Scottish poet, probably a Lothian man, but particulars of his origin and of his life are entirely wanting. It is only by gathering together a few scraps of internal evidence that we learn that his poems were written between 1545 and 1568 (the date of the Bannatyne MS., the only MS. authority for the text). Allan Ramsay was the first to bring Scotts work to the notice of modern readers, by printing some of the poems in his Ever Green. In a copy of verses (Some Few of the Contents) on the Bannatyne MS., he thus refers to Scott:
Licht skirtit lasses, and the girnand wyfe, | |
Fleming and Scot haif painted to the lyfe. | |
Scot, sweit tunged Scot, quha sings the welcum hame | |
To Mary, our maist bony soverane dame; | |
How lyflie he and amorous Stuart sing! | |
Quhen lufe and bewtie bid them spred the wing. |
The first collected edition was printed by D. Laing in 1821; a second was issued privately at Glasgow in 1882. The latest edition is that by James Cranstoun (Scottish Text Society, 1 vol., 1896). See also A Rondel of Love, A Bequest of His Heart; Literary Criticism.