Authorship of The Complaynt of Scotland

Abstract

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.