page_title: Poetry of Scotland
section_title: High Middle Ages
hierarchical_section_title: Poetry of Scotland / High Middle Ages
context_page_description: Poetry of Scotland includes all forms of verse written in Brythonic, Latin, Scottish Gaelic, Scots, French, English and Esperanto and any language in which poetry has been written within the boundaries of modern Scotland, or by Scottish people.
  Much of the earliest Welsh literature was composed in or near Scotland, but only written down in Wales much later. These include The Gododdin, considered the earliest surviving verse from Scotland. Very few works of Gaelic poetry survive from this period and most of these in Irish manuscripts. The Dream of the Rood, from which lines are found on the Ruthwell Cross, is the only surviving fragment of Northumbrian Old English from early Medieval Scotland. In Latin early works include a "Prayer for Protection" attributed to St Mugint, and Altus Prosator attributed to St Columba. There were probably filidh who acted as poets, musicians and historians. After the "de-gallicisation" of the Scottish court from the twelfth century, bards continued to act in a similar role in the Highlands and Islands. What survives of their work was only recorded from the sixteenth century.
context_section_description: The Kingdom of Alba was overwhelmingly an oral society dominated by Gaelic culture. Our fuller sources for Ireland of the same period suggest that there would have been filidh, who acted as poets, musicians and historians, often attached to the court of a lord or king, and passed on their knowledge and culture in Gaelic to the next generation. At least from the accession of David I (r. 1124–53), as part of a Davidian Revolution that introduced French culture and political systems, Gaelic ceased to be the main language of the royal court and was probably replaced by French. After this "de-gallicisation" of the Scottish court, a less highly regarded order of bards took over the functions of the filidh and they would continue to act in a similar role in the Highlands and Islands into the eighteenth century. They often trained in bardic schools, of which a few, like the one run by the MacMhuirich dynasty, who were bards to the Lord of the Isles, existed in Scotland and a larger number in Ireland, until they were suppressed from the seventeenth century. Members of bardic schools were trained in the complex rules and forms of Gaelic poetry. Much of their work was never written down and what survives was only recorded from the sixteenth century.
  It is possible that more Middle Irish literature was written in Medieval Scotland than is often thought, but has not survived because the Gaelic literary establishment of eastern Scotland died out before the fourteenth century. Works that have survived include that of the prolific poet Gille Brighde Albanach  (fl. 1200–30). His Heading for Damietta (c. 1218) dealt with his experiences of the Fifth Crusade. In the thirteenth century, French flourished as a literary language, and produced the Roman de Fergus, the earliest piece of non-Celtic vernacular literature to survive from Scotland. Many other stories in the Arthurian Cycle, written in French and preserved only outside Scotland, are thought by some scholars, including D. D. R. Owen, to have been written in Scotland. In addition to French, Latin was a literary language, with works that include the "Carmen de morte Sumerledi", a poem which exults triumphantly the victory of the citizens of Glasgow over the warlord Somairle mac Gilla Brigte.
caption: Picture from a fourteenth-century illuminated manuscript of the Roman de Fergus
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