an Edinburgh merchant and burgess. He is, however, most famous as a collector of Scottish poems. He was a native of Angus. He compiled an anthology of the Scots poetry of his age. His work extended to eight hundred folio pages, divided into five parts. The Bannatyne Manuscript is, with the Asloan and Maitland manuscripts, one of the great sources of Middle Scots literature. It contains many works by Henryson, Dunbar, Lyndsay, Alexander Scott and Alexander Montgomerie.
