William Campbell, minister of Kilchrenan, which appears to state that the original compilation was completed at Glenmasan (now Glen Massan or Gleann Masain, on the Cowal peninsula in the parish of Dunoon, Argyll) in the year 1268.
Based on the alternation of the spelling ao and ai for the same diphthong, Donald MacKinnon assigns a date no later than the end of the 15th century and suggests that the manuscript may well have been a first-hand copy of this early 13th-century exemplar.
A late, anonymous hand on folio 19 wrote Leabhar Echdra ata ann so ar a scriobha le Eoin M'Tavis, "This is a book of adventures written by John M'Tavish", a name which recurs a few times elsewhere in the manuscript and fits the Argyll provenance of the text.
William Campbell, Robert's probable great-nephew and minister of Kilchrenan (since 1745) and Dalavich, is named on folio 16 as having been the one-time owner of the book and so may have acquired it through his grand-uncle.
The manuscript appeared in a brighter light in the late 18th century, when the Committee of the Royal Highland and Agricultural Society of Scotland requested proof that the Ossian published by James Macpherson was a translation from genuinely ancient Scottish Gaelic poetry.
Bannatyne passed the manuscript on to the Highland Society of Scotland, whose minutes record that it was laid before the Ossian Committee in March 1799.