‘Out of My Contree'

The definition of fifteenth-century Scottish writing as literature which ‘came to the court rather than from it’ ² has shaped the landscape of Older Scots literary studies over the last twenty-five years. As a result, we now have a much sharper sense of the extent to which Older Scots works, particularly in the latter part of the fifteenth century, have their transmission and reception rooted in noble households, rather than the royal court. ³ This chapter returns to the royal Scottish court, and reappraises three earlier fifteenth-century works, the Kingis Quair (c.1424), ⁴ Walter Bower’s prose Latin Scotichronicon (1440s) ⁵ and the anonymous Older Scots verse romance, Lancelot of the Laik (c.1437–60?). ⁶ It explores how these works are very much products of royal court culture in Scotland from the first half of the fifteenth century, and are especially concerned with paradigms of articulating royal Scottish authority. It suggests for the first time that Bower’s Scotichronicon responds directly to the Kingis Quair, and that the dream-prologue of Lancelot of the Laik takes James’s poem as its principal source. Thus, comparison of these texts reveals how some literary aspects of court culture from James I’s reign can be understood as continuing into James II’s minority and reign proper.