Education
He may have attended St. Andrews University (a George Bannatyne is known to have been a student there in the 1560's)
He may have attended St. Andrews University (a George Bannatyne is known to have been a student there in the 1560's)
He is chiefly remembered, however, for compiling a manuscript collection of poems by 15th- and early 16th-century Scottish writers in the last three months of 1568, while plague was sweeping Scotland. Tradition says Bannatyne compiled it at Newtyle, but the editor of the Scottish Text Society edition gives good grounds for thinking that it was in fact written in Edinburgh, that its making was not an idle pastime but a carefully planned undertaking, that it was intended for publication and then withheld by Bannatyne because he had doubts about its reception by the Presbyterians.