For multilingual, geopolitically complex early modern Scotland, a definition of Scottish women’s writing must recognize the diversity of languages—Gaelic, Scots, English, French, and Latin—and literary cultures that its extant corpus represents while also encompassing verbal art and nonliterate oral circulation alongside written text. Some women’s writing, typically anglophone, was preserved contemporaneously, including with authors’ personal involvement, while others’, typically in Gaelic, was captured from initially near-exclusive oral circulation at second or third hand or at multigenerational remove from its composers’ lifetimes. Extant work covers multiple genres as well as languages, responding to political division, religious turbulence, and circumstances of private and national significance. Methods of composition varied across hierarchical structures, from the elite writings of a monarch to the exclusively oral circulation of both elite poetry and popular song. While several women’s works were printed and enjoyed commercial success, the majority of extant material remained in manuscript form, circulating semi-privately among wealthy families or networks of mutual acquaintance. Orally sustained compositions comprise a significant part of Scottish women’s contribution to poetry and song traditions across the social spectrum but, other than for Gaelic women, are associated mainly with semi- or nonliterate lower classes. Alongside original work, certain women also translated into Scots and English, primarily from Latin. Overall, many women in early modern Scotland wrote and composed, representing most strata of contemporary society both urban and (from the Lowland, usually anglophone perspective) peripheral, but the visibility of their work varies and multiple factors affect the likelihood of their voices’ preservation.