The Complaynt of Scotland is a literary work in prose modelled on
Chartier’s Quadrilogue Invectif, written in 1549 and apparently printed
in France, probably Paris. The four extant copies of the original printed
edition are without title-pages, so that neither the original title nor the
identity of the author are known. This paper summarizes the theories
proposed by the different editors of this work concerning its authorship:
Leyden (1801), Murray (1872) and Stewart (1979), and then carries
out a linguistic study of three poems in the Bannatyne Manuscript
(poems 345, 367 and 373) ascribed to Wedderburn (author also of The
Complaynt according to Stewart), which have echoes of the
Complayner’s words and allusions. The results are compared to those
obtained from The Complaynt in order to establish whether it is possible
to ascribe this work to Wedderburn.
