The dates 1613 on folio 1 and 1612 on folio 55 verso appear to have been altered from 1611. This manuscript is thus earlier than Adv.MS.19.3.7, dated 1625, on which the earliest printed edition (Edinburgh, 1709; reprinted by the Abbotsford Club in 1845), is based.

The present manuscript does not contain the poems to the Author or the lines on Prince Henry, and the poems on Robert II and III, James II and III, and Mary are shorter by one stanza; on the other hand, it gives an additional stanza each on Robert I and James VI. The language is somewhat more Scottish than that of the later version, there are occasional differences of phrasing, and the word omitted from the poem on Duffus in Adv. MS.19.3.7 is given as 'Ylles' (folio 39 verso).

There is a note on the manuscript at folio ii*.