The Wife of Auchtermuchty
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"The Wife of Auchtermuchty" is a Scots poem of the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries.
The poem narrates how a farmer, envious of his wife's apparently easy life, proposes that the couple exchange their normal responsibilities. She will work the fields and he will take care of the home.
The wife agrees to the proposal and proves to be quite capable with a plough.
Meanwhile, under her husband's supervision, the housework descends into comical chaos. At the end of the day, with some encouragement from his shrewd and strong-willed wife, the husband decides that he has learnt a valuable lesson and will return to his plough.[1]
"The Wife of Auchtermuchty" is characterised by physical humour and wry observations on the relationship between husband and wife. In contrast to most of the works of the contemporary makars it concentrates on the life and circumstances of ordinary people.
The poem gives a vivid depiction of domestic life in rural Scotland during the late medieval era.
"The Wife of Auchtermuchty" is of uncertain date and authorship. The text is found only in the Bannatyne Manuscript which dates to the latter sixteenth century and contains works of the sixteenth and fifteenth centuries. As such the poem is most likely to be of this era.
In the manuscript an unidentified scribe, not George Bannatyne himself, attributes the piece to an author called only "Mofat".[1]
The poem's first modern publication, with many modifications, was in The Ever Green of Allan Ramsay between 1724 and 1727.[2]
The text given in this article is that from the Bannatyne Manuscript.
Historical context
The family depicted in the poem are tenant farmers in the lowlands of Scotland. They live with their livestock in a two-roomed cottage of the but and ben design. The but was an outer room, with external access, used for cooking, storage and other household work. The ben was an interior room, warmer and more comfortable than the but, used to accommodate the family.
The poem predates the introduction of draught horses in Scottish agriculture. The family's plough is pulled by oxen.