Scots writing
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Bannatyne Manuscript
The wryttar to the reidaris
Ye reverend redaris thir workis revolving richt
Gif ye get crymis, Correct thame to your micht
And curss na clark that cunyngly thame wrait,
Bot blame me baldly Brocht this buik till licht
In tenderest tyme, quhen knawlege was nocht bricht
Bot lait begun to lerne and till translait
My copeis awld mankit and mvtillait.
Quhais trewth as standis (yit haif I sympill wicht)
Tryd furth, Thairfoir excuse sumpairt my estait -
Now ye haif heir this ilk buik sa provydit
That in fyve pairtis It is dewly devydit
The first concernis gods gloir and ouir saluatioun
The nixt ar morale, grave and als besyd it
Grund on gud counsale. The thrid I will nocht hyd it
Ar blyith and glaid Maid for ouir consollatioun.
The ferd of luve, and thair richt reformatioun.
The fyift ar tailis and stories weill discydit
Reid as ye pleiss, I neid no moir narratioun.
This address to the reader is the introduction to a collection of poetry known as the Bannatyne Manuscript (National Library of Scotland, Adv.MS.1.1.6). George Bannatyne (1545-1608) came from a Forfarshire family and spent most of his life as a merchant in Edinburgh. He completed his anthology as a young man in 1568, the year of the plague in Edinburgh. It comprises over 400 poems by Scottish and English authors which, as Bannatyne explains in his address, are arranged into five sections of religious, moral, merry, amatory and narrative poems. Manuscript miscellanies of poetry were not uncommon at this time; other 16th-century Scottish examples are the Asloan Manuscript (also in the National Library of Scotland) and the Maitland Folio (Pepys Library, Magdalen College, Cambridge). Among these, the Bannatyne Manuscript holds an important place as a source for early Scottish poetry, particularly for authors such as William Dunbar, Robert Henryson and Alexander Scott. Many of its poems are not recorded elsewhere, and it stands out for the well-organised arrangement of its poetry, for which there is even an index of first lines at the back.
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