NOTE
It has long been a reproach that, owing to the absence of an accessible edition, no popular knowledge of the early poetry of Scotland was possible -- that, while texts of early English poets, such as Chaucer, Langland, and Gower, were within reach of all, no such facilities were available for the equally interesting and valuable works of Thomas the Rhymer, Barbour, Wyntoun, and Henry the Minstrel.

EARLY SCOTTISH POETRY
One of the commonest of popular mistakes upon philological subjects has been the supposition that the Lowland Scots language was nothing more than a rude or corrupted dialect of ordinary English.