Scottish literature in the Middle Ages

After the Davidian Revolution of the thirteenth century, a flourishing French language culture predominated, while Norse literature was produced from areas of Scandinavian settlement.

The landmark work in the reign of James IV was Gavin Douglas's version of Virgil's Aeneid, the Eneados, which was the first complete translation of a major classical text in an Anglic language, finished in 1513, but overshadowed by the disaster at Flodden in the same year.

After the collapse of Roman authority in the early fifth century, four major circles of political and cultural influence emerged in Northern Britain.

Finally, there were the English or "Angles", Germanic invaders who had overrun much of southern Britain and held the Kingdom of Bernicia (later the northern part of Northumbria), which reached into what are now the Borders of Scotland in the south-east.

Similarly, the Battle of Gwen Ystrad is attributed to Taliesin, traditionally thought to be a bard at the court of Rheged in roughly the same period.

[5] A series of anecdotes contained in the tenth century Betba Adamnáin (Life of St. Adomnán) are probably derived from works composed on Iona.

Fuller sources for Ireland of the same period suggest that there would have been filidh, who acted as poets, musicians and historians, often attached to the court of a lord or king, and passed on their knowledge and culture in Gaelic to the next generation.

After this "de-gallicisation" of the Scottish court, a less highly regarded order of bards took over the functions of the filidh, and they would continue to act in a similar role in the Highlands and Islands into the eighteenth century.

Although surviving only from manuscripts preserved in Ireland, Thomas Owen Clancy has argued that the Lebor Bretnach, the so-called "Irish Nennius", was written in Scotland, and probably at the monastery in Abernethy.

There was a proliferation of Latin lives of the saints, often venerating early Celtic and Scottish figures, and the creation or embellishment of foundations myths for religious centres including St. Andrews, Glasgow and Dunkeld.

[20] In the thirteenth century, French flourished as a literary language and produced the Roman de Fergus, the earliest piece of non-Celtic vernacular literature to survive from Scotland.

[22] In addition to French, Latin was a literary language with works that include the "Carmen de morte Sumerledi", a poem which exults the victory of the citizens of Glasgow over Somairle mac Gilla Brigte,[23] and the "Inchcolm Antiphoner", a hymn in praise of St.

[17] As the ruling elite gradually abandoned French, they began to adopt Middle Scots, and by the fifteenth century it was the language of government, with acts of parliament, council records and treasurer's accounts almost all using it from the reign of James I (1406–37) onwards.

[17] The major corpus of Medieval Scottish Gaelic poetry, The Book of the Dean of Lismore was compiled by the brothers James and Donald MacGregor in the early decades of the sixteenth century.

[27] The work was extremely popular among the Scots-speaking aristocracy, and Barbour is referred to as the father of Scots poetry, holding a similar place to his contemporary Chaucer in England.

1384), which would provide the basis for later historical writing, including Walter Bower's (c. 1385–1449) continuation known as Scotichronicon and the Humanist works like that of Hector Boece (1465–1536).

[20] Much Middle Scots literature was produced by makars, poets with links to the royal court, which included James I, who wrote the extended poem The Kingis Quair.

[30] Writers such as Dunbar, Robert Henryson, Walter Kennedy and Gavin Douglas have been seen as creating a golden age in Scottish poetry.

Although there are earlier fragments of original Scots prose, such as the Auchinleck Chronicle,[31] the first complete surviving work is John Ireland's The Meroure of Wyssdome (1490).

[17] The landmark work in the reign of James IV was Gavin Douglas's version of Virgil's Aeneid, the Eneados, which was the first complete translation of a major classical text in an Anglic language, finished in 1513, but overshadowed by the disaster at Flodden in the same year.