Background
The second son of James Wedderburn and Janet Barry, he was born in Dundee about 1500.
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John Wedderburn
Edit ProfileEducation
He studied at the pædagogium (afterwards Street Mary"s College), Street Andrews, graduated Bachelor of Arts in 1526 and Master of Arts
Career
In 1528. Returning to Dundee, he was placed under the tuition of Friar Hewat of the Dominican monastery there, and he took orders as a priest. He was chaplain of Street Matthew"s Chapel, Dundee, in 1532. They 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 Ane Compendious Booke of Godly and Spirituall Songs collected out of sundrie partes of the Scripture, with sundrie of other Ballates changed out of prophaine sanges, for avoyding of sinne and harlotrie, with augmentation of sundrie gude and godlie Ballates not contenit in the first editioun.
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. About 1540 Wedderburn made his way to the continent, and remained some time at Wittenberg, then the chief centre of the reformers.
That he had the largest share in writing these ballads seems probable from the fact that many of them are framed on German models with which he would be familiar. Wedderburn was in Dundee in the early part of 1546, but was forced to flee to England in that year to avoid prosecution, and he died there in exile in 1556.
