# Essays and studies: by members of the English Association/Blind Harry's "Wallace"

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ON BLIND HARRY'S WALLACE
Poet and Quasi-Historian
The contrast between Barbour's Bruce, a poetical narrative of history written in 1375–6 on the one hand, and Blind Harry's Wallace on the other, is among the most interesting in literature. The exact date of the Wallace has not been ascertained beyond that it was after 1470 and before 1488. The personality of the author is dark: there is little in John Major's biographical paragraph about him, and as little in the entries in the Treasurer's Accounts, that would explain. A greater gulf than usual stands between the poem and the poet. John Major was no enthusiast, and his paragraph illustrates perhaps the scholastic contempt for the 'burel man'. Major says that in his (the historian's) childhood, Harry, blind from his birth, composed a whole book of Wallace, and wrote in vernacular verse, in which he was skilful, the things which were commonly reported. By reciting the stories before the nobles he procured food and clothing, of which, Major condescendingly thought, he was worthy.
It is hardly possible to believe that the author of the Wallace was blind from birth. It is infinitely more likely that Major blundered in saying so, for the work bears too many marks of distinctly literary origins to have been written by one who was congenitally blind. That he was blind, however, in his later years is certain. Dunbar as well as Major attests him both blind and a poet. It is easy to delete the words 'from birth' in Major's paragraph.
​The oldest copy of the Wallace extant was written in 1488 by John Ramsay, a cleric and notary of the St. Andrew's diocese. It has been claimed for Ramsay that he was more than a mere copyist, and that he was the collaborator of Harry, and also an interpolator and editor of Barbour's Bruce. This theory, if countenanced, involves unspeakable confusion in the history of King Robert the Bruce, taints with suspicion of redaction every chapter of Barbour's great poem, and implies a deliberate and purposeless fraud by Ramsay in editing, not copying, the poem. But it is a theory happily disproved by the mass of quotations from Barbour extant before 1488, as well as by the failure to establish any single case of real tampering with the text. To Ramsay the scribe we gratefully owe copies of both poems, but the proposition that he was 'redactor' of the Bruce and 'collaborator' in the Wallace would be sufficiently rebutted by the single line of objection that the texts show that he did not always quite understand either poem. There are other texts which, though later in date, have many clearly correct readings where his are palpably corrupt. Such errors are not a privilege that can be conceded to the autograph either of poet or editor. Intelligible as a copyist's errors, they are untenable as editorial.
The Wallace, by the ambition of its design as contrasted ​with the Bruce, changes the plane of composition from that of the rhyming chronicle of the Middle Ages to that of an age a century later, that of the set classical poetry—classical in the vernacular—of the Renaissance. In the comparison these two standards must be remembered. The Bruce was a fine type of the chanson de geste, a narrative root and branch historical, with only slight occasional lapses into decorative simile and heroic apostrophe. It was a rhymed chronicle. A full hundred years later in style, the Wallace is a conscious heroic poem of a type elaborate, ambitious, and highly developed. It tells its tale with enthusiasm, patriotism, and metrical vigour; but it is poetry and not chronicle. Neither in its episodes, chronological sequence, nor general outline, does it really correspond with the historical biography, although through and through it the gleams of fact in unexpected places sometimes puzzle as much as they surprise.
Vivisection has its advocates and opponents, its virtues and defects. Chief of the disadvantages is the fact that the process is apt to end in a post mortem examination. Closely analogous is criticism by scrutiny of sources: the scalpel may lay bare every bone and muscle, but its action may arrest the blood, and most likely will fail to discover any trace whatever of the soul. It is a risk, notwithstanding, which both the critic and the criticized must run from the examination of sources wherever the theme is so tangible and ponderable as a historical figure. Especially is this search of quellen an inevitable element of the critic's task in cases where, as in Harry's Wallace, the claim to be a vitally true record differs so little from the historic 'soothfastness' which Barbour so solemnly declared as the design for which he wrote the Bruce. How deliberately Harry parallels it in the Wallace!
All worthi men at redys this rurall dyt, Blaym nocht the buk, set I be wnperfyt,
I suld hawe thank, sen I nocht trawaill spard For my laubour na man hecht me reward; Na charge I had off king nor othir lord; Gret harm I thocht his gud deid suld be smord. I haiff said her ner as the process gais; And fenzeid nocht for frendschip nor for fais. Costis herfor was no man bond to me; In this sentence I had na will to be, Bot in als mekill as I rahersit nocht Sa worthely as nobill Wallace wrocht.
(Wallace, xi. 1431–42.)
Despite the superior head-shaking of the wise but dull John Major, who distrusted Harry but did not confute him, the eulogist of Wallace was taken at his word: he was in the main accepted more or less as the vernacular annalist of fact. His story of Wallace not only fired the souls of generations of patriotic Scots, but also supplied matter for nearly all the historians till Lord Hailes, greatly daring, said him nay. Since then history may be said to have hanged, drawn, and quartered Harry as a traitor to truth. He remained on the gibbet until Dr. W. A. Craigie one fine day discovered that this obloquy was not altogether fair. He raised a process of rehabilitation, maintaining that it was scant enough justice to condemn Harry as if he were merely a historian, because his work fell to be tested not so much for its history as for its poetry, and because in that sense the honours were divided. While the palm might go to the Aberdonian biographer, Barbour, for his historical story of Bruce, the canons of poetical judgement would secure to Harry the laurel of superior merit, interest, and vivacity in his descriptions of the exploits of Wallace, his portraiture of the hero, and his creation as a poetic whole and patriotic epic. The rivals were not to be weighed against each other by the sole balance of truth, the nil nisi verum which history—a trifle unreasonable sometimes in its standpoint to ​literature—might seek to apply, regardless of wrong to that imaginative faculty which ranks so high among poetic gifts.
While thus in 1893 my friend Dr. Craigie contrasted Barbour and Harry, as Literature, not a little to Harry's profit, my friend, Mr. J. T. T. Brown, in 1900 supplied him with a 'Collaborator' who not only found him his facts from chronicle, and his quotations from literature, but was busy about the same time in redacting Barbour and embroidering Bruce from the cradle to the grave. Although quite unable either to countenance redaction in the one case, or to admit collaboration in the other, I shall pursue with interest and appreciation not a few valuable lines of examination started by Mr. Brown into the sources of Harry, whether he had a collaborator or not.
The Wallace is a Renaissance heroic poem so curiously composite that one need never expect to trace all its elements. But many are patent, and their character is sufficient not only to bring into the literary contrast challenged by Dr. Craigie certain ethical factors which cannot be set aside, but also to show yet more fully than before the dependence of Harry's Wallace on Barbour's Bruce.
Some Poetical Sources
There is no need to linger over the purely historical citations made from the prose chronicler Walter Bower, or from the earlier poet-historian, Andrew of Wyntoun, which in every sense deserve commendation as true historic buttresses of the epic scheme. Nor is it with any question of propriety that we look at some other poetical models which Harry followed. The ten-syllabled couplet verse of the Wallace comes from the Canterbury Tales. Direct quotations from ​Troilus, the Knight's Tale, and the Franklin's Tale have been pointed out by Professor Skeat. There may be added borrowings from Chaucer's Shipman, in the prologue to the Tales, used to shape the Red Reivar of Wallace.
Mr. Brown first showed that the alliterative Morte Arthure of Huchown (Sir Hew of Eglintoun) was drawn upon for passages descriptive of a voyage, for the lament over Sir John the Graham, and much more questionably for possible touches in Wallace's dream. To these, additions may be made. A romance attribute of great heroes, for example, of the Cid, is that their very aspect overawes and abases their enemy when they meet him in conference. This is used in Morte Arthure and followed in Wallace. In Morte Arthure Watling Street is mentioned with curious particularity, and in the Wallace the mariner Jop was familiar with it—the way.
Fra Carleill throucht Sandwich that ryoll stede (vi. 305). The arming of Arthur in Morte Arthure is imitated in the arming of Wallace. Distinct allusion is made in the Wallace to the St. Michael's Mount episode of Morte Arthure: there ​is a large use of the mechanism of vows in the Wallace doubtless reflecting the alliterative poem.
But it is not in these incidental adaptations of earlier poetical episodes or ideas that the peculiar quality of Harry consists. Mr. Joseph Bain was well within the mark when he said that a great part of the Wallace was 'plagiarized from Barbour '. How remarkable a fact this is will appear the more when we recall the deliberate challenge of comparison which Harry makes between his hero and the Bruce:
All worthi men that has gud witt to waille, Be war that yhe with myss deyme nocht my taille, Perchance ye say that Bruce he was none sik? He was als gud quhat deid was to assaill, As off his handis, and bauldar in battaill. Bot Bruce was knawin weyll ayr off this kynrik; For he had rycht, we call no man him lik. Bot Wallace thriss this kynrik conquest haile, In England fer socht battaill on that rik.
(Wallace, ii. 351–9.)
We may come again to this passage in order to consider the ethical aspect of the comparison in the face of Harry's method of conducting it.
Rapreiffyt Eduuard rycht gretlye off this thing; Bawchillyt his seyll, blew out on that fals king.
(viii. 723.)
These words not only refer to the institutions (well-known on the Scottish border till the Union) of 'bauchilling' and 'reproving', but can be best illustrated by an event of 1452. James II murdered Earl William of Douglas breaking the 'band', as he said, with his dagger notwithstanding assurance and safe conduct under the royal privy seal. The slain earl's brother 'come on Sanct Patrikis day in lentrynto Strivling and blew out xxiiij hornis attanis apon the king and apon all the lordis that war with him that tyme for the foule slauchter of his brother and schewe all their selis at the cors on ane letter with thair handis subscrivit and tuke the letter and band it on ane burd and cuplit it till ane hors tale and gart draw it throu the towne spekand richt sclanderfully of the king and all that war with him that tyme.'
Another allusion may be cited as almost certainly topical not of Wallace's time but of the poet's. In the quarrel at Lanark an English soldier mocks Wallace by saying he had taken him for a foreign ambassador:
Come yhe nocht new our se? Pardown me than, for I wend ye had beyne Ane inbasset to bryng ane wncouth queyne.
This can scarcely be other than a refracted reference to the splendid embassy which in 1469 brought Queen Margaret from Denmark to be married to James III at Holyrood with unwonted pomp and spectacle long remembered by the chroniclers.
The Pillaging of Barbour
Central and vital, however, to the consideration of the Wallace is its extraordinary relationship to the Bruce—a ​relation which it may not be much easier to parallel than to justify in certain of its ramifications. Harry's borrowings and adaptations from Barbour were many and of many kinds. On the count of diction the indebtednesses are infinite; lines by the score were 'lifted' and with an extra dissyllable thrown in to fill up the metre were transferred from the earlier poem, most notably perhaps in descriptions of battle. But this is a venial and comparatively mechanical debt which, extensive though it was, would hardly put a poet's credit through the bankruptcy court. Things otherwise in themselves void of offence stand on the perilous verge the moment the poem claims to be a record of truth. They prepare the way for adaptations emphatically unscrupulous. Some artfully dovetail into the true story of Bruce, as told by Barbour, incidents feigned or imagined regarding the career of Wallace. This is a delicate process for a poet to adopt if at the end of the day he is going to ask his readers ' Which, think you, is the greater hero of these twain? '
Comparatively innocent examples of the operation are found, as when Harry directly or indirectly refers to Barbour's account of an episode concerning a French knight at the attack on Perth in 1313:
That tym was in his company A knycht of France wicht and hardy.
(Bruce, ix. 390.)
This unnamed knight of France serving in the army of Bruce is boldly taken over by Harry, who finds him a name. He becomes the knight Longaville, previously the Red Reivar, and afterwards ancestor of the Charteris family:
With Bruce in wer this gud knycht furth can ryng. Remembrance syn was in the Brucys buk; Secound he was quhen thai Saynct Jhonstoun tuk; Folowed the king at wynnyng off the toun.
(Wallace, xi. 1146–9.)
Soon comes a whole series of adaptations bolder still. Barbour tells a pleasant story of a martial churchman,
Of Dunkelden the gude bischop That men callit Willyame Syncler,
whom Bruce admired for his patriotism and valour,
And held him into sic daynte That his awne bischop him callit he.
(Bruce, xvi. 574, 673.)
But Bruce might not even call his bishop his own: Harry annexed him for the ecclesiastical establishment of Wallace, who indeed is represented by Harry as appointing Sinclair to the bishopric, although in fact Sinclair was only elected in 1309. Throughout the Wallace he fills a first-class part as a counsellor and supporter of Wallace.
How these bland transferences from Bruce to Wallace may affect a comparison between the two heroes may well suggest a question whether at the end of the process anything ​whatever will be left to the Bruce which the triumphant challenge of comparison with Wallace may not hint to have been the merest imitation on Bruce's part of what Wallace had done before. Not even Rachrin is sanctuary for preservation of any peculium for Bruce; even the shelter of Rachrin must be shared with Wallace, and Arran and Turnberry too. Wallace's battles and exploits in the capture of castles again and again manifest the same extraordinary forestalling of the historical achievements of Bruce, and sometimes the adaptations display a coolness of daring unsurpassed in the dashing careers of Wallace and Bruce themselves. Thus history knows only of one battle of Lowdonhill, fought at the outset of Bruce's career, in which, skilfully narrowing the approaches by dykes, the Scottish king's men repulsed a charge of English cavalry, of whom a hundred were killed. Harry invents for Wallace also, as his first battle, a battle of Lowdonhill, in which the same stratagem in like manner succeeded, with precisely the same number of slain. Bruce's defeat near Metliven seems to have suggested a counterpoise in Wallace's victory there, for which history does not vouch. Bruce having gained a battle in the Pass of Brander at the foot of Cruachan Ben, Wallace must needs win one there too, on Lochawe:
Betuix a roch and the gret wattir sid.
Bruce as an archer, slaying the foremost pursuer, was only a little less formidable than Wallace in the like case. If Bruce was hunted with bloodhounds so that he narrowly escaped, Wallace, on Harry's ' making ', was the same. Sir ​James Douglas under Bruce captured Douglas Castle with the aid of 'Thorn Dicson'; so in the Wallace Sir William Douglas (father of Sir James) with the aid of 'Thorn Dycson'—evidently caught young—captures Sanquhar Castle. William Bunnock in the Bruce uses a stratagem to seize Linlithgow, and in Wallace the hero by the same hay-wain stratagem captures Perth. Bruce having, as above noted, won Linlithgow by an ambush against its 'peill'—constructed, as we know, in 1301—Harry naturally deemed it well to make Wallace take the 'peyll' too, notwithstanding its having been set up after Wallace's brilliant but brief season of victory was ended. Plagiarism is not nearly the word for such literary pillage. Harry nearly uproots Barbour.
The Wallace has for its ground plan a prophecy first intimated by the lines:
Als Inglis clerks in prophecys thai fand How a Wallace suld putt thaim of Scotland (i. 351),
but later more circumstantially accredited to Thomas the Rymer thus:
Than Thomas said: ' Forsuth, or he decess, Mony thousand in feild sail mak thar end. Off this regioune he sail the Sothroun send; And Scotland thriss he sail bryng to the pess: So gud off hand agayne sail neuir be kend.'
(ii. 346–50.)
This is the mode by which the expectancy of the reader is started; and the complete fulfilment of the prophecy makes up the story of the Wallace—the tale of Scotland rescued thrice. Yet here again in the prophetic field the trail of ​Barbour guides Harry's course. Barbour too began with a prophecy of Thomas of Ercildoun that Bruce should be king,
And haiff this land all in leding, (Bruce, ii. 86).
As we have seen Harry already laying sacrilegious hands on a bishop, we need not marvel to find him kidnapping a prophet.
Everywhere it is the same, whether the matter is of mist, of battle-speech, of division of spoil, of battle tactics, of cutting tent-ropes in night-surprises, the Wallace of Harry is a rib out of Bruce's side, although, of course, there are things which derive elsewhere. Originality is a merely relative term; imagination is often a mere disorder of the memory; in Harry's case the matter of Wallace was largely a memory carefully re-arranged. The older conceptions of the place of imitative licence were laxer than ours, and Harry used Barbour with a latitude beyond the wide limits even of mediaeval canon.
The Wallace Portrait
If anywhere we could expect to find originality it surely must be when now and again Harry turns from his arithmetic of slaughter, his unending rhetoric of victory and bloodshed, to describe the person and characteristics of his hero. He describes his tall stature, his broad shoulders, his great and brawny limbs:
Woundis he had in mony divers place, Bot fair and weill kepyt was his face. Off ryches he kepyt no propyr thing; Gaiff as he wan, lik Alexander the king. In tym off pes mek as a maid was he; Quhar wer approchyt the rycht Ector was he.
(Wallace, ix. 1933–8.)
His face he kepyt, for it was euir bar, With his twa handis, the quhilk full worthi war.
(Wallace, iii. 91–2.)
In retreat he was as terrible as in attack:
Sic a flear befor was neuir seyn; Nocht at Gadderis, off Gawdyfer the keyn, Quhen Alexander reskewed the foryouris, Mycht till him be comperd in that houris.
(Wallace, x. 341–4.)
My friend Mr. Brown has essayed to trace the sources of the Wallace portrait given by Harry, and has concluded that it came from the alliterative Troy Book. The main things, however, are not from that work: they are from Barbour's Bruce. Barbour describes James of Douglas:
Bot off lymmys he wes weill maid, With banys gret and schuldrys braid. ·······Quhen he wes blyth he wes lufly, And meyk and sweyt in cumpany; Bot quha in battaill mycht him se, All other countenance had he. ·······Till gud Ector of Troy mycht he In mony thingis liknyt be (Bruce, i. 385–96).
As for his wounds, there is no doubt whatever that Harry's Wallace got them from James of Douglas. The episode in Spain is familiar how, meeting Douglas there, a knight, bearing a countenance all rueful with scars, wondered at Douglas's freedom from such:
He wend his face had wemmyd beyne Bot nevir ane hurt in it had he (Bruce, xx. 370).
Lowe God, all tyme had I Handis, myne hede for till were (Bruce, xx. 378).
Of the picture of Wallace in retreat it is only necessary to cite again the Bruce as the explanation. Barbour likens the king, forced to retire when attacked by John of Lome, to Gaudifer,
Quhen that the mychty duk Betys Assailzeit in Gadderiss the foray ours, And quhen the king [Alexander] thaim maid rescours
(Bruce, iii. 74–6).
No simile was sacred enough to be reserved for Bruce if Harry needed a decoration for Wallace.
Evidently, just as the battles and exploits of Wallace are so largely the battles and exploits of Bruce and Douglas, so in the central facts of portraiture and characterization the personal figure of the hero is but second-hand the shadow of Barbour's Douglas and Bruce.
In audacity possibly nothing exceeds that adaptive feat of Harry's by which in the battle of Falkirk Bruce is made to level his spear at Wallace, to ride full tilt at him but miss his blow, and as he thunders past, to receive full on his horse's neck the terrible down-stroke of Wallace's blade:
With a gud sper the Bruce was serwyt but baid: With gret inwy to Wallace fast he raid; And he till him assonzeit nocht for thi. The Bruce him myssyt as Wallace passyt by, Awkward he straik with his sharp groundyn glaive, Sper and horscrag in till sondyr he drave; Bruce was at erd or Wallace turned about.
Were it not that the situation has a grave side one might be content to marvel at the whimsicality, the almost comical ​audacity of this assignment of the historical part of Bruce to Wallace, and the bestowing upon Bruce, instead, of the inglorious part of De Bohun. But can any stretch of poetic licence justify such hard measure to Bruce as this filching from him of one of the chief roses of his chaplet of Bannockburn?
Wallace's alleged Yorkshire Campaign
Critics of Harry have, however, done less than justice to certain sections of his work which, far removed from sober history, have been set down as palpably absurd, and the blame laid by implication entirely upon Harry's shoulders. The 'Wallace Buke' of 'Maister Blair' needs further search, which may yet show that that fictitious authority had some kind of basis for his alleged existence. The theme is too deep for the present occasion. Certainly there is chronicle for something substantially akin to Wallace's dream. There is the same for his encounters on the sea with pirates, for adventures in France, and also for the vision which attested the passage of his soul from purgatory into paradise. These all belong to the Wallace story in fifteenth-century chronicle.
A chief object of the present essay is to re-examine the extraordinary narrative which fills the eighth book and records Wallace's invasion of England in terms hardly capable of recognition as in any degree consonant with the actual expedition of Wallace after the victory of Stirling Bridge on September 11, 1297. Complete records of the historical invasion exist, and its strict limitations equally in ​point of time, and territorially, are beyond dispute. Wallace played havoc with Cumberland and Northumberland from Carlisle to Hexham and Newcastle in October and November, 1297, but never penetrated south to Yorkshire, and never personally encountered Edward I, who indeed was then in Flanders. But in Harry's poem the event assumes much grander dimensions: the story exalts the place of Wallace and debases that of Edward I to the degree of representing that, after prolonged sojourn in England, with the country and even Edward's queen at his feet, Wallace, fruitlessly challenging Edward to pitched battle, at last dictates, half way from St. Albans to Westminster, the terms of a peace which for a reason of sentiment Wallace only consents to ratify at Northallerton in the North Riding of Yorkshire. Mystery hangs over the origin of the entire episode, for in no single feature does it correspond with the facts of the actual invasion. There are signs that some such story was a misleading factor to the chronicler, Abbot Bower, and there is no need here to accuse Harry of inventing the exploit, however much poetic liberty he may have taken to ornament it. Historically Edward I was not in England; the poet makes him flee personally from battle with Wallace; he also makes him hold parliament at Pontefract. Historically the invasion never reached Yorkshire; in the poem Wallace ​makes his head-quarters for forty days at Northallerton, and between that place and Malton a battle is fought in which 7,000 men, under Sir Rauff Rymunt, are defeated and Sir Rauff is slain. Subsequently, parliament is—poetically — convened at Pomfret, and battle is offered to Wallace on condition of his being crowned king—an extraordinary condition which Wallace refuses, even for one day, and the English were diplomatically deceived on this score, although the poet afterwards corrects himself in this particular. When the forty days expired, Edward had failed to keep his promise of battle, and Wallace 'bauchillyt his seyll' and put him to shame. Then Wallace marched to York, which he besieged, but which ransomed itself for £5,000 after Wallace's banner had been set upon the walls. Middleham and its lands were burnt and wasted. The Scots meanwhile lived at will in Richmondshire. In that region there was a castle of 'Ramswaith' held by Fehew, a personality who somehow appears to have been Harry's chief antipathy. Fehew's brother, earlier in the poem, had gone as a false herald to Wallace at Tinto, and had for his offence against the laws of arms been put to death by Wallace. Fehew's castle was the more bitterly attacked because of this episode of the brother's treason to chivalry.
A ryoll sted, fast by a forest sid, With turrettis fayr and garrettis off gret prid. Beildyt about, rycht lykly to be wicht, Awfull it was till ony mannis sicht.
Wallace's army went vigorously to work:
The bulwerk wan thir men off armys brycht, To the barmkyn layd temyr apon hecht. Than bowmen schot to kep thaim fra the cast, The wall about had festnyt firis fast.
(Wallace, viii. 1013–48.)
With a gud suerd Wallace strak off his hed.
(viii. 1069.)
In Yorkshire Harry's English geography appears to have been exhausted; the next place he knows south of York is St. Albans, where Edward's queen—
Weill born scho was off the rycht blud off France—
comes to beg for peace to be granted to her pusillanimous husband and his oppressed realm (viii. 1114.) After negotiation Wallace foregoes his claim of battle and agrees to peace, declining, however, to seal any treaty until he again reaches Northallerton, where at last
Thai seyllyt the pes without langar delay.
(viii. 1567.)
The Scots had set out from Scotland in October, 'before All Hallow evyn,' and it was August, on Lammas Day, ere returning they alighted by the banks of Tweed.
All this is a puzzle as yet unread, and there is pleasure in submitting a solution containing every needed element. Once more it is a case of confused identities. The thing never happened to Wallace and Edward I in 1297; it did happen in substance to King Robert the Bruce and Edward II in 1322. In the invasion of that year the Scots under Bruce were about Northallerton in October. The abject and cowardly Edward of the poem, who breaks his vow and flees from the battle he had pledged, is the Edward II who narrowly escaped capture by his promptitude of flight before the battle of Byland on October 14, 1322 to be derided by his own subjects, the chroniclers among them, for his ​want of courage. Barbour truly enough says, he 'fled with all his mycht'. Now Byland is not far from Rievaux Abbey about midway between Malton and Northallerton, so that it perfectly conforms to Harry's geography. And Sir Rauf Rymunt? He has been supposed to be a 'Richmond', although the Christian name was not found to square with that of the earl. But at the battle of Byland the two distinguished prisoners were Sir Rauf Cobham and the Earl of Richmond, John of Bretagne. Sir Rauf Rymunt, therefore, a literary figment, disintegrates under the chemical analysis of history into that not uncommon phenomenon, two gentlemen who have been poetically rolled into one.
On their defeat in (Harry's) battle the English fled to Malton, whither Wallace pursued them. In 1322, as the Bridlington Chronicle records, Bruce remained for a time in possession at Malton. English and Scots historians alike tell how Bruce chased the English to the gates of York. And if York did not redeem itself from Bruce, as Harry says it did from Wallace, certain it is that the adjacent town of Beverley did so ransom itself for 400. As for Fehew's castle, it is the castle of Ravenswath or Ravensworth, in Richmondshire, seat of the Fitzhughs, and we shall perhaps find later a reason for Harry's hatred of its lord. Harry's ​parliament at Pomfret is explained by the residence of Edward II there in 1322, and by his holding there the great council which sentenced to death Thomas, earl of Lancaster, defeated and taken at Borough Bridge. Edward was long at York, which was certainly in danger, though never actually besieged. As for the Scottish poetical head-quarters at Northallerton, we have the fact recorded by Fabyan that in 1322 'the Scots in thayr returning homeward wan the castell of Norham and robbyd the towne of Northallerton'. While the intervention of the queen is not paralleled by any fact, it is alleged by some Scottish historians that the English at this very time sued for peace, and, whichever side first sought it, certainly a treaty was made, which Harry, however confusedly, must have had in view. Made in May, 1323, not exactly at Northallerton but at Thorpe, not far away in Yorkshire, it was a truce for thirteen years. In the negotiations which led to it there was trouble about the terms of recognition of Bruce himself, and early in the following year there was keen discussion at the papal court with Edward II over the title of king which had at first been refused to Bruce—an element which convincingly accounts for the curious and otherwise unintelligible tale of the crown and title of king to be borne by Wallace in the poem. It is the final touch which makes obvious how completely the history of Bruce in 1322–3 is the key to Harry's story of Wallace in England. What is clear, once more, is that Harry's Wallace derives another large section of his spinal column from the vertebrae of Robert the Bruce.
The Perth Connexion and Indications of Date
Among the indications of date must be reckoned the curious, alliterative, political poem perhaps an allegory, the full historical significance of which has not been recovered the Douglas poem known as The Howlat, written by Richard of Holland, a cleric and notary in the service and under the patronage of a scion of the Douglas family, the Earl of Moray, in the middle of the fifteenth century, at the time of the culmination and fall of that ambitious house. Dated by its editor, my friend Mr. Amours, about 1450, it supplied Harry with material for his incident of Stewart of Bute taunting Wallace about his borrowed plumes, the 'fethrame' of a dignity of command which was not by right his own. Moreover, it has a value as practically convicting John Major of actually quoting Blind Harry, although professing to quote those Latin authors whom he so academically, though not without some of his frigid scholastic criticism, preferred to the minstrel as vouchers of history. Later passages reflecting current events and local circumstances, and making for an argument to fix the date of the poem, may reasonably be included, such as the episode of the squire, young Fehew, who, as the penalty of falsely assuming a herald's coat-arms and privileges, is beheaded by Wallace, while the herald who abetted Fehew has his tongue cut out for his falsehood to arms. This fierce proceeding will recall the episode in Scott's Quentin Durward, the suggestion for which was the actual sending of a false herald by Louis XI to Edward IV in 1475.
​Something, although not much, can be deduced from certain indications of particular knowledge of local institutions; those alone crucial are such as concern the burgh and county of Perth. The poet had a peculiar interest in the town of Perth and its vicinity, and also in its institutions. Perth is made the model illustration of Wallace's thrice freeing Scotland (although this was a mere figment, as Scotland was only freed once by Wallace), for Wallace in the poem thrice besieges and captures Perth from the English. Early in the book Wallace says,
Rycht sor I long Sanct Jhonstoun for to se,
and his very last exploit is its capture for the third time. Both on the surface and under it there are signs of special knowledge; Harry knows that Strathearn is a separate jurisdiction, that Perth itself has that very rare attribute of a city-county, a 'schirreiff off the toun', and that it has that distinctive officer, a 'mar'. Besides, it is worthy of noting by the way that Jop, the herald and gallant comrade of Wallace, bears a most unusual name, which in records of the fourteenth century is found borne by a burgess of Perth. Very significant too is the part played in the story by Rutliven, the 'gud Ruwan' of many an episode Ruwan, who is twice made sheriff of the burgh of Perth a poetical ​appointment whereby perhaps may hang a tale. For from 1483, or a little before it, the Ruthven family appear, as they did for long hereditarily afterwards, as sheriffs of Perth—1483, a date therefore of critical account, when aligned with a yet more decisive index of time next to be mentioned.
The 'Revare Edward' of 1482
A singular epithet of abuse is used by Wallace to King Edward in answer to Edward's summons of Wallace to his presence:
Thow reyffar king chargis me throw cas, That I suld cum and put me in thi grace. Gyff I gaynstand, thow hechtis till hyng me: I vow to God, and evir I may tak the, Thow sail be hangyt, ane exempill to geiff To kingis off reyff, als lang as I may leiff.
(Wallace, vi. 381–6.)
Here is a decisive clue not only to the date of the poem, but also to the conditions which inspired its production. The proof has all the force of statute, for it is an Act of the Scottish Parliament. In 1481 war had broken out with the old enemy the English, under Edward IV, and in March, 1482, the Scots passed a most energetic enactment, denouncing the iniquity of 'the Revare Edward calland him king of Ingland', and particularly the breach of truce committed by 'the saide Revare Edwarde throu birnand averice and for fals reif and conqueist nocht dredand God nor the effusioun of cristin blude.'
Just before the 'Reivar' episode in the poem, Wallace ​had made offer of pardon to all who left the English interest and became true Scots:
He gart commaund, quha that his pes wald tak, A fre remyt he suld ger to thaim mak, For alkyn deid that thai had doyne beforn (vi. 322).
Now the very Act of 1482 referred to ordains general proclamation of an offer of pardon to the adherents of the rebel Douglas:
'And quhatsumevir persons that now assistis to the saide tratour Douglace that will within xxiiij dais cum to our soverane lord and bide at the faith and lawtee of his hienes sal have full remissioun and forgeifnes of all tressoun and other trespassis committit be thaim of tyme bigane' (Acts of Parl. Scot. ii. 139).
Besides, the extreme hatred which Harry's poem manifests of Fehew, as well as the presence of Graystock among the English leaders, is significantly accounted for by the fact that in 1482, when an English army invaded Scotland, 'the lefte wyng was guyded,' says the chronicler Edward Hall, 'by the lorde Fitz He we,' while 'the lorde Greystocke' was on the generalissimo's staff.
The 'Revare Edward' of himself alone is conclusive of the date of Harry's poem, and is so much the more satisfactory in that respect as supplying the clearest possible explanation of the bitterness of spirit at the core of the poem, the malignant ruthlessness it displays towards Englishmen, and the glaring failure of the poet to redeem the hereditary sense of enmity by associating it with any generous note towards an enemy so worthy of the Scottish steel. In all these respects it is far as the poles asunder from Barbour's Bruce, which, never vindictive or savage, achieves its purpose ​of patriotism in the spirit of chivalry without the incessant vengeance and refusal of quarter which make Harry's Wallace reek of the shambles. Written in or about 1482 or 1483, the poem was shaped when Scotland and England were at war, when Edward IV, intriguing with the exiled Duke of Albany and Earl of Douglas, was the object of intense exasperation. He had supported Albany's pretension to the crown, and fomented every treason against the Scottish throne; his armies had over-run the borders with fire and sword; his fleets had assailed—though not with impunity—Scottish ships in the Firth of Forth; and his bargain with Albany was that, as the price of English support, Albany, if successful in winning the kingdom, should hold it as Edward's feudatory, and should further cede to him the fortresses of Berwick and Lochmaben and the territories of Liddesdale and Eskdale and Annandale. There was justification therefore for Scottish indignation against such a policy of conquest by intrigue and against a 'king of reyff'.
The phrase was radically a Lancastrian taunt, Scotland had long and with fair consistency favoured the red rose. Margaret of Anjou and Henry VI had once found shelter in exile at the Scottish court. The French and the Scots were leagued enemies of the house of York. Edward IV, the Yorkist victor, veritably enough a 'king of reyff' in England, had both by war and policy become a 'revare' in Scotland too and the country was up in arms. Of the national indignation Harry's poem is a passionate expression. Tending so directly to explain its violence and ruthlessness of tone, the ascertainment of its date thus considerably intensifies its political and historical significance. In virtue ​of this explanation it becomes of real value historically as reflecting the vehemence of Scottish antagonism to England and Edward IV, circa 1483. But its endless structural inversions, conversions, and perversions of the great and true story of Bruce in order to deck the plume of Wallace, preparatory to a challenge of comparison upon the ludicrously falsified issue, make it, with its pretence of truth 'ner as the process gais', nothing short of a grievous wrong to Bruce. The owl in the poetic fable had the grace to confine his borrowed feathers to those which the other birds had discarded, but the 'fetheram' in which Harry bedizened Wallace were plucked from the quick. As history the poem is the veriest nightmare. As literature it requires an almost deranged patriotism to accept as worthy of the noble memory of Sir William Wallace so vitiated a tribute.
Geo. Neilson.
* ↑ John Major's Historia, lib. iv. cap. 15.
* ↑ Accounts of the Lord High Treasurer of Scotland, vol. I. xcix. 133, 174, 176, 181, 184.
* ↑ Mr. J. T. T. Brown's The Wallace and The Bruce Restudied, Bonn, 1900, P. Hanstein's Verlag.
* ↑ G. Neilson's John Barbour, Poet and Translator, Kegan Paul, 1900, reprinted from the Transactions of the Philological Society, vol. for 1899–1902; Athenæum, November 17, 1900 February 23, 1901; W. M. Mackenzie's edition of The Bruce, A. & C. Black, 1909, pp. 505–11.
* ↑ Instances in Ramsay's Edinburgh MS. as appearing from Professor Skeat's (Scottish Text Society) edition of the Bruce, ii. 438, 468, 529, iii. 69, iv. 14, vii. 623, ix. 249, x. 382, xii. 153, xvi. 265, 495, xix. 155, 336, 459, 627. Instances in Ramsay's MS. of the Wallace as appearing from Dr. Moir's (Scottish Text Society) edition of the Wallace, i. 77, 399, ii. 145, iii. 189, v. 212, 506, 535, 629, 696, 738, 764, 1028, vi. 360, 363, vii. 775, viii. 605, 737, 745, 918, 1691, ix. 707, 1698, 1900, 1917.
* ↑ Scottish Review, vol. xxii. (1893), p. 173.
* ↑ Wallace and Bruce Restudied, pp. 58–77.
* ↑ Wyntoun's Cronykil, viii. 2011–2116, Wallace, vi. 107–248.
* ↑ Professor Skeat in Modern Language Quarterly, November, 1897, followed and extended by Mr. Brown in Wallace and Bruce Restudied, pp. 42–5. Passages cited include Troilus, ii. 99, 105 (Wallace, vii. 191–2), Knight's Tale, 2135, 2450–69, 2466, 2466 (Wallace, ix. 1922, vii. 175–95, 183, 189), Franklin's Tale, prol. 716–28 (Wallace, xi. 1461–63). For Wallace, xi. 1451–2, cf. also Kingis Quair, 194.
* ↑ Canterbury Tales, prologue, 399–400, Wallace, vi. 303, ix. 91, 210, x. 822.
* ↑ Morte Arthure, 740–52, Wallace, ix. 47–58,Wallace and Bruce Restudied, 34–40.
* ↑ Morte Arthure, 3951–63, Wallace, x. 561–70.
* ↑ Morte Arthure, 3358–9, &c., Wallace, vii. 75–6, &c.
* ↑ Southey's Chronicle, bk. ix. chap. 10, El Romancero del Cid (ed. 1870), part iv. No. 70.
* ↑ Morte Arthure, 116–36, Wallace, vi. 881.
* ↑ Morte Arthure, 447, 450, 476, 482, Wallace, vi. 305.
* ↑ Morte Arthure, 900–30, Wallace, viii. 1177–1210.
* ↑ Morte Arthure, 1213–4, Wallace, viii. 886.
* ↑ Morte Arthure, 296–396, 2044–89 (cf. Neilson's Huchown of the Awle Ryale, pp. 44–6), Wallace, vi. 216, 384, 897, vii. 387, 735, viii. 409, 442, 972, ix. 667, 995, 1860, x. 579, xi. 304, 959.
* ↑ Bain's Calendar of Documents relating to Scotland, iii. p. xxxvi.
* ↑ For Rokeby: Wallace, vii. 685, Rot. Scot. i. 488–601, Bain's Calendar, iii. pp. xxxvii. 364–8.
* ↑ For Crawford: Wallace, vii. 288, ix. 126, 1300, Douglas Book, iii. 405.
* ↑ For Heron: Wallace, iv. 396, v. 32, 145, Rot. Scot. ii. 22–164.
* ↑ For Gray: Wallace, vi. 694, viii. 499, Rot. Scot. ii. 392; cf. Hall's Chronicle, 259.
* ↑ Wallace, vii. 996, viii. 765, x. 852, xi. 25.
* ↑ Ibid. ix. 1170.
* ↑ Ibid. v. 800.
* ↑ Ibid. vii. 977, 987, xi. 877.
* ↑ Ibid. viii. 12.
* ↑ Ibid. v. 27.
* ↑ Ibid. ix. 169 (cf. Leslie's De Origine Moribus et Rebus Gestis Scotorum, 60).
* ↑ Asloan MS. (Auchinleck Chronicle), p. 47.
* ↑ Wallace, vi. 134–6.
* ↑ Ferrerius in Boece, ed. 1574, sub anno 1468, p. 388.
* ↑ Bruce, ix. 400, Wallace, ix. 232.
* ↑ Bruce , iv. 29, Wallace, vii. 890.
* ↑ Bruce, ii. 243, i. 282, i. 483; Wallace, vii. 1276, vi. 771, viii. 1527.
* ↑ Bruce, ii. 244, iv. 342, 505, viii. 415; Wallace, iii. 52, vi. 331, &c.
* ↑ Wallace, vii. 930, ix. 1225, x. 783, 993, 1047, xi. 59, 757.
* ↑ Bruce, iii. 680–725; Wallace, xi. 725, 759.
* ↑ Bruce, iv. 464; Wallace, xi. 725, 759.
* ↑ Bruce, v. 186, 213; Wallace, vi. 836.
* ↑ Bruce, viii. 339; Wallace, i. 319, iii. 115–223 and 205.
* ↑ Bruce, ii. 346–450; Wallace, iv. 420–68.
* ↑ Bruce, x. 20; Wallace, vii. 661.
* ↑ Bruce, iv. 543; Wallace, iv. 554.
* ↑ Bruce, vi. 485; Wallace, v. 25. Barbour's verity in the bloodhound story is finely and curiously confirmed by Jehan le Bel's Chronique, chap. 22.
* ↑ Bruce, v. 279; Wallace, 1575–1655.
* ↑ Bruce, x. 137–250; Wallace, ix. 695–760.
* ↑ Bruce, x. 137, 165, 223.
* ↑ Stevenson's Historical Documents, Scotland, ii. 441; Bain's Calendar, ii. 1308–1422; Neilson's Peel; its meaning and derivation, pp. 5–8.
* ↑ Wallace, ix. 1693.
* ↑ Bruce, ix. 577, 587; Wallace, xi. 500.
* ↑ Bruce, xii. 311; Wallace, vi. 519.
* ↑ Bruce, v. 118, xii. 311; Wallace, vii. 953.
* ↑ Bruce, viii. 243, xii. 265; Wallace, ix. 904.
* ↑ Bruce, xix. 541, 565; Wallace, vi. 577, x. 636.
* ↑ Wallace and Bruce Restudied, 40–42.
* ↑ Troy Book, 11. 3760–2, 3892.
* ↑ The Relationes Quaedam Arnaldi Blair (frequently edited as appendix to editions of the Wallace) can hardly be said to show any correspondence whatever with Harry's citations of 'Maister Blair'; but the present does not give an opportunity for an intricate collation.
* ↑ Wallace, vii. 65–115; Bower's Scotichronicon, ii. 170.
* ↑ Wallace, ix. 46–264, x. 800–904; Bower, ii. 176.
* ↑ Wallace, ix. 276–544, x. 906–65, xi. 1–325; Bower, ii. 176.
* ↑ Wallace, xi. 1241–1300; Bower, ii. 230.
* ↑ Bain's Calendar, ii. pref. xxxi, Nos. 954, 971; Chronicle of Lanercost, 190–1; Langtoft, ii. 299, 308; Fordun, i. 329; Bower's Scotichronicon, ii, 172, 173.
* ↑ Edward was at Ghent from September 7, 1297, until February 26, 1298: Gough's Itinerary of Edward I.
* ↑ The missing chapters 32 and 33 of book xi. of Bower's Scotichronicon, were believed by Dr. Jamieson (notes to his edition of Wallace, note to xi. 948) to be reproduced or incorporated in Blair's Eelationes. See also Tytler's History of Scotland, vol. i, note U. The matter has been much discussed by later writers, reviewed in Wallace and Bruce Restudied, pp. 55–7; but the significance of one or two citations from libri and chronica by Bower, xi. 29, xii. 2, and the corresponding passages in the Relationes, chaps, v and xii (episodes of Allerdale and Roslin), has not been exhausted.
* ↑ Wallace, viii. 570.
* ↑ Ibid. 575–98.
* ↑ Ibid. 623.
* ↑ Ibid. 631–72.
* ↑ Ibid. 676–80.
* ↑ Ibid., xi. 1443–50.
* ↑ Ibid., viii. 741–928.
* ↑ Ibid. 946.
* ↑ Ibid. 1003.
* ↑ Ibid. 1013.
* ↑ Ibid. 1009–72.
* ↑ Wallace, viii. 1556.
* ↑ Ibid. 1573–4.
* ↑ Bain's Cal. iii. 790.
* ↑ Lanercost Chron. 247–8; French Chronicle of London, p. 45.
* ↑ Bruce, xviii. 481.
* ↑ Bain's Cal. iii. pref. xxxvii.
* ↑ Bruce, xviii. 410, 431, 469.
* ↑ Wallace, viii. 598; cf. Annals of Melsa, ii. 346.
* ↑ Chron. Edward I and II, vol. ii. 80.
* ↑ Ibid. 304; Bruce, xviii. 489.
* ↑ Murimuth, year 1322, Chron. Edward I and II, ii. 304, &c.
* ↑ Camden's Britannia, ed. Gibson, 761. It stands about five miles north of Richmond, North Riding of Yorkshire. ' It was once the possession of the ancient family of Fitzhugh and next of the Parrs who succeeded that family. It is of comparatively late date. The fragments of masonry now wide apart cover a considerable area. Originally it had eight square towers connected by curtain walls forming a parallelogram moated round. … So long back as 1558 the castle was in ruins.' (Proceedings Soc. Antiq. Newcastle, third series, vol. iv. p. 73, and plate facing p. 72).
* ↑ For Pomfret compare Wallace, viii. 623, with Lanercast Chron. 244, Chron. Edward I and II, i. 302, ii. 76.
* ↑ Fabyan's Chronicle, 427.
* ↑ Bower, ii, 280.
* ↑ Foedera, May 30, 1323.
* ↑ Foedera, November 15, 1319, March 21, 1323, January 13, 1324; Hailes's Annals, year 1323.
* ↑ Doubtless the name of Northallerton has been associated by Harry with this truce through a confusion of it with the more famous peace treaty of Northampton in 1328.
* ↑ Howlat, ed. F. J. Amours (Scottish Text Society), stanzas 66, 69, 70, and 71, p. xxxiii; Wallace, x. 130–9; Wallace and Bruce Restudied, 31.
* ↑ Major's Historia, iv. cap. 14.
* ↑ Wallace, vi. 363–415.
* ↑ Cf. Gilbert Hay's Buke of the Law of Armys, part iv. cap. 142, ed J. H. Stevenson, vol. i. 281.
* ↑ Quentin Durward, chap. 33.
* ↑ Hall's Chronicle, 311–13; Comines' Memoires, iv. chap. 7.
* ↑ Wallace, i. 349, 358, xi. 959.
* ↑ Ibid. vii. 958, ix. 756, xi. 756–904.
* ↑ Ibid. iv. 350.
* ↑ Ibid. xi. 895–904, 959.
* ↑ Ibid. vii. 1027.
* ↑ Ibid. This was a very special feature of Perth, resulting from a charter granted to Perth by Robert II in 1394 (Registrum Magni Sigilli, vol. 1593–1608, page 376). Contra-distinguished from this minute accuracy about Perth may be set the seeming error of assigning to Ayr a 'schireff of that towne' (Wallace, i. 25), apparently an unhistorical institution.
* ↑ Wallace, iv. 359. The 'mar' long continued a hereditary officer in Perthshire; see Inquis. ad Capellam, Retours of Perth, No. 67.
* ↑ Wallace, vi. 316, vii. 366: cf. Liber de Scon, 128.
* ↑ Wallace, vii. 1027, ix. 774.
* ↑ Acts Parl. Scot. ii. 153 (Vicecomes de Perth, 1483), Acta Dominorum Concilii, 95 (Sheriff, 1488). The office was then hereditary; see charter of the officium vicecomitis transmitted by resignation in 1497, Registrum Mag. Sig., vol. 1424–1513, No. 2366. For its continued tenure by the Ruthven family, e. g. in 1545, see Privy Council Reg., i. 21.
* ↑ Acts of Parliament of Scotland (ed. Thomson), ii. 138.
* ↑ Wallace, v. 857, 937. Evidently Harry had no Christian name for either 'Fehew' or 'Graystock'.
* ↑ Hall's Chronicle, 331. The titles of the two doubtless explain why has no Christian name for either.
* ↑ Brace's declared policy was to take prisoners (Bruce, viii. 509); Harry's Wallace on the other hand, made it a rule to give no quarter to men (Wallace, iii. 217–8, iv. 256–7, 299, vi. 405, 412, ix. 159, 517, 753–4, 1110. Harry rejoices even in the plunder of the dead, vi. 764–5; and, at ix. 753–4 makes Wallace deny sanctuary to refugees in a church.