Anonymous, Wife of Auchtermuchty, The

Lucy R. Hinnie (University of Edinburgh)

Ed. by Kate Ash-Irisarri, University of Edinburgh
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.3: Scottish Writing and Culture, 400-present.
Vol. editors: Kate Ash-Irisarri (University of Edinburgh), Daniel Cook (University of Dundee), J. Derrick McClure (University of Aberdeen)

Dates

First circulation or publication c. 1400 - c. 1599

Places

Scotland (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Poetry (any)

Resources

“The Wyf of Auchtermuchty” is a fifteen stanza poem, extant in the Bannatyne manuscript (c. 1568). Categorised as one of Bannatyne’s “[b]allatis mirry and vther salacious consaittis [conceits] set furth be Ancient Poyettis”, the poem has enjoyed an afterlife in prints from the eighteenth century onwards, the first of which was Allan Ramsay’s Ever Green (1724). A bucolic poem, located in an otherwise primarily urban manuscript, the poem is a curious one. It describes a day in the life of a typical rural Scottish household, in which the master of the house trades places with his wife, suspecting that she has too little to do. Framed as a story “tawld” to an anonymous narrator, the …

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1009 words

Citation: Hinnie, Lucy R.. "Wife of Auchtermuchty, The". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 23 June 2021 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=39027, accessed 21 November 2024.]

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