The Complaynt of Scotland
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The Complaynt of Scotland is a book printed in 1549 and is an important work of the Scots language.
The book is a continuation of the war of words between Scotland and England in the 16th century. Books in England were asserting the idea of uniting the two countries, with England dominant, and this was an answer to these works. The so called "Rough Wooing" of Mary I of Scotland by Henry VIII of England as a wife for his son Edward had only antagonised relations.
The author of the work is anonymous, probably due to its controversial political content, and is variously ascribed to Robert Wedderburn or Vedderburn, James Inglis and David Lyndsay, though the 1979 Scottish Text Society edition of the work uses the Wedderburn attribution. It was once thought to have been among the first books printed in Scotland but it is now believed to have been published in Paris. The contention of a Paris printing is supported by the discovery that the book owes much of its structure, and some of its content, to the Quadrilogue-invectif, a similar political work in part attacking England, by Alain Chartier. The close ties between Scotland and France at that time, the Auld Alliance, are attested by the fact that the Complaynt is dedicated to Mary of Guise, the effective queen of Scotland of the time.
The book itself, subtitled "wyth ane exortatione to the thre estaits to be vigilante in the deffens of their public veil", is rather a miscellany of stories, ballads and allegorical tales emphasising Scotland's separateness. The English works it was aimed against tended to use the pagan prophecies of Merlin to back-up their claim of a united Great Britain, whilst the Complaynt stuck to christian ideals.
It is an important source for information on Border ballads and contain some of the first references to important ballads such as Tam Lin, Froggy would a-wooing go and The Ballad of Chevy Chase. The book is also a significant example of Middle Scots, and the Oxford English Dictionary cites The Complaynt of Scotland as the earliest source for numerous words, including: axis, barbarian, buffoon, cabinet, crackling, decadence, excrement, heroic, humid, imbecile, moo, parallel, robust, suffocation, superb, timid and water-lily.
