Attributed to Andrew of Wyntoun, a learned scholar of the time,[1] it is one of the only manuscripts composed in Scots verse before the seventeenth century, though it is also said to be written in northern English.
The first five books focus on the creation of the world in general, and Scottish history commences in the sixth.
Among other topics, Wyntoun records the churches and Bishops of St. Andrew, as well as information about the royal families of Scotland,[5] lines from Barbour and an elegiac cantus for Alexander III.
However, he skims over Alexander the Great and the wars of the Anglo-Saxons with the Ancient Britons, merely directing readers to find such histories in other books.
[7] Wyntoun provided a second, revised Cronykil, correcting minor mistakes made in the first edition.