Abbreviations
Craigie
The Maitland Folio Manuscript, ed. W.A. Craigie, 2 vols, STS NS 7, 20 (Edinburgh & London, 1919-27).
Craigie, Asloan MS
The Asloan Manuscript, ed. W.A. Craigie, 2 vols, STS NS 14, 16 (Edinburgh & London, 1923-5).
Fox
The Poems of Robert Henryson, ed. Denton Fox (Oxford, 1981)
Gregory Smith
The Poems of Robert Henryson, ed. G. Gregory Smith, 3 vols, STS 55, 58, 64 (Edinburgh & London, 1906-14).
Murdoch
The Bannatyne Manuscript, ed. J. Barclay Murdoch, 4 vols, Hunterian Club (Glasgow, 1896; reprinted New York, 1966).
Ritchie
The Bannatyne Manuscript, ed. W. Tod Ritchie, 4 vols, STS 3rd Ser. 5, 22, 23, 26 (Edinburgh & London, 1928-33).
Stevenson
Pieces from the Makculloch and the Gray MSS. together with the Chepman and Myllar Prints, ed. George Stevenson, STS 65 (Edinburgh & London, 1918).
Wood
The Poems and Fables of Robert Henryson, ed. H. Harvey Wood (Edinburgh, 1933; 2nd edition 1958).
Introduction
The main manuscript sources of Henryson's poems are largely the same as those of Dunbar's poems: namely, the Bannatyne MS (National Library of Scotland, Adv. MS. 1.1.6); the Maitland Folio MS (Magdalene College, Cambridge, Pepys Library, MS 2553); and the Asloan MS (National Library of Scotland, MS 16500), the last manuscript originally including other poems by Henryson, including The Testament of Cresseid and The Morall Fabillis of Esope the Phrygian, which are recorded in the list of contents but now lacking. Three poems also appear in the Makculloch MS (HnR 12, HnR 18, HnR 24), one poem appears in the Gray MS (HnR 7), and independent transcripts of The Morall Fabillis of Esope (HnR 10) and The Testament of Cresseid (HnR 29-30) are preserved.
The last two poems, Henryson's most important works, were first published in the sixteenth century. Three other poems (HnR 13, HnR 16, HnR 35) appeared in the Chepman and Myllar Prints in 1508 (see the Introduction to Dunbar above). The remaining pieces were not published until the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries, when they were edited from the manuscript sources.
Peter Beal