{{Short description|Scottish poet, prior of Loch Leven, and a canon}} {{Use dmy dates|date=December 2019}} {{Use British English|date=December 2019}} '''Andrew Wyntoun''', known as '''Andrew of Wyntoun''' ({{circa|1350|1425}}), was a Scottish poet, a [[Canon (priest)|canon]] and [[prior of Loch Leven]] on [[St Serf's Inch]] and, later, a canon of [[St. Andrews]].
Andrew Wyntoun is most famous for his completion of an eight-syllabled metre entitled, ''[[Orygynale Cronykil of Scotland]]'', which contains an early mention of ''[[Robin Hood]]''; it is also cited by the ''[[Oxford English Dictionary]]'' as the earliest work in English to use the word "[[Catholic]]": [spelling modernised] "He was a constant Catholic;/All [[Lollard]] he hated and heretic." Wyntoun wrote the 'Chronicle' at the request of his patron, [[Earls of Wemyss|Sir John of Wemyss]], whose representative, Mr. Erskine Wemyss of [[Wemyss Castle]], Fife, possessed the oldest extant [[manuscript]] of the work.<ref name="EB1911">{{EB1911|inline=y|wstitle=Wyntoun, Andrew of|volume=28|page=873}}</ref> The subject of the 'Chronicle' is the history of Scotland from the mythical period to the death of [[Robert Stewart, Duke of Albany]] in 1420.<ref>Wyntoun's Chronicle Prologue IX</ref>
The nine original manuscripts of the ''Orygynale Cronykil of Scotland'' still subsist today and are preserved within various facilities throughout the United Kingdom. Three out of the eight original manuscripts are currently preserved by the [[British Library]], two are in the possession of the [[Advocates' Library]] in Edinburgh; one, within the [[University of St Andrews]] Library; another, within the confines of [[Wemyss Castle]] and the eighth, privately owned by Mister John Ferguson of [[Duns, Scottish Borders]], Berwickshire.<ref name="EB1911"/> The first edition of the 'Chronicle' (based on the Royal manuscript) was published by [[David Macpherson (historian)|David Macpherson]] in 1795; the second edition was produced by [[David Laing (antiquary)|David Laing]] and published in 1872<ref>''The Orygynale Cronykil of Scotland by Androw of Wyntoun'', Edited by David Laing in three volumes, Edinburgh, Scottish Text Society, 1872</ref> and the current standard edition was published by [[F. J. Amours]] as ''The Original Chronicle of Andrew of Wyntoun: Printed on Parallel Pages from the Cottonian and Wemyss MSS., with the Variants of the Other Texts''.
The ''Chronicle'' is entirely composed of couplets, usually of eight syllables, although frequently there also are lines of six or 10 syllables.<ref>{{cite book|title=A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen|year=1875|publisher=Blackie & Sons|location=Glasgow|page=562|url=http://digital.nls.uk/74514690|editor=Robert Chambers|access-date=5 November 2013}}</ref>
==References== {{Reflist}} * ''Oxford English Dictionary'', New York: [[Oxford University Press]], 1989
==External links== * {{wikisource author-inline|Andrew of Wyntoun}} *[http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/teams/orygnale.htm The Robin Hood passage] at the TEAMS Medieval Texts website.
{{S-start}} {{S-rel}} {{Succession box | before=David Bell<br><small>or Thomas Mason</small>| title= [[Prior of Loch Leven]] | years=1390–1421| after=John Cameron}} {{S-end}}
{{Scots makars}}
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wyntoun, Andrew Of}} [[Category:Scottish chroniclers]] [[Category:15th-century Scottish writers]] [[Category:15th-century Scottish historians]] [[Category:Priors of Loch Leven]] [[Category:Year of birth uncertain]] [[Category:Early Scots poets]] [[Category:14th-century Scottish historians]] [[Category:1420s deaths]]