The "Roman" could be the first piece of non-Celtic vernacular literature to have survived from Scotland, an honour often thought to belong to the Brus of John Barbour, written one and a half centuries later in Middle English. It has been neglected in Scotland mainly because it did not come to the attention of scholars until relatively recently, being preserved only in Continental Europe. The other reason for neglect is probably that it was written in French, a linguistic-literary tradition which died out by the later Middle Ages. The "Roman de Fergus" however shows that, despite its future, French-culture flourished in Scotland during the High Middle Ages.