page_title: The Wallace (poem)
section_title: Date of composition
hierarchical_section_title: The Wallace (poem) / Date of composition
caption_attribution_description: English: A page from the Ramsay manuscript text of "The Wallace". 1488. National Library of Scotland. Number Adv.MS. 19.2.2 (ii)
context_page_description: The Actes and Deidis of the Illustre and Vallyeant Campioun Schir William Wallace, also known as The Wallace, is a long "romantic biographical" poem by the fifteenth-century Scottish makar of the name Blind Harry probably at some time in the decade before 1488. As the title suggests, it commemorates and eulogises the life and actions of the Scottish freedom fighter William Wallace who lived a century and a half earlier. The poem is historically inaccurate, and mentions several events that never happened. For several hundred years following its publication, The Wallace was the second most popular book in Scotland after the Bible.
  The earliest extant text is a copy made by John Ramsay, 1st Lord Bothwell in 1488, but that copy has no title page and last few pages are missing, with no mention of Blind Harry as its author. The first mention of Blind Harry as the work's author was made by John Mair in his 1521 work Historia Majoris Britanniae, tam Angliae quam Scotiae. It was later republished in the late 18th century by the poet William Hamilton, in contemporary English. This version also went through over 20 editions, with the last published in 1859.
context_section_description: The Wallace appears to date to the latter half of the fifteenth century. The earliest surviving copy, the Ramsay Manuscript, is dated to 1488 but evidence from within the poem itself suggests that it was completed during the 1470s or earlier. Blind Harry refers to having consulted William Wallace of Craigie while composing the poem and Wallace of Craigie is known to have died in 1479.
  Furthermore, during the 1470s King James III was engaged in a policy of reconciliation with King Edward IV of England. The poem, with its unsympathetic depiction of the English, may represent a criticism of this policy as typified in its opening verse,
caption: The Ramsay Manuscript of "The Wallace", 1488. (National Library of Scotland).
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