From late 1959 through to early 1968, Hamish Henderson and Hugh MacDiarmid engaged in a series of public debates on Scottish literature, folk art, and politics that were to become known as their ‘Flytings’. They comprised three separate disputes: ‘The Honour'd Shade Flyting’ (1959–60), ‘The Folksong Flyting’ (1964), and ‘The 1320 Club Flyting’ (1968). Though other contributors were involved, Henderson and MacDiarmid were the most prominent participants, and their particular conflicts provided the debates with their most dynamic and resonant episodes. Other notable parties included academics and authors such as the Marxist literary critic, David Craig; the nationalist, classicist, and poet, Douglas Young; the critic and pioneer of modern Scottish literary studies, Thomas Crawford; the poet, Stewart Conn; and Scots language poets, Tom Scott and Sydney Goodsir Smith. Yet this series of impassioned debates has garnered almost no critical attention. Existing material on the ‘Flytings’ comes substantially from those whose remit is simply to survey Henderson's long and varied career. As such, the ‘Flytings’ are approached, straightforwardly, as the public dimension of his complex relationship with MacDiarmid. The debates have become part of Henderson's reputation as a ‘folk-hero’ and are seen – like most of Henderson's creative and critical work – in biographical terms, as context for the political and cultural vision of this ‘father’ of the Scottish folk revival.

Given this critical lacuna, the ‘Flytings’, their contributors, and their principal concerns, deserve clarification. The immediate contexts of the ‘Flytings’ ought to be understood; in particular, the cultural movements MacDiarmid and Henderson came to represent: the Scottish Literary Renaissance and the popular Scottish folk revival. An in-depth analysis of the ‘Flytings’ affords the most direct access to Henderson's cultural politics in the absence of a manifesto or magnum opus. In challenging him, MacDiarmid took to task a political-cultural programme that had been inspired by, and partially founded on, his own poetry and public persona.