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- "I that in Heill wes and Gladnes", also known as "The Lament for the Makaris", is a poem in the form of a danse macabre by the Scottish poet William Dunbar. Every fourth line repeats the Latin refrain timor mortis conturbat me (fear of death troubles me), a litanic phrase from the Office of the Dead. Apart from its literary quality, the poem is notable for the list of makars it contains, some of whom are historically attestable as poets only from Dunbar's testimony in this work. After listing Lydgate, Gower and Chaucer, the makars invoked are Scottish. All but two are cited as having died by the time of the composition. The two exceptions are the courtier Patrick Johnston and known poet Walter Kennedy, the latter of whom died circa 1508. From internal evidence, the lament is generally thought to have been composed c.1505. Most of the names can be traced to either the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries. (en)
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