Book IV

. 1-56 are missing in C. On the other hand, C bears to have been completed in 1487, E in 1489. Other things being equal, the earlier MS. must, of course, be preferred. Here, however, intervenes a series of extracts, numbering 280 lines from Books I. and II., embedded in Wyntoun’s _Orygynale Cronykil of Scotland_, and the two MSS. of the _Cronykil_ are actually older than those of _The Bruce_. This raises a difficulty, as Wyntoun’s extracts show a goodly proportion of variations in language from the corresponding passages in E, the only other MS. which covers the same ground. Professor Skeat considers that Wyntoun’s lines are “in a better form (in the main)” than those of E;[1] but, on the other hand, we do not know Wyntoun’s method of working in such a case--how far he transcribed verbatim, how far “he modified the language of the MS. which he must have had before him.”[2] Many lines he omits, and others he obviously paraphrases; he incorporates matter from another source; and his version of _The Bruce_ lines may quite well be due to memorial reproduction after a hurried reading. It is not otherwise easy to account for scraps of a few lines of the poem being here and there embedded in narrative independently worded or derived. There is thus no warrant for erecting this chopped-up, second-hand version of the lines in question into a canon or standard for a purely scribal transcript made for its own sake. It is needful to enter this plea in view of the separatist theory of Mr. J. T. T. Brown, for whom the passages in Wyntoun represent so much of the original or _ur_-Bruce, out of which our MS. and printed versions have been elaborated by a fifteenth-century editor, who, to do so, borrowed freely and with no great cunning from the works of contemporary authors.[3]

[1] Preface, S.T.S. edition, p. lxxv.

[2] Skeat, p. xxxvii.

The earliest printed versions of _The Bruce_ raise yet another issue bearing on the purity of the text. The first is apparently of the year 1571, and only one copy is known to exist.[4] It does not, however, differ materially from that of “Andro Hart” (H), published at Edinburgh in 1616. In this the language is modernized; still more so is it in the edition of four years later from the same publisher. And these seem to have been the basis of the gradually worsening issues so common in the eighteenth century, until in 1790 Pinkerton reverted to the sound critical method of having a transcript made directly from the Edinburgh MS. This again was the origin of Jamieson’s more careful edition of 1820, reprinted with a few corrections in 1869. Meantime Cosmo Innes had prepared for the Spalding Club (1856) a version which, for the first time, introduced readings from the Cambridge MS., but which, in being dressed up in a “consistent orthography,” so far reverted to the evil example of Hart. Subsequently, for the Early English Text Society, and later, for the Scottish Text Society, Professor Skeat, basing on C, but also utilizing E and H with a few readings from Wyntoun and Anderson’s issue of 1670, produced, for the first time, a full and in all respects competent text. To Skeat’s edition the present one is essentially indebted.

[3] _The Wallace and The Bruce Restudied_, p. 74 and _passim_. See also Appendices E, F.

[4] For a detailed account of the different editions see Skeat’s _Preface_ to the E.E.T.S. or S.T.S. issues.

The main point about Hart’s edition (H) is that it supplies 39 lines not found in either MS., with an expansion of two others into eight, 45 new lines in all. The expanded portion Skeat perforce relegates to the footnotes. Twelve lines from Hart in the last book he at first accepted as genuine, but finally discarded as an interpolation.[5] He might justifiably have gone further, for he seems to me to have erred in attaching undue importance to Hart’s unsupported contributions.

[5] See Appendix D.

This is made clear by considering the question as between C and E. Each MS. has portions not found in the other. The scribe of E furnishes his own excuse; his copy was “hurriedly written” (_raptim scriptus_). Consequently we are not surprised to find that he has dropped 81 lines found in C. On the other hand, the more careful Cambridge scribe has overlooked, as the best of copyists might, 39 lines preserved in the Edinburgh version. Upon analysis of these two groups a satisfactory test of character emerges. In one case only--C, Bk. VI. *85-*92, E, Bk. VI. 101-106--do we find an unexplained confusion, traces of two alternative accounts of one incident, a possibility to which Barbour refers in several instances. One line from C Skeat rejects because it results in a triple rhyme.[6] Having eliminated these, we find that of the remaining omissions in E two lines are the result of the misplacing of one;[7] eight lines are couplets which have been overlooked; four lines are necessary to complete couplets, so that their loss is due to sheer carelessness; while the bulk of the missing lines, 57 out of 80, is accounted for by the recurrence of the same word or words at the beginning or end of the line, whereby the eye of the scribe has run on from, _e.g._, “Toward the toun” in Bk. IX. *374 to “Toward the toun” in 374, and from “thai fand” in Bk. XIII. 446 to “thai fand,” in *450, missing all between. A parallel result is given by analysis of the 39 lines wanting in C but present in E. Six are involved in the mutual perplexity of Bk. VI.; one is merely a careless oversight, and the remaining 32 come under the main category of omission through recurrence, within a short space, of the same word or rhyme. On the whole, then, with the reservation noted above, the condition of things as between the two MSS. is quite normal; the omissions are explicable on ordinary grounds, and as the missing lines, with but one real exception, take their places again without disturbance of their neighbours, we may conclude that C and E are individual versions of a single original poem, and complementary to each other. But copyists were only mortal; an author too might see cause to alter a MS.; and the variations of reading, even with those of Wyntoun thrown in, after all supply a less serious illustration of such possibilities than do the MSS. of the _Canterbury Tales_ from the Ellesmere to the so disturbing Harleian.

[6] XVIII. *537; and see note on p. 277.

[7] VIII. *493, *495.

As for the lines found only in Hart’s edition, their every feature arouses distrust and suspicion. Skeat’s judgment of “almost certainly genuine” he has had to retract for 18 out of the total of 45, including the eight-line version of a couple in the MSS.[8] Those on the heart-throwing episode, Bk. XX. *421-*432, have been referred to above. Not a single example of the remaining accretions meets the test of repetition operative in the case of the MSS., or suggests its own explanation. The couplet in Bk. II., p. 25, is nothing either way; that on p. 283 is awkward; the intrusive lines on p. 321 are neither sense nor grammar; those on pp. 215, 216 can find a place only by an unwarrantable alteration of the succeeding line in both MSS., a liberty which Mr. Brown, on purely speculative grounds, lightly accepts from the very passage in question.[9] On the untimeous harangue into which Bruce is made to pass on p. 239 I have spoken in its place. In general it may be said that Hart’s contributions are clear misfits. Moreover, the circumstantial evidence seems to clinch the main conclusion. Hart, or his editor, had a turn for rhyme: to him are due the rhyming rubrics, and he added at the close of the poem a halting colophon of six lines, which in the later corrupt editions was simply merged in the poem, and is quoted as a specimen thereof in a critical historical work of 1702.[10] In XX. 610 he has barefacedly substituted a line for that of the MSS., which introduces a detail not found before the time of Bower and no doubt taken from him.[11] This throws a strong light on the origin of other lines in the same Book.[12] Thus we prove capability and inclination. Hart “modernized” the language of _The Bruce_, and from “modernization” to “improvement” is a tempting transition.

[8] XVII. 887, 888.

[9] _The Wallace and The Bruce_, pp. 133, 134.

[10] _The Scottish Historical Library_, by W. Nicholson, Archdeacon of Carlisle, p. 147.

[11] See note on passage.

[12] See Appendix D.

2. THE SCRIBES.

The Cambridge MS. bears witness that it was completed on August 18, 1487, by the hand of “John de R., chaplain”; the Edinburgh MS. that it was “hurriedly written” by “John Ramsay” in 1489, for a Fife vicar; and the latter signature is attached to the only MS. of _The Wallace_, which accompanies that of _The Bruce_ but was transcribed two years earlier. Skeat immediately pronounces that the names signify but one person, that “John de R.” is also “John Ramsay,” apparently on the logic of Wonderland, because both surnames begin with the same letter.[13] Mr. Brown, however, points out that this equation of alternative forms was highly improbable for fifteenth-century Scotland, and substitutes a reading of his own whereby the scribes are still merged in one personality as “John Ramsay” otherwise “Sir John the Ross,” one of Dunbar’s _makars_, the real author of _The Wallace_, and the wholesale redactor of _The Bruce_. The details of Mr. Brown’s argument and all that flows therefrom must be read in _The Wallace and The Bruce Restudied_.[14] Mr. Brown (if I may say so) never fails to be suggestive and interesting, and even the light which led him astray was real critical illumination; but John Ramsay, who, “as a chaplain”--which _he_ does not claim to have been--“was entitled to the courtesy title of _Sir_,”[15] and took his alternative name from his office as “Ross Herald or Ross Secretary”;[16] who lightened the toil of transcribing Acts of Parliament by dropping into verse on the margin--an unjustifiable accusation;[17] and who, from the seed of Blind Harry’s “gests,” raised the prickly bloom of _The Wallace_, and grafted enough borrowed material on to the rough stock of the original Bruce to make it something substantially different, and did all this without leaving even a cipher as a hint to posterity--of this complex and composite personage Mr. Brown is the only begetter, and his brief and inglorious career may be followed in _The Athenæum_, November 17-December 8, 1900, February 9, 1901. Mr. Brown, of course, can still claim that the problem of late redaction remains, whoever the guilty one may have been.[18] On this understanding I deal with it elsewhere.[19]

[13] The Bibliography of the _Cambridge History of English Literature_, vol. ii., recklessly says: “As the colophon informs us (!) all three MSS. were written by John Ramsay” (p. 447).

[14] Bonn, 1900.

[15] Brown, p. 82.

[16] _Ibid._, p. 68.

[17] See _Athenæum_, November 17, 1900.

[18] _Athenæum_, December 8, 1900.

[19] Appendix F.

For the MSS., it needs but a slight examination to show that they are from different hands. The fifteenth century had no “consistent orthography,” but a scribe would probably have of himself; would not, at the least, exhibit the systematic differences that mark the MSS. in question. That the differences _are_ due to the scribes is indicated by their occurrence even in proper names where E is, on the whole, much more accurate than C.[20] Add that C offers more traces of southern English influences; that it invariably gives the weak form _I_ for the _Ic_ or _Ik_ of E, and substitutes _can_ for the latter’s _gan_; that it regularly prefers _of_ to the _off_ which distinguishes E and in certain positions _i_ for _y_--these with other minor peculiarities, not being vital in character, are certainly due to individual idiosyncrasies in spelling. Ramsay is an honest scribe, who, at places, cannot read his original, and leaves a blank which must be supplied from the copy of the chaplain.[21] There is thus not the faintest reason for supposing but one scribe to have been at work. At the same time the essential agreement of the two transcripts shows that we are dealing with a single, complete, familiar poem which has suffered in precision of copying from the usual mishaps incident to its manner of publication and preservation.

[20] And Koeppel, while granting the general superiority of C, gives as his opinion that in not a few cases E, nevertheless, where it differs from C, preserves the genuine, original reading (_Englische Studien_, x., p. 377, note).

[21] IX. 492, XIX. 459, XX. 396.

3. THE PRESENT EDITION.

The present edition of _The Bruce_ is based upon the printed text of the Cambridge MS., collated throughout with that of E--that is, upon the versions of Skeat and Jamieson. I have, however, adopted rather more readings from E than does Skeat, also a few more from Wyntoun, and offer some slight emendations--_e.g._, _luffys_ for _liffys_ in Bk. II. 527, _oft_ for _off_ in III. 194, _Fyn all_ for _Fyngall_ in II. 69, etc. I have profited, too, by criticism of the published text as in the adoption of Dr. Neilson’s _corn-but_ in Bk. II. 438. The question of Hart’s version has been discussed above; it is valid only as a check upon the MSS. Variants of any interest or importance are given in the footnotes.

There has been no modernization of the language save in the case of the rubrics, which are no part of the text proper and have been contributed by the scribes or editors in order to facilitate the understanding of the poem. I have thus adhered to the spirit while modifying the letter of their work. But while avoiding any change in the language of the poem or even any attempt at a uniform spelling, I have taken a few harmless liberties with its alphabet and restricted certain of the letters to their modern values, substituting for others a modern equivalent. Skeat did this in the matter of the ancient “thorn” letter = _th_. In consideration of the general reader, I have gone somewhat farther, viz.:

1 The _s_ with the ornamental curl I read as merely _s_; Jamieson and Skeat take it as, generally, = _ss_. But such alternative forms as _Parys_,[22] _purches_,[23] and _purpos_,[24] on the one hand, and the actual use of the tailed letter following the ordinary type in _dress_, _press_,[25] fix the usage I have adopted.[26] There are a few exceptions in which this letter is probably a contraction for _is_--_e.g._, II. 366, 459.

[22] I. 345.

[23] II. 572.

[24] III. 287.

[25] XIV. 246; XVI. 253.

[26] _Cf._ also in Gregory Smith’s _Specimens of Middle Scots_, p. xxx.

2. I have distributed their modern values to _i_, _j_, _u_, _v_, _w_. There is no advantage in preserving such forms as _iugis_, _Evrope_, _wndyr_: the hedge of the language--to use Lowell’s simile--is prickly enough without these accessories. Moreover, I have throughout written _Edward_ for _Eduuard_ or _Eduard_ and _Inglis_ for _Ynglis_ (C).

3. As Skeat has substituted “_th_” for the “thorn” (þ), I have done likewise with the ancient English _g_ (ȝ), the “yok” letter, resolving it into the digraph _yh_. As ultimately, in almost every case, significant of the consonantal _y_, I might have simply replaced it by that letter. But alternative forms, nearly without exception, show the digraph, both in _The Bruce_ and in Wyntoun, giving _yhe_, _yhet_, _yharnit_, _fenyhe_, etc., and in Wyntoun’s extracts _feyhnnyng_, _senyhoury_, _yhystir-day_, _bayhllys_, etc. Even with the original letter the _h_ is added as often as not. Apparently the usage, which had practically disappeared from the southern practice, was in a transitional stage on its way to its full revival in later Scots, where it became fixed, at the hands of the printers, as _z_, and survives in such forms as _Cadzow_, _capercailzie_, etc.[27] In I. 16, however, it has been read as _g_ in _forget_, though _foryhet_ is to be found in _Ratis Raving_, and in XV. 75 it is obviously _z_ in _Fi(t)z-Waryne_.

[27] _Cf._ Murray’s _Dialect of the Southern Counties of Scotland_, p. *92; and _New. Eng. Dict._, G.

4. The placing of the capital letters and the punctuation are, of course, modern.

Further, the poem in MSS. is not divided into Books, but paragraphs are denoted by the insertion of a large capital; these, as in C, are similarly marked in the text. The division into twenty Books was first made by Pinkerton, and, as the most convenient, has been adopted by Skeat in his editions. From Pinkerton also Skeat adopts the numbering of the lines. Jamieson, however, made a division into fourteen Books with a numbering to suit. Cosmo Innes gave up the Books in favour of Cantos, with a fresh renumbering. To avoid confusion I have adhered to Skeat’s divisions and numbering, which are those of Pinkerton; inconvenient though the duplicate numbers certainly are, a totally new and fourth arrangement would be much more so. To break up and make more accessible the matter, I have also introduced, where possible, the paragraphs of Jamieson distinguished by spaces, some of these, however, being found in C. They are merely for the convenience of the reader. I may, perhaps, draw attention to the critical treatment of _The Bruce_ as an historic document without which we move greatly in the dark. The historical notes of the early editors are few and superficial. Skeat does not profess to deal with the work strictly on this line (_note_, vol. ii., p. 224), though he does not fail to pass unnecessary censure at several places. But some such examination as I have tried to make seems necessary in the interests of Scottish historiography.

CONTENTS

PAGE PREFACE v-xii 1. MSS. and Editions v 2. The Scribes viii 3. The Present Edition x

INTRODUCTION xv-xxiii 1. _The Bruce_ as Romance xv 2. John Barbour xvi 3. Historic value of _The Bruce_ xx

TEXT OF “THE BRUCE.” BOOKS I-XX. 1-377

NOTES TO TEXT 378

APPENDIX A.--The Site of the Battle of Bannockburn 496 „ B.--Bruce’s Speech at Bannockburn 497 „ C.--The Numbers at Bannockburn 498 „ D.--The Throwing of the Heart 502 „ E.--The _Alexander_ and _The Bruce_ 505 „ F.--Mr. Brown’s “Sources” for _The Bruce_ 506 „ G.--Language and Orthography 511 „ H.--Grammar 513

GLOSSARY 519

LIST OF PRINCIPAL WORKS 545

INTRODUCTION

1. “THE BRUCE” AS ROMANCE.

The literary relationships of _The Bruce_ may be briefly indicated. It stands at the beginning of Scottish literature; of its predecessors and contemporaries we have but the names, or possible versions whose place of origin is in dispute. In form and technique, including the octosyllabic couplet, it plainly depends on the French metrical romance, the most fruitful branch of a literature which, for quite two centuries, had been the mother of literatures in Western Europe. The opening line of _The Bruce_ characterizes at once the poem itself, and what was best and most abundant in the literature of the Middle Ages. Barbour, too, it is never overlooked, announces his work as a “romance,” but as such, we gather from what precedes, only in a technical sense; and no mediæval writer would consider this popular method of treatment incompatible with strict accuracy and reality of subject: that is a modern refinement. Barbour certainly did not, nor did those who followed and used him; his selection of the model is simply the expression of his desire to do his work in “gud manere.” He anticipated Macaulay’s ambition in that his history was to differ from the most attractive literary matter only in being true. There were already in French many examples of contemporary history presented in this way as a succession of incidents on the lines of personal memoirs, though history had in the end succeeded in widening its outlook, and consequently found more fitting expression in prose. But that was of Barbour’s own age, and indeed Froissart had made his first essay, as an historian, in verse, which later he recast and continued in the form we know. All the necessities of Barbour’s case, however, led him the other way--the despised condition of the prose vernacular as a literary medium, from which, indeed, it never fully emerged; the character of his audience, which would be either learned or aristocratic; and the nature and associations of his subject, for which only the literature of romance could furnish a parallel or supply the appropriate setting. The literary qualities of _The Bruce_ are, therefore, those of its model; it is a clear, vivid, easy-flowing narrative, and if it is also, as romances tended to be, loose in construction and discursive, it is never tedious, for it deals with real persons and events of real interest, depicted with an admiring fidelity.

2. JOHN BARBOUR.

The year of John Barbour’s birth we do not know, an item which is lacking also for Chaucer: 1320 is a good round guess. Nor have we any knowledge of his family. If, however, the _St. Ninian_ in the _Legends of the Saints_ be of Barbour, a claim for which there is much to be said,[28] it may give us a clue. The adventure of Jak. Trumpoure, there told, connects with the fact that Jaq. (James) Trampour had land in Aberdeen bordering on that of an Andrew Barbour.[29] It may be conjectured that the latter was John Barbour’s father, or other near relative, since the vivid personal details of the affair in the _St. Ninian_ must have come from Trumpour himself, and the fact that he was a neighbour of the Barbours would explain how.

The name Barbour (_Barbitonsoris_) is obviously plebeian. Some ancestor followed the business of barber, as some one of Chaucer’s possibly did that of “hose-making.” The established spelling, Barbour, shows a French termination which takes also the form Barbier, whence Mr. Henderson concludes that John Barbour “was of Norman origin.”[30] But the spelling is merely an accident of transcription; the oldest form is Barber(e) (1357, 1365),[31] which the scribe of the Edinburgh MS. also uses, and which Wyntoun rhymes with _here_ and _matere_; in a few cases it is Barbar. As we might expect, the name was common enough in the English-speaking districts of Scotland.

[28] See Neilson in _Scottish Antiquary_, vol. xi., p. 102 ff., and Buss, _ex adverso_, in _Anglia_, Band ix., p. 495.

[29] Jamieson’s _Memoir_, p. iv.

[30] _Scottish Vernacular Literature_, p. 41.

[31] For this reason Buss always gives the name as Barbere.

All our information about John Barbour, except the little to be gleaned from the complimentary references of later authors, is drawn from official sources,[32] and is thus, of course, perfectly precise, but meagre and uncharacteristic. We learn something of what Barbour did and got, but not what sort of man he was, or what he was like. By 1357, at the latest, he is Archdeacon of Aberdeen, the most important official of the diocese after the bishop, having as his prebend the parish of Rayne, in Garioch; and in the same year (August 13) he has a safe-conduct to go with three scholars, for purposes of study, to Oxford, where he may have seen John Wycliffe. There was, of course, no University in Scotland as yet, and scholars desirous of academic advantages had to seek them at least across the Border, a patronage which Edward III., in his own interests, readily encouraged. Seven years later he is again in England on a similar mission with four horsemen,[33] and on October 16 of the year following he goes to St. Denis, near Paris, this time with six companions on horseback; in 1368-69 he once more visits France “with two servants (_vallettis_) and two horses.” The University of Paris had the highest reputation for the study of philosophy and canon law, and Barbour, whose duty it was to administer the jurisdiction of his bishop, would necessarily be something of a lawyer, though his allusion to the clerkly “disputations” in this field does not suggest much personal interest in legal refinements.

[32] These have been brought together by Skeat in his first volume, pp. xv-xxv.

[33] Skeat here takes _equitibus_ to be “knights,” but this is not a military business. They were, we may judge, the attendants proper to his rank.

His next appearance is in a different though related capacity. In 1372 he is clerk of the audit of the King’s household, that of Robert II., who had come to the throne in the previous year as the first of the Stewart Kings. The year after he is also an auditor of exchequer. The Stewarts were good friends to Barbour, and we see the result in his kindly, almost affectionate, references to the family in his poem. He wrote up their genealogy, but that piece of work is lost. After a long interval he reappears as an auditor of exchequer in 1382, 1383, 1384. For some part, at least, of this interval he was engaged upon _The Bruce_, and its completion in the course of 1376[34] suggestively approximates to a grant of £10, by the King’s order, from the customs of Aberdeen, first recorded in the accounts of March 14, 1377. So also does a pension of twenty shillings sterling from certain revenues of the same city, granted on August 29, 1378, to himself and his assignees for ever.[35] Accordingly, two years later Barbour assigned his pension, on his death, to the cathedral church of Aberdeen, as payment for a yearly mass for his own soul and for the souls of his relatives and all the faithful dead. The practice of these payments can be traced for a considerable time afterwards, but the financial readjustments of the Reformation sent Barbour’s legacy elsewhere.

[34] See on Bk. XIII. 702.

[35] The account of 1429 is the first to state expressly that this perpetual pension was “for the composition of the book of the deeds of the erstwhile King Robert the Bruce” (_Excheq. Rolls_, iv., p. 520).

But the royal bounty had not dried up. In 1386 the poet had gifts of £10 and £6 13s. 4d., no doubt in recognition of further literary labours. And on December 5, 1388, he had a fresh pension of £10 for life “for faithful service,” to be paid in equal portions at Pentecost and Martinmas. This he enjoyed for only a few years. On April 25, 1396, the first payment of twenty shillings is made to the Dean and Chapter of Aberdeen, so that Barbour must have been dead before April 5, 1395, when the accounts for the year began. As his “anniversary” fell on March 13, that date in 1395 was, in all probability, the day of his death. Thus born under the great Bruce, he had lived through the reigns of David II. and Robert II., and five years of Robert III.

Some stray notices of Barbour in other connections add nothing of importance. One, however, lets us know that he was responsible for the loss of a volume on law from the library of his cathedral.

We have really learned nothing as to the personality of the poet. That he was a keen student and a great reader as well as a trustworthy official, and stood high in the royal favour, may be inferred. The respectful and admiring references of Wyntoun and Bower attest his high reputation as a writer and authority on history. But _The Bruce_ of itself would suggest neither the cleric nor the accountant. His pious reflections would be commonplaces even for a lay writer, and his handling of figures is not in any way distinctive. Even of Scotland in the background we get but casual, fleeting glimpses. Barbour is occupied entirely with his heroes and their performances. It is these he undertakes to celebrate, not, primarily, even the great cause which called them forth; and personal loyalty is his master virtue.[36] That he so conceived and developed his subject, his hurried passage from incident to incident, his grim, practical humour, his impatience of inaction or commonplace achievement, his actively descriptive vocabulary, and his vivid realization of the details of movement and conflict--all contribute to the impression of a man of lively, energetic temperament, with a delight in action and the concrete, and so, as his time and circumstances would make him, an amateur and idealist of chivalry.

[36] “His theme was Freedom,” writes Mr. Cosmo Innes. Barbour gives out his “theme” in the first thirty-six lines, and never once mentions it.

Besides _The Bruce_, Wyntoun credits Barbour with _The Stewartis Oryginalle_, a metrical genealogy starting from “Sere Dardane, lord de Frygya”(!), which has not survived.[37] Skeat has also suggested, basing on certain references by Wyntoun, that Barbour wrote a _Brut_ on the mythical colonization of Britain by Brutus, but the inference is disputed by Mr. Brown,[38] and Wyntoun’s language is too vague for a definite opinion. On better grounds there has been attributed to him a _Trojan War_ or _Troy Book_, portions of which have been used to fill up gaps in a MS. of Lydgate’s _Siege_ with the rubric, “Here endis Barbour and begynnis the monk,” and again conversely. An independent MS. gives a larger number of lines in continuation. These fragments have been subjected to close linguistic and metrical criticism by P. Buss in _Anglia_, ix., pp. 493-514, and by E. Koeppel in _Englische Studien_, x., pp. 373-382, and their reasoning on differences of verbal and grammatical usages has been summarized by Skeat,[39] who concurs with their conclusion against Barbour’s authorship. But there are other elements of evidence, and the sceptical discussion of Medea’s alleged astronomical powers with the affirmation,

Bot na gude Cristene mane her-to Sulde gif credence--that I defend,[40]

is significantly similar to the argumentation on astrology in _The Bruce_, Bk. IV. 706 to end.[41] Faced with the plain statement of the fifteenth-century scribe, Skeat can only suggest that the poem was not by our Barbour, but by another person of the same name--surely the extremity of destructive literary criticism. And every argument of the German scholars against the _Troy_ fragments would clinch the case for Barbour’s claims on the _Alexander_, with which I deal elsewhere. The garrulous and dreary _Legends of the Saints_ probably contain, at least, contributions by Barbour; even Buss admits peculiar features in the _St. Ninian_,[42] and _St. Machar_ is a purely Aberdeen worthy, in whom the poet, too, professes a special interest; these may well have come from Barbour’s pen as the uncongenial but meritorious labour of his old age. Such, at any rate, was the normal progress of a poetic clerk, from translation to original work, to decline at the close upon versions of saintly biographies.

[37] The editor of _The Exchequer Rolls_, vol. ii. p. cv., says: “Bower accuses Barbour of misrepresenting the origin of the Stewarts.” That is not so. According to the summary in Bower, Barbour had it that they came from Wales, and in fact the family was settled in Shropshire on the Welsh March. It had its origin, he said, from one who was called “Le Fleanc de Waran,” who may equate with Alan FitzFlaald, who, however, apparently did not marry a daughter of Warine, the sheriff of that county (Round, _Studies in the Peerage_, p. 116). He affirms, rightly enough, that the first of them in Scotland was Walter, in the days of King William (twelfth century). Where he goes wrong genealogically, according to Bower, is in saying that Walter’s son, Alan, was in the First Crusade, which was obviously impossible; but Alan FitzAlan, uncle of Alan FitzFlaald, was in that expedition. Barbour was dealing with remote personages through family tradition, and whatever his errors as represented by Bower, he does not appear, as is too lightly assumed, to have been the source of the myths of later historians in this connection. Bower’s language does not admit of a Banquo. See _Cupar and Perth MSS._, in _Scotichronicon_, Lib. IX., chap. xlviii.

[38] _The Wallace and The Bruce_, pp. 88-90.

[39] Preface I., xlix-lii.

[40] Edit. Horstmann, ii., p. 226.

[41] See further, Neilson’s _John Barbour_, p. 2.

[42] _Anglia_, as cited.

3. HISTORIC VALUE OF “THE BRUCE.”

A comparison of judgments on the value of _The Bruce_ as a contribution to history plunges us into a thicket of contradictions. Green’s verdict that it is “historically worthless”[43] is but a petulant aside. It repeats itself, however, in the pronouncement of Mr. Brown that “in no true sense is it an historical document,”[44] but Mr. Brown selects, as illustrative of this, examples, such as the Simon Fraser identification,[45] and the Stanhope Park inference,[46] which recoil to the confusion of the critic.[47] Mr. Cosmo Innes has sought to discriminate, unfortunately upon wrong lines. Of Barbour as historian, he writes: “Satisfied to have real persons and events, and an outline of history for his guide, and to preserve the true character of things, he did not trouble himself about accuracy of detail.”[48] As it happens, it is just in his outline--that is, in his dates and succession of events--that Barbour may be adjudged most careless; his details contain the most remarkable examples of his accuracy. The latest expression of opinion on this head is not even self-consistent. In the _Cambridge History of English Literature_ it is thus written of _The Bruce_: first, that “it is in no real sense a history ... though, strange to say, it has been regarded from his own time to this as, in all details, a trustworthy source for the history of the period”--a clear exaggeration;[49] and then a few pages farther on: “While Barbour’s narrative contains a certain amount of anecdotal matter derived from tradition, and, on some occasions, deviates from the truth of history, it is, on the whole, moderate, truthful, and historical”[50]--which is quite another pair of sleeves.

[43] _Short History_, p. 211.

[44] _The Wallace and The Bruce_, p. 93.

[45] See on II. 239.

[46] XIX. 486.

[47] An article on Barbour’s _Bruce_ in the _Saturday Review_, 1872, vol. xxxiii., p. 90, has all the marks of the “belabouring” method of Professor Freeman. Barbour’s “historical value,” it is affirmed, “is as low as value can be,” and there are intermittent shrieks of “shameless falsehood,” “conscious liar,” etc. The usual play is made with the supposed identification of the two Bruces, and it is declared that on this “the whole story hangs,” which, in its own way, is a statement just as unwarranted and absurd. It is easy to fix on the error as to Edward being in the Holy Land when the question arose as to the succession, and the antedating of his death. But the critic, with full opportunity for being correct, can sin as to dates quite as egregiously. “In authentic history,” he says, “somewhat more than three years passed between the death of Alexander III. in Lent, 1289, and the coronation of John Balliol on St. Andrew’s Day, 1292.” Quite wrong. In “authentic history” Alexander was killed on March 19, 1286 (1285 by old reckoning). This is a criticism of Barbour’s “six years” in I. 39! He objects to the statement that the Queen was put “in prison,” because she was entertained in one of her husband’s manors. But she is always officially spoken of as “in custody,” and the stone walls of a manor even make a good enough prison. This is mere carping, and most of the rest is of the same sort, where it does not depend on a forcing or misunderstanding of the text. Barbour, he complains, makes the difference between Bruce and Balliol “one between male and female succession.” So, in a sense, it was (see on I. 54), but the critic has not taken the trouble to understand how. Barbour, however, is certainly confusing.

[48] _The Brus_, Spalding Club edition, 1856, p. ix.

[49] Vol. ii., p. 104.

[50] P. 108.

The fact is that these wayward judgments rest upon too narrow a basis of induction, and that induction, too, usually irrelevant or uncertain--considerations as to the nature of Romance, Barbour’s literary awkwardness and literary dressing, with inadequate examination of the external evidence. But if Barbour professes to write history, as he does profess, and as he gives every evidence of honestly trying to do, he can surely claim to be tried by the appropriate tests--those of official records or other contemporary accounts, and, in the last resource, by his performance so far as these carry us, and by an estimate of the probable sources of what is peculiar to himself. Nor must the quality of his critical equipment be overlooked; he frankly lets us know that of certain incidents different versions were in circulation--some said that the fatal quarrel between Bruce and Comyn fell otherwise than as he has related, and he includes the divergent accounts of how Bruce and his man escaped the hound; and there are other matters for which, lacking certainty himself, he is content to cite popular report. Towards prevailing and attractive superstitions, necromancy, astrology, and the like, his attitude is bluntly sceptical; yet an apparently well-attested case of prophecy--not one, it must be owned, exhibiting any exceptional degree of penetration--he does record, with very distinct reservation of judgment.[51] There is no supernatural machinery in _The Bruce_, no visions, miraculous agencies, or other such distractions: for these we must go to sober prose. But such is not the manner of popular romance with which it has been usual to class the manner of _The Bruce_. Barbour is not writing a conventional romance with historic persons and incidents for his material; he is writing history which has all the qualities of romance in real life. Of the same type were the exploits of Edward Bruce, which of themselves, he says, would furnish material for many romances.[52]

So comes it, then, that a careful and most competent investigator like Joseph Bain can authoritatively pronounce _The Bruce_ to be “of the highest value for the period,”[53] and affirm that “in these details he is almost always correct, with occasional errors in names.”[54] Barbour’s errors, indeed, lie on the surface, and are typical of his time, not wilful perversions on his part--events are transposed, wrong dates given, figures almost always exaggerated. On the other side a study of the notes to the present volume will show how trustworthy he is in the main, and, repeatedly, how strikingly and minutely accurate. His profession to tell a truthful story, so far as his knowledge will take him, must be accepted as fully borne out.

[51] Bk. IV. 767-774. Contempt for astrology, indeed, had already gone pretty far--Chaucer’s _Franklin_ has it (_F.s’_ Tale); but the contrary opinion still held most ground, and prophecy was in the enjoyment of full respect. Theological authority was divided and uncertain on the matter.

[52] IX. 492.

[53] _Calendar of Documents_, vol. iii., p. ix, note.