The Buik of Alexander is a short title for the two known Scots

Scots language

Scots is the Germanic language variety spoken in Lowland Scotland and parts of Ulster . It is sometimes called Lowland Scots to distinguish it from Scottish Gaelic, the Celtic language variety spoken in most of the western Highlands and in the Hebrides.Since there are no universally accepted...

 versions of the Alexander romance

Alexander Romance

Alexander romance is any of several collections of legends concerning the mythical exploits of Alexander the Great. The earliest version is in Greek, dating to the 3rd century. Several late manuscripts attribute the work to Alexander's court historian Callisthenes, but the historical figure died...

 stories — a genre which was common in Medieval European literature, particularly France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 from the 12th century onwards, and the British Isles

British Isles

The British Isles are a group of islands off the northwest coast of continental Europe that include the islands of Great Britain and Ireland and over six thousand smaller isles. There are two sovereign states located on the islands: the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and...

 in the 14th and 15th centuries. A principal source text for these was the Old French text, Li romans d'Alixandre

Li romans d'Alixandre

The Roman d'Alexandre, from the Old French Li romans d'Alixandre , is a massive 16,000-verse twelfth-century) Old French Alexander romance detailing various episodes in the life of Alexander the Great. It is considered by many scholars as the most important of the Medieval Alexander romances...

, attributed to Alexandre de Bernay, although writers tended to adapt material freely from different sources. Many different European nations had poets who produced versions of the romance

Romance (genre)

As a literary genre of high culture, romance or chivalric romance is a style of heroic prose and verse narrative that was popular in the aristocratic circles of High Medieval and Early Modern Europe. They were fantastic stories about marvel-filled adventures, often of a knight errant portrayed as...

. The dating is unsure, but the earlier of the two Scottish versions was anonymous (dated 1438?), and the second, in a version dated 1499?, is by Gilbert Hay.

Anonymous version

The earlier of the two versions from Scotland

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

 is the anonymous The Scots Buik of the most noble and vailyzeand Conqueror Alexander the Great. A few witnesses have tried to ascribe the text of this to the seminal Scots poet John Barbour and some of its passages certainly use material from The Brus

The Brus

The Brus is a long narrative poem of just under 14,000 octosyllabic lines composed by John Barbour which gives a historic and chivalric account of the actions of Robert the Bruce and the Black Douglas in the Scottish Wars of Independence during a period from the circumstances leading up the English...

, an original verse romance, and Barbour's most famous poem. The sole witness for this Buik of Alexander, however, is a single version printed at the Edinburgh

Edinburgh

Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland, the second largest city in Scotland, and the eighth most populous in the United Kingdom. The City of Edinburgh Council governs one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas. The council area includes urban Edinburgh and a rural area...

 press of Alexander Arbuthnot

Alexander Arbuthnot (printer)

Alexander Arbuthnot was an early printer in Edinburgh, Scotland.He printed the first edition of George Buchanan's first History of Scotland in 1582....

, c. 1580. It gives the date of its source as 1438, some forty years after Barbour's death.

Gilbert Hay's version

The second surviving Scottish work in the genre is The Buik of King Alexander the Conquerour composed by the poet, Gilbert Hay.