James Wedderburn

James Wedderburn (c. 1495 – 1553) was a Scottish poet, the eldest son of James Wedderburn, merchant of Dundee (described in documents as "at the West Kirk Style" to distinguish him from others of the name), and of Janet Barry, sister of John Barry, vicar of Dundee. He was born in Dundee about 1495, and matriculated at St Andrews University in 1514. He was enrolled as a burgess of Dundee in 1517, and was intended to take up his father's occupation as a merchant. While at St. Leonard's College, St. Andrews, he had come under the influence of Gavin Logie, one of the leading reformers, and he afterwards took an active part against Romanism. After leaving the university he was sent to Dieppe and Rouen, where it is probable that a branch of the Wedderburn family was settled in commerce. Returning to Dundee, he wrote two plays—a tragedy on the beheading of John the Baptist, and a comedy called Dionysius the Tyrant—in which he satirised the abuses in the Roman church. These plays were performed in the open air at the Playfield, near the west port of Dundee, in 1539–40; but they have not been preserved, though from references made to them by Calderwood and others they seem to have given much offence to ruling ecclesiastics. About this time, in conjunction with his brothers John Wedderburn and Robert Wedderburn, he wrote a number of sacred parodies on popular ballads, which were published apparently at first as broadsheet ballads, and were afterwards collected and issued in 1567, under the title . Only one copy of the edition of 1567 is known to exist, and there is no clue to the date of the first edition referred to on its title-page. As some of the songs plainly refer to incidents that took place in Scotland about 1540, the theory that these were circulated as broadsheets is not unreasonable.