wonder whether it's actually marie's lover responding to her

00:52:02.100 Marie's a very bold character utterly audacious really and this poem 72 is another sapphic poem

00:52:08.620 but it's like more careful and it also sounds like a response if poem 49 is almost like a marriage

00:52:14.980 proposal poem 72 is almost like an I do so this also makes it feel to me that it was her lover

00:52:22.400 responding to her because it's the same themes it sounds like a response to poem 49 and it's

00:52:28.180 a slightly different voice so i think it's a poem by marie's lover in response to her could also be

00:52:33.440 by marie again just continuing on the same theme and just continuing to pour out her love but i'm

00:52:39.660 really interested to hear what what readers think i don't come down hard in the book i leave it open

00:52:43.480 as it's definitely one of the lesbian love poems but whether by marie or her lover we don't know

00:52:47.520 and then there's a third and final lesbian love poem in the manuscript which is definitely by

00:52:51.940 marie and which sadly is a heartbreak poem we've said it's a really positive story it is

00:52:56.620 in the context of LGBT history

00:52:58.940 but there is sadness in it as well

00:53:00.200 their love story does seem to end in heartbreak unfortunately

00:53:02.780 You say in your book

00:53:05.620 you suggest

00:53:06.960 which of these poems might be a good reading

00:53:09.540 for a wedding, which one was that?

00:53:11.760 That's poem 72

00:53:12.820 that's like the response to the

00:53:15.100 proposal one because the thing with poem 49

00:53:17.380 as I've said is it was born

00:53:19.500 out of quite sad circumstances it seems

00:53:21.540 it refers to the two women

00:53:23.340 being in pain because the lover

00:53:25.260 has a husband

00:53:26.040 and even though it does also declaim their undying love and everything there's like a sad

00:53:31.020 bit in the middle if I was going to do poem 49 I'd want to extract just some stanzas not the whole

00:53:35.240 thing poem 72 though is just this beautiful four stanzas that just read like marriage vows they

00:53:40.500 read like a response to a proposal it's like yes I would love to marry you and be committed to you

00:53:44.420 forever and I give you my heart as a pledge and that and I don't know if you notice at the front

00:53:49.180 of the book when I dedicate the book to my own wife and it says my heart here I present and

00:53:54.020 pledge perpetual that's from that poem so that in itself tells you that I didn't choose a line

00:53:59.260 from poem 49 to dedicate the book to my wife the poem's too kind of depressing at first I chose a

00:54:03.960 line from poem 72 to dedicate the book to my own wife it pains us it's a source of regret that when

00:54:09.600 we got married it was 2017 so it was like several years before I even had a clue who Marie Maitland

00:54:14.800 was so we couldn't have any such reading at our own wedding but I hope that future lesbians can

00:54:20.180 can have these poems at their wedding so I would have loved to have such a reading but that's the

00:54:24.360 point of why it's so important to tell the story we we got married in 2017 as two lesbian Scottish

00:54:29.260 women didn't have a clue that Marie Maitland had ever existed exactly and I I think I think there's

00:54:35.480 be so lovely as a wedding reading I think that's such a beautiful idea and I love that you mention

00:54:39.460 it in your book so again your book is with my actually can you explain the title with my own

00:54:44.940 hand yeah absolutely i would like to make clear given that this is vulgar history podcast i feel

00:54:51.160 i can say this that it is not a reference to masturbation okay some people some people have

00:54:56.900 started to um think it was that um and it certainly didn't help when we started to imprint in

00:55:03.240 promotional posters i've been doing events all year even before the book has come out and it

00:55:07.980 certainly doesn't look good when you have coming soon with my own hands does not help

00:55:12.040 the sense that some people have like is it meant to be a sort of like subtle reference to like

00:55:17.260 female self-sufficient like it's really not but it's quite funny that it's accidentally that as

00:55:21.180 well but no that's not what it's about it is about um an original record as you said it's a series

00:55:27.220 really really important sources a bunch of acquittances which are essentially receipts

00:55:32.520 um that marie signed with her own hand in the 1580s and these are so important for so many reasons

00:55:40.020 reason one is that they provide us with incontrovertible proof of her ability to write

00:55:45.860 out with the pages of the manuscript which is crucial because as I say this manuscript has

00:55:50.880 been known about in academic circles for quite some time and despite the fact that her name's

00:55:54.620 on the front cover and various poems refer to her as its author and all of that some academics have

00:55:59.920 said oh but we can't be sure she wrote it which I've personally I've always found a bit ludicrous

00:56:04.300 I think there's actually more than enough evidence even if you just had the manuscript all on its own

00:56:08.740 her name's like emblazoned on the front cover twice like there's as you've read the book you

00:56:13.780 know there's like an anagram of her name embedded in the first poem which is so cheeky and so clever

00:56:18.160 it's her again saying this is my manuscript there are various poems that literally refer to her as

00:56:23.380 the author of the manuscript so personally I've always found it difficult to understand why some

00:56:28.320 academics have felt unable on on all those bases alone to say oh she wrote the manuscript but

00:56:33.500 they've all said oh we can't be sure for we can't be sure and what we'd need to be sure is evidence

00:56:38.440 of her writing independent evidence of her writing that's not the manuscript and I've found that I

00:56:43.900 have found that with these acquaintances where she signs with my own hand and it's really really

00:56:48.800 important that she writes with my own hand because of course in this period illiteracy is a big

00:56:55.260 problem most people actually cannot write most women certainly can't write so when Marie's signing

00:57:01.880 these documents when she's writing underneath with my own hand that is her telling us I wrote 0.69

00:57:06.200 this myself I signed this myself whereas today because most people can write it's normally

00:57:10.720 enough now just to sign right you don't have to write your name and then underneath right

00:57:13.960 I did this with my own hand but because this was a time where a lot of people couldn't write

00:57:17.800 they'd often have people sign like a notary would sign on their behalf or whatever so

00:57:22.220 unless somebody writes their name and then also tells you I literally signed this with my own

00:57:27.380 hand it doesn't mean they personally held the quill and put their name to it somebody could

00:57:32.000 have done on their behalf but we have these records um in marie's hand obviously in her

00:57:36.540 own that hand because she tells us she says with my own hand so that is why the title of the book

00:57:42.220 is with my own hand and also because it kind of i feel like it captures her whole life it is

00:57:46.980 actually just a quote from these series of acquaintances and in its own context it was

00:57:51.540 just quite practical and quotidian you know it's not actually a hugely evocative statement in the

00:57:56.220 context that was written it was just quite practical just so you know I literally signed

00:57:59.440 this myself for like almost just propriety so people knew to verify that but for me it's like

00:58:06.340 her whole life is about her ability to write and to leave us records of her life with her own hand

00:58:12.980 she's left us records in her own hand so I just it was actually my wife as well by the way that

00:58:17.940 suggested the title um because we didn't the book didn't have a title for most of the writing process

00:58:23.100 i don't know how how other authors who've been on your podcast have have found that with titles but

00:58:27.740 it didn't have a title until the whole thing was written um and then it was like okay what what

00:58:31.960 title are we going to give this and my wife who obviously knows the book as inside out as i do

00:58:36.060 because she has been by my side for the past five years as i've researched it so she said oh what

00:58:41.200 about with my own hand and i was like that's genius this is why i married you like excellent

00:58:45.240 it's perfect yeah and my publicist and publishing team agreed that's so perfect so yeah full credit

00:58:51.200 to my wife for actually suggesting that's what it should be but it is indeed from a very significant

00:58:56.720 primary record written by Marie. So as I warned you about this but at the end of these sorts of

00:59:03.260 episodes I like to honour the people that we're talking about by giving them a score in four

00:59:08.840 different categories and actually what I'm doing in this series with the tutor episodes is you know

00:59:13.680 I'm going to have these scores then at the end of this series I'm going to do sort of like a playoff

00:59:17.820 you know where people can vote for their favorite person so these scores will help with that

00:59:21.480 it's also just kind of a fun way to wrap things up so for Marie um there's the four categories 0.99

00:59:26.940 and the first one is uh scandalousness how scandalous was she seen by people in her time

00:59:33.780 and place and it's interesting because because of her family and her family her father's support

00:59:39.980 especially of her like it doesn't nothing you found was like Marie Maitland she's she's she's

00:59:46.140 shocking everyone's just like she's a chaste virgin she's a landowner we're cool with her

00:59:50.880 it doesn't seem like anyone in her time saw her as scandalous or did they I don't know

00:59:55.940 no they didn't I think that's such a fascinating thing what she was scandalous and she was writing

01:00:02.040 scandalous poetry and she had a scandalous love for another woman but she played the game so well 1.00

01:00:07.540 she outwitted the patriarchy because although she issued marrying a man and served as secretary to

01:00:16.460 her father and we know from these these poems and from the insight into her emotional life that we

01:00:22.240 have that she was definitely a woman who loved other women but to the world outside to her

01:00:26.800 father to society she just looked like a dutiful daughter if she wasn't marrying it was only so 0.97

01:00:32.220 that she could serve her blind father and of course that was the only way for her to even 0.97

01:00:36.240 remotely honour herself as a sapphic woman you couldn't be an open lesbian in this time it's just 0.98

01:00:41.240 impossible beyond comprehension so it's it's like she was both absolutely scandalous but was so good 0.54

01:00:49.380 at it she played within the rules she outwitted the patriarchy so nobody saw what she was doing 1.00

01:00:53.960 as scandalous what you actually had was a lesbian who grasped an opportunity to sidestep marriage

01:01:00.200 but to the world she presented i am a chaste virgin i am a jitterful daughter i'm only not 0.79

01:01:05.720 marrying because I'm serving my father so kind of I don't know where she falls in that sense

01:01:10.940 secretly scandalous I know what I'm going to propose like this is each of the categories is

01:01:15.340 like a zero to ten score I'm going to propose a five out of ten because it's like averaging the

01:01:20.940 fact that she was scandalous but she hid it so it's kind of like right in the middle I agree I

01:01:26.520 think that's fair I think that's fair yeah which is interesting like in you know I've I've scored

01:01:32.060 people on this for throughout all my episodes of my podcast i don't recall somebody who was

01:01:37.000 secretly scandalous but covered it up so perfectly that yeah yeah it's good for her um

01:01:44.780 you know like if if she had been scandalous and none of i don't know like her life would

01:01:50.220 have turned out very differently if if people well if she'd been scandalous and genuinely

01:01:55.580 had a public reputation in 16th century scotland for being a sodomite we'd have very

01:02:01.760 different records of her and they would they would definitely then be in the realms of depressing 1.00

01:02:05.180 she might have been like scandalous oh this lesbian but ultimately she would have ended up 1.00

01:02:09.420 executed so yeah yeah or you know god knows witchcraft trials etc yeah exactly exactly or 0.98

01:02:15.840 charged with witchcraft or something yeah so we'll give her a five um the next category is

01:02:20.680 scheminess which in terms of this podcast and the people we talk about it's just kind of like

01:02:25.580 i feel like this is a going to be a high score for her it's a compliment um somebody who just

01:02:30.180 kind of sees what's going on in the world and finds ways to pivot around and comes up with a

01:02:34.280 plan like they're an active participant in their own life that's a 10 so i think this is a 10 this

01:02:39.260 is like this is why she's only a five on the scandalous one but a 10 on this one because it's

01:02:43.460 like she was so clever scandalous but but managed to not appear scandalous well and even and people

01:02:52.520 can read more about this when they get into your book and you know we don't want to spoil too much 0.96

01:02:56.460 in this episode but we see like when she is being an independent woman and she has property and 1.00

01:03:01.680 stuff she's if someone doesn't pay her rent she will like take them to court like she is 0.99

01:03:05.540 oh completely yeah she is an operator she is she is absolutely a woman who operates in a man's 1.00

01:03:13.480 world with great flair and empowerment which is insane as you say there's the lesbian love poetry 0.89

01:03:20.840 which we've spoken about a lot but there's also this evidence of her as a public woman participating

01:03:26.040 in scottish court life and engaging in land and property networks with men across scotland and

01:03:31.740 you're right there's this one case where a man who was due her money like an important prominent

01:03:36.220 powerful edinburgh landed guy has not paid her money she was she was due and she just sues him

01:03:42.100 she just hasn't declared an outlaw and she gets the land taken off him and assigned to somebody

01:03:47.400 else who will pay her the rents from them that she's due that is iconic yeah no exactly i love

01:03:52.800 she like gets the job done she's not just being like oh i'm a dutiful daughter just writing out

01:03:58.360 what my father says it's like no she's like i'm gonna write my secret lesbian love poetry i'm

01:04:01.940 gonna have this love affair i'm gonna have these my reading club i'm gonna like take out of court

01:04:06.980 like she's doing stuff and yeah exactly and even those with my own hand records as well that is her

01:04:13.580 also signing her own acquittances those are those are documents that are saying i marie

01:04:18.720 Maitland have received this money that was due to me by so and so I confirm that I've received it

01:04:22.820 on time and in full and again she's doing that herself with her own hand not having a male 0.95

01:04:28.140 clerk do that for her yeah she she looks after her her own independent finances on her own terms

01:04:35.120 I think that this is also in terms of you being the historian to unearth all of this stuff it's

01:04:41.020 like thank goodness she did all this stuff because there is all this paperwork there is there is 0.72

01:04:46.760 indeed yeah if she hadn't been so litigious if she hadn't you know but she was doing all these

01:04:54.860 things that was being recorded so you're able to piece together the story exactly and it's good

01:04:59.920 that like it is useful as well that as we've touched on quite a bit that she was born into

01:05:03.620 such an elite and prominent family so obviously there will also have been women among the lower

01:05:08.320 classes of Scottish society who were who were women who loved other women of whom we just have

01:05:12.360 no records occasional criminal records they're getting tried for witchcraft and stuff but it is

01:05:16.780 it is great that marie was born into such an elite family and then as a character herself was

01:05:22.680 obviously just very litigious and very keen to have everything recorded and proper so the next

01:05:28.640 category actually i'm going to skip down and then go back just because i want to end with

01:05:32.180 one and to confirm she's getting 10 for scheming she's getting 10 yes five for scandalous 10 for

01:05:37.480 seeming um the next category is what i call the sexism bonus which is just kind of like i like to

01:05:43.400 give people points for what they had to put up with and maybe they could have done more in their

01:05:48.200 life were it not for the patriarchy they lived under oh definitely a 10 as well right because

01:05:53.500 this is 16th century scotland i don't think there's like gets worse for women than this period

01:05:57.640 in scottish history she did accomplish everything she did within the patriarchy right it's like her

01:06:03.020 father supported her when he died her brother kind of took over and we won't talk about what

01:06:07.140 happens with that but yeah she wasn't she thrived as much as she could but how much more could she

01:06:13.000 have done if she could just be a free woman who didn't have to depend on a male family member who

01:06:18.420 could have just loved openly if she could have gone to university yeah exactly yeah all her

01:06:24.880 brothers go to st andrew's uni and she didn't even have the chance to do that just women just 0.99

01:06:30.140 did not go to university didn't get to participate meaningfully in court life or be ambassadors or do 0.87

01:06:36.600 anything like that no yeah definitely top like sex is a bonus as well yeah you just have to

01:06:41.900 compare her to her brothers you just have to compare Maitland's daughter to Maitland's son

01:06:44.860 and then look at the the different opportunities and freedoms they each had now I keep picturing

01:06:49.900 this as a movie I don't know if you do but I just keep thinking like if this was the movie like the

01:06:54.380 movie it's like you know the reading club circle like where she meets her lover all this stuff but

01:06:57.760 I'm like I'm like a movie somebody could do that wouldn't be accurate it'd be like she disguises

01:07:02.380 herself as a man to go to university i feel like that could be that would be ace yeah

01:07:07.840 and then that's where she falls in that it would be basically the movie yentl

01:07:12.040 um except in scotland the final category is um significance and i suspect i know where you're

01:07:19.820 gonna put her with this but i'll just explain so this is kind of the sign of her significance to

01:07:24.240 scottish history her significance to queer history and also honestly her significance to you

01:07:29.500 as a person who's ever used to move by her story i'm gonna guess like 10 10 10 10 is the highest

01:07:36.460 we can go yeah but but seriously um marie maitland is significant in her own time as somebody who

01:07:44.080 lived such a unique and meaningful independent life as a woman in 16th century scotland and

01:07:48.660 wrote this lesbian love poetry she is also in terms of sort of global sapphic history she's

01:07:54.280 currently the among the earliest known lesbian love poets since Sappho herself that's why the

01:07:59.680 book subtitle is Scotland 16th century Sappho plus she's compared to Sappho but yeah she's

01:08:04.200 among the earliest known lesbian love poets since Sappho of ancient Greece so this makes her

01:08:09.100 significant to not just Scottish but like the world's LGBT history and then she's also a few

01:08:14.520 centuries earlier than Anne Lister who is obviously rightly famed I know you've done podcast episodes

01:08:19.880 I'm going to say Ann Lister in terms of skills.

01:08:22.420 So Marie Maitland is coming up with a 35 is her score. 0.99

01:08:25.540 Ann Lister has a 36. 0.94

01:08:26.980 And I'm going to say Ann Lister was more scandalous. 1.00

01:08:29.680 Ann Lister didn't hide what she was doing. 1.00

01:08:32.160 I think that's where she got that one more point.

01:08:34.820 I'll concede that.

01:08:35.700 I'll concede that. 0.99

01:08:36.420 Like if Marie's going to just narrowly be beaten by anyone,

01:08:38.880 I'm okay if it's Ann Lister. 1.00

01:08:40.280 And Ann Lister's amazing.

01:08:41.420 But this also makes Marie kind of,

01:08:43.760 can she have significance to live in? 0.55

01:08:45.680 Because Ann Lister is cool. 0.72

01:08:47.340 but Maria is like 1.00

01:08:49.840 two centuries earlier

01:08:51.180 and in an even more

01:08:52.380 hostile context

01:08:53.300 but on the flip side

01:08:54.220 as you say

01:08:54.720 not open with it

01:08:55.920 so

01:08:57.260 yeah

01:08:58.340 what if we do

01:09:00.280 I will concede

01:09:01.360 what if we give her 0.72

01:09:01.880 scandalous 0.54

01:09:02.320 I can't go higher than 10

01:09:03.400 but I can give her

01:09:03.840 5.5 1.00

01:09:04.980 in scandalousness 0.97

01:09:06.000 and I can give her 1.00

01:09:06.500 35.5 1.00

01:09:07.380 so then she's just 1.00

01:09:07.920 0.5 below

01:09:09.140 or even 6

01:09:10.400 I'm really

01:09:10.840 I'm really

01:09:11.300 going for Maria here

01:09:12.660 honestly 0.56

01:09:13.120 let's do it

01:09:14.680 even like just

01:09:15.740 being at all 0.96

01:09:17.340 yeah and and like do you know what she wasn't like yeah as bold as i muster but she still 0.98

01:09:21.860 record she still wrote down this lesbian love poetry and put it in a manuscript where another 0.99

01:09:25.380 woman compares her to saffo like it you know it was yeah still dangerous it could have ended worse 1.00

01:09:30.600 yeah let's give her six she's not five she's like the scandalous like potential for like if this 0.99

01:09:36.800 had been found out yeah no so then she and endless are both out of 36 and just so you know that's 0.59

01:09:43.080 fine. I'm okay with that. Mary Queen of Scots also 36. So this is. That's cool. That's right.

01:09:48.400 These are the charts that Marie should be in. Yeah. She's up at that echelon. Definitely. Yeah.

01:09:54.540 No, that's wonderful. So I want to just remind everybody. So your book with my own hand. So

01:10:00.220 this episode is coming out. It's published by the time that this episode comes out. It's coming out

01:10:05.020 in August and it was published in July. And do you have a website or how can people keep track

01:10:11.000 of like events and things that you're going to be doing sure yeah i'm i am not very good at

01:10:16.460 updating my website but people can go on it and i will update it soon but i mostly put things on

01:10:20.160 instagram to be honest if that's the best place for people to follow you yeah yeah yeah if people

01:10:25.000 follow me on instagram i'll put all events and fantastic podcast episodes like this i'll put

01:10:29.820 them all on my instagram and what is your instagram name that would be helpful yeah it's um at ash

01:10:36.140 douglas scott perfect and the scott but it's like dot scott for scotland do you know like

01:10:42.080 sometimes people think it's surname like a double barrel but it's like ash douglas and then just

01:10:46.440 s-c-o-t as in like dot scott sort of thing and i will i'll link to so people can buy the book and

01:10:53.500 also link to your instagram as well so people can follow you after they hear this because you know

01:10:57.540 we've only touched on this story and there's so much more to it it was honestly so fun for me to

01:11:03.420 read your book just not knowing the twists and turns of what was going to happen next because

01:11:06.580 it's a story that's never been put together before and I had no idea what was going to happen next

01:11:10.900 yeah yeah so so yeah people have said um like some reviewers have said like it reads like

01:11:16.760 historical fiction as a compliment as a compliment the way but that's the way I decided to tell it

01:11:20.820 as a biography because that's how her life you know that's how it was for her so I wanted to

01:11:24.240 tell it in real time that we don't know anything that's going to happen we live her life in real

01:11:27.700 time with her I think that was the most powerful way to tell her biography especially when it's a

01:11:32.300 story that hasn't been told obviously you can't really do that with that impact with mary queen

01:11:35.840 of scots because people probably have some sense of what's going to happen but the privilege of

01:11:39.800 having a a figure that people literally don't know what happens what happens when did she die

01:11:44.100 what like people don't know so you you do have to read it like a novel to the end to find out what

01:11:48.480 happens it was no i and i appreciate that and that's what i try to do on my podcast as well

01:11:53.140 because there's there's other biographies and like no shade against those biographies but sometimes

01:11:56.940 with someone like mary queen of scots they'll be like and that was the last time she ever saw her

01:12:01.200 son and then it's not until seven chapters later you find out why but it's like no yeah she doesn't

01:12:06.980 know that's the last time she saw her son so why are you putting that on the book so I like that

01:12:10.620 your book exactly yeah so there's not that kind of like oh something bad's gonna happen like I

01:12:15.880 like that you're right there with her and it's yeah living the life thank you I'm really glad

01:12:21.460 to hear that's what I was totally hoping to achieve with that so thank you so much and it's

01:12:24.680 also I do want to like just like really let people know that because you wrote this as like you're

01:12:29.900 sort of people said it's sort of like a novel and it is it's readable it's not like a heavy

01:12:33.560 like academic biography it doesn't require you to know the history of scotland like you're

01:12:37.920 giving the history that you need to understand her context but it's like very readable so people

01:12:43.480 just to know that it's like it's not a textbook yes thank you for clarifying that yeah no it's

01:12:49.200 not it's not an academic style book at all it's definitely very fun and because marie is like

01:12:54.360 she's just such a character so it's just fun to to see what she's gonna do next yeah and i've put

01:12:59.380 all the poems and stuff

01:13:00.520 at the back

01:13:01.220 because we thought

01:13:01.560 people might like

01:13:02.180 to see the poetry together

01:13:03.460 we put the three

01:13:04.140 lesbian love poems

01:13:04.960 at the back of the book

01:13:06.680 as well

01:13:06.960 so people can see them

01:13:07.940 and hopefully use them

01:13:08.780 as their wedding readings

01:13:09.640 I was going to say

01:13:10.260 exactly

01:13:10.600 make it easy

01:13:12.540 for the wedding readings

01:13:13.300 or anyone other

01:13:13.840 exactly

01:13:14.140 I was thinking that

01:13:15.420 because obviously

01:13:16.020 in the book

01:13:16.400 because I'm taking people

01:13:17.720 through them

01:13:18.260 because they're in

01:13:18.940 Scots language first

01:13:20.320 so there's

01:13:20.800 parallel translation

01:13:21.880 throughout into English

01:13:22.800 but I obviously

01:13:23.980 also split up the stanzas

01:13:25.080 because we talk about them

01:13:26.040 in turn

01:13:26.580 so I thought it would be nice

01:13:27.640 to have the poetry

01:13:28.260 just you want to be 0.52

01:13:29.120 your wedding and then like doing stanza one and then like sucking forward four pages like where's

01:13:32.460 the second stanza of this one again so I've very considerately put them at the back for all the

01:13:37.540 future wedding readings I hope will take place well actually if I can just ask one more question

01:13:41.300 or if you could explain to people where the book is and how it's kind of hard to access the actual

01:13:46.980 book oh yeah the Maitland the manuscript itself absolutely so yeah as I said when I first was

01:13:53.080 going to write about it I just went and consulted a later print edition there's only one copy of

01:13:59.100 the original manuscript

01:14:00.000 in the whole world

01:14:00.760 this was the manuscript

01:14:01.540 that Marie created

01:14:02.620 with Incan Quill

01:14:03.300 it's now held in Cambridge

01:14:04.940 at Peep's Library

01:14:06.120 Peep's Library

01:14:06.960 as in Samuel Peep's 0.94

01:14:07.900 like the famous diarist

01:14:09.180 which is part of

01:14:11.220 Modlin College

01:14:11.920 University of Cambridge

01:14:13.620 and it ended up there

01:14:14.940 it stayed in the Maitland family

01:14:16.020 for some generations

01:14:16.840 and then it ended up

01:14:17.560 being sold off to him

01:14:18.700 so it's been in his

01:14:19.600 private collections

01:14:20.560 for some centuries now

01:14:22.140 and it's really hard to access

01:14:24.260 they're very precious

01:14:25.880 but they're collections in there

01:14:26.860 so if you don't have

01:14:28.060 a valid research interest and letters of introduction so i had to get a letter of

01:14:32.440 introduction from my professor at st andrews and the national librarian in scotland to even get in

01:14:36.800 the door to get my hands on it and i was to go all the way down to cambridge from edinburgh

01:14:40.560 to see it um so that's where it is now but it's so good that i did go to see it physically because

01:14:46.920 as you know from the book the clues that you get from consulting the the one document of modern

01:14:52.040 print editions are obviously great because they make things a bit more accessible um but they are

01:14:56.720 then losing so much of the original the physicality so things like paper changes things like ink

01:15:01.960 changes things like copied out lines so the the physical properties of the manuscript tell us so

01:15:09.860 much about its creation so for example there are three paper changes within the manuscript which

01:15:15.340 obviously if you're consulting a print edition you don't see that because it's all just on the

01:15:18.760 same place the same paper when I went down and I went down on two research trips so I've spent

01:15:23.220 hours and hours up close and personal with the manuscript and when you're holding it in your

01:15:27.020 own hands one it's just so significant to to have that physical connection with marie maitland who

01:15:32.100 wrote it the first time i held it in my hands was quite emotional i'll be honest um but secondly

01:15:36.920 you're going through it and you're like this is a different type of paper now and why is it a

01:15:41.360 different type of paper at this point and what does that tell us about how this manuscript was

01:15:44.740 actually created over a period of years it's a it's a big book it's 95 poems in total it was

01:15:49.240 obviously compiled over some time and in different chapters um so you can see the paper changes you

01:15:55.320 can see the ink changes not all the poems are recorded in the same ink which again tells us

01:15:59.140 well these ones were recorded at the same time but this one's in a completely different higher

01:16:02.820 quality ink so this was added at a different time and perhaps has more significance attached to it

01:16:07.300 because she's used a much more striking um high quality ink and then as i said you can see where

01:16:13.520 lines have been copied out these aren't replicated in the print editions and when a line's been

01:16:17.620 copied out again your eyes drawn to it and you're why is that line been copied out and then maybe

01:16:21.440 that line contains an anagram but if you hadn't gone and seen the original you wouldn't have

01:16:25.940 lingered on the line you wouldn't have known to look at it more closely but once i went down and

01:16:30.320 saw the original and started noticing things like that or where there are scribal errors

01:16:33.700 for the most part of the manuscript is super christine marie's like a fantastic scribe and

01:16:39.120 pen women and then every so often there's like a tiny scribal error and these are so out of

01:16:44.860 character that you then are asking yourself well where do these errors occur and are they at times

01:16:49.300 of heightened emotion and yeah so going to see the primary record was just the best thing to do

01:16:55.620 and i would say if anyone listening to your podcast is like doing historical research

01:16:59.200 my main recommendation and please people is like just go to the primary records like never ever

01:17:04.700 just look at primary secondary sources or editions because even if an edition claims to be like a

01:17:09.380 faithful here's exactly what's in it they can even if they give you all the right words from the

01:17:13.720 document you can't see clues in the document itself like ink scribal changes paper changes

01:17:20.680 errors do you know it's like you really need to go and be physical with primary oh and this is

01:17:26.280 where i just see you like this detective looking at this evidence and like how much you were able

01:17:31.280 to learn from looking at the paper changes and like when it was like you need to look at the

01:17:35.860 evidence you can't just take somebody's word for it is there any um i think you mentioned this in

01:17:40.740 the book but any thought to having this digitized so people can look at it? Yeah so the National

01:17:48.340 Librarian of Scotland Amina Shah is an absolutely wonderful woman she has really championed me in

01:17:53.240 this research from the beginning a lot of my research and writing of the book was undertaken

01:17:57.540 at the National Library of Scotland so it's been really central to the story and Amina is very

01:18:03.400 passionate about access to collections as am I so we both think it's not ideal that this manuscript

01:18:09.400 which is so significant it contains some of the earliest known lesbian love poetry in Europe

01:18:13.200 since Sappho it's very significant to Scottish history and it feels not ideal that it should be

01:18:19.980 sort of entombed in a private library in Cambridge where it's like really really difficult to access

01:18:24.900 and inaccessible and so Amina is really trying her best to work with Cambridge to have it digitised

01:18:34.000 at the very least I mean ideally we'd like to get it up to up in Scotland and have it on display

01:18:38.360 that's maybe a bit too much of an ask but at the very least if it was high quality digitized and

01:18:42.520 then anyone anywhere in the world would be able to to look at because it's amazing like I'm so

01:18:46.540 sad that my readers of the book hopefully when people have finished reading the story of Marie

01:18:50.180 Maitland they will be so desperate to see the manuscript and it pains me that it's nearly

01:18:54.400 impossible for anyone to get their hands on it or even their eyes on it so we're really hopeful

01:18:59.920 that in the next few years we'll hopefully be able to persuade Peep's library to to work with

01:19:05.900 us to digitize it because at the library the national library of scotland is certainly willing

01:19:09.340 to work with them to host the digital version and stuff like that so work in progress fingers

01:19:15.800 crossed and i guess the first step is really well the first step was you finding her finding out

01:19:20.860 about her and then all of your detective work and then now that the book is out there and word is

01:19:24.700 spreading hopefully like more people will know about her and we'll be there to champion and

01:19:29.000 support the digitization yeah that's what i'm hoping is that the book is the start like just

01:19:33.020 the start of Marie becoming the household name that she should be and her manuscript being known

01:19:38.660 about in the way that it should be well thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today this

01:19:43.440 is it's it's always such a pleasure to talk to people who who've written books historical books

01:19:48.560 but like the depth so I don't think I've ever spoken to someone who's done this amount of

01:19:52.800 sleuthing oh thank you like digging around like this just to unearth this whole story it's so

01:19:59.520 impressive to me oh thank you that's very kind of you to say it just it just like grew arms and legs

01:20:04.540 you know you start and then it just like snowballed and snowballed and then suddenly five years later

01:20:09.140 and you're looking at like deeds and like legal documents and yeah yeah I was very anti-social

01:20:15.360 for a while all my weekends and evenings were just like spent at the library pouring over old

01:20:20.060 documents from the 1500s my wife's very glad to have me back now I've returned to the 21st century

01:20:24.580 it's fantastic well thanks again for joining me um and best of luck with with your book and

01:20:29.880 all the promotions you're doing thank you so much so as ashley said you can keep up with her and

01:20:39.220 what she's doing her her social media various book promotional events and things at her website

01:20:44.640 which is ashley douglas dot scott like ashley douglas dot s-c-o-t is where you can keep up

01:20:50.740 with her and i super recommend this book um if you're able to get a copy of with my own hand it's

01:20:55.580 such a it's such a fascinating book and just really sort of turning flipping the camera around

01:21:01.060 from the narratives that you often hear about this era even in scotland well no one's really

01:21:05.680 put this together but you hear about marie maitland's male relatives but she was right

01:21:09.440 there doing so much interesting stuff and so i really recommend everybody pick up a copy of

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Vulgar History - September 02, 2026

Marie Maitland, Scotland's Sixteenth-Century Sappho

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