V was made, and in the 18th and 19th centuries a war of words between literary historians failed to decide between these two candidates. At the beginning of the 19th century James Sibbald suggested Robert Henryson as a possible author, but this idea did not find favour. In 1964 Allan H. Maclaine argued for an early 15th-century date, without committing himself to James I as author, but in 1996 he acknowledged that linguistic evidence suggested a date of around 1500. This new date, which is now widely accepted, rules out both James I and James V, and leaves "Christis Kirk" as an anonymous poem. Metre The stanzas are each of ten lines rhyming ABABABABCD. The first eight lines alternate iambic tetrameter with trimeter, the ninth is a two-syllable "bob", and the final line forms the refrain "At Christis Kirk on the green". Much alliteration is used, which, together with the recurring rhymes, gives the verse a headlong pace, while the bob line is useful in accentuating the humour. The combined effect is to make the poem well-suited to recitation or singing. Setting Most modern commentators accept the tradition, first reported in print by William Tytler in 1783, that the Christ's Kirk of the poem is a ruined church in the parish of Leslie, near the village of Insch in Aberdeenshire. According to Tytler a fair was held by this church every May Day until the end of the 17th century. In 1715 Allan Ramsay proposed a different Leslie in Fife as the site of the poem, and was seconded by John Callander in his 1782 edition of the poem. However this identification is probably based simply on a confusion of place-names, and it is no longer believed to have any good evidence in its favour. James Sibbald identified Christ's Kirk with the church of St. Salvator's College, St. Andrews, but, as with his authorship theory, this idea has found no supporters. Criticism Critics agree that the main virtues of the poem do not lie in subtlety of descriptive detail, nor in coherence of structure, but in a fast-paced excitement and wild comic verve that suggest comparison with Dutch peasant paintings. Vividly described scenes of grotesque and earthy incident (possibly too earthy for some modern tastes) follow one after the other in rapid succession. As the literary historian George Gregory Smith wrote, "Everybody is at fever-heat: the louder the women's voices