George Bannatyne, a student at St Andrews, and a merchant burgess of Edinburgh, wrote the manuscript in the last three months of 1568, when an outbreak of plague in Edinburgh compelled him to refrain from work; see his colophon on folio 375. The year is also given on page 1 and folios 97, 290, and 298; on folio 290 it was originally written 1565 and on folio 298 1566, but these must be slips of the pen.

Some forty authors are represented; those with most poems are William Dunbar, Robert Henryson, Alexander Scott, and William Stewart; others are John Bellenden, Gavin Douglas, Walter Kennedy, Sir David Lindsay, Alexander Montgomerie, and --- Wedderburn. Many of the poems are found in other manuscripts or early printed sources, but the collection as a whole is of unique importance.

Various seventeenth-century hands have filled blank spaces, and William Carmichael added at the end of the Draft manuscript his transcript of a poem. Allan Ramsay had the use of the manuscript for The Evergreen and in 1726 entered at folio 374 verso a poem of thanks. Thomas Percy had the manuscript in London in 1773-1775 and made some corrections, especially in the index.

The introductions to `The Bannatyne Manuscript`, edited by W Tod Ritchie and `The Bannatyne Manuscript` with an introduction by Denton Fox and William Ringler, provide detailed descriptions of the poems and full discussion of the manuscript and the compiler.