Bannatyne Manuscript

A page from The Bannatyne Manuscript. (National Library of Scotland) At the foot of the page is the opening of Henryson's Ane Prayer for the Pest.

The Bannatyne Manuscript is an anthology of literature compiled in Scotland in the sixteenth century. It is an important source for the Scots poetry of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The manuscript contains texts of the poems of the great makars, many anonymous Scots pieces and works by medieval English poets.[1]

It was collected in 1568 by the Edinburgh merchant George Bannatyne[2] when he was isolated in his home, escaping the plague that had reached Edinburgh.[3] Bannatyne was motivated by his desire to preserve Scottish literary heritage when compiling this anthology[4] and also included some of his own writing in the manuscript. Contrary to popular claims,[5] it is not the earliest surviving record of the word "fuck".[6][7][8][9][10][11]

According to the text of the manuscript itself, it represents;

Ane most godlie mirrie and lustie rapsodie made be sundrie learned Scots poets and written be George Bannatyne in the tyme of his youth.[12]
  1. ^ A transcript of the manuscript, Hunterian Club, 1896, (Volume 2 of 4) at archive.org
  2. ^ The National Library of Scotland's Discussion of the Manuscript
  3. ^ Brown, J. T. T. (1904). "The Bannatyne Manuscript: A Sixteenth Century Poetical Miscellany". The Scottish Historical Review. 1: 136–158 – via JSTOR.
  4. ^ Newlyn, Evelyn (1 January 1991). "Luve, Lichery and Evill Women: The Satiric Tradition in the Bannatyne Manuscript". Studies in Scottish Literature. 26: 283–293 – via Scholar Commons.
  5. ^ Ouellette, Jennifer (6 April 2020). "500-year-old manuscript contains earliest known use of the "F-word"". Ars Technica. Retrieved 7 April 2020.
  6. ^ Booth, Paul (2015). "An early fourteenth-century use of the F-word in Cheshire, 1310–11". Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire. 164: 99–102.
  7. ^ "The first ever use f the word f*** has been found by accident". The Independent. 13 September 2015. Retrieved 7 April 2020.
  8. ^ Medievalists.net (11 September 2015). "The earliest use of the F-word discovered". Medievalists.net. Retrieved 7 April 2020.
  9. ^ Lynch, Jack (3 November 2009). The Lexicographer's Dilemma: The Evolution of 'Proper' English, from Shakespeare to South Park. Bloomsbury Publishing USA. ISBN 978-0-8027-1963-8.
  10. ^ Flen flyys.
  11. ^ "Definition of FUCK". www.merriam-webster.com. Retrieved 7 April 2020.
  12. ^ The 'Memorial Buik' of George Bannatyne', Bannatyne Manuscript Volume 1, 1896, p. xxiii-xxxviii