The Project Gutenberg eBook ofThe BruceThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: The BruceAuthor: John BarbourEditor: W. M. MackenzieRelease date: November 27, 2013 [eBook #44292]Most recently updated: October 23, 2024Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Henry Flower and the Online DistributedProofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file wasproduced from images generously made available by TheInternet Archive)*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BRUCE ***
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: The BruceAuthor: John BarbourEditor: W. M. MackenzieRelease date: November 27, 2013 [eBook #44292]Most recently updated: October 23, 2024Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Henry Flower and the Online DistributedProofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file wasproduced from images generously made available by TheInternet Archive)
Title: The Bruce
Author: John BarbourEditor: W. M. Mackenzie
Author: John Barbour
Editor: W. M. Mackenzie
Release date: November 27, 2013 [eBook #44292]Most recently updated: October 23, 2024
Language: English
Credits: Produced by Henry Flower and the Online DistributedProofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file wasproduced from images generously made available by TheInternet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BRUCE ***
The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.
The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.
THE BRUCEBYJOHN BARBOURArchdeacon of AberdeenEDITED FROM THE BEST TEXTSWITH LITERARY AND HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION, NOTES AND APPENDICES, AND A GLOSSARYBYW. M. MACKENZIE, M.A., F.S.A. (Scot.)AUTHOR OF “AN OUTLINE OF SCOTTISH HISTORY,” ETC.LONDONADAM AND CHARLES BLACK1909
BYJOHN BARBOURArchdeacon of Aberdeen
EDITED FROM THE BEST TEXTSWITH LITERARY AND HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION, NOTES AND APPENDICES, AND A GLOSSARYBYW. M. MACKENZIE, M.A., F.S.A. (Scot.)AUTHOR OF “AN OUTLINE OF SCOTTISH HISTORY,” ETC.
LONDONADAM AND CHARLES BLACK1909
The poemThe Bruce, by John Barbour, is preserved in only two manuscripts, one in the library of St. John’s College, Cambridge, and the other in the Advocates’ Library, Edinburgh. The former is hereafter denoted by the letter C, the latter by E. Of these E alone is complete in the sense of having both beginning and end; the first three Books and 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’sOrygynale Cronykil of Scotland, and the two MSS. of theCronykilare actually older than those ofThe 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 ofThe Brucelines 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 ofMr. J. T. T. Brown, for whom the passages in Wyntoun represent so much of the original orur-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]
The earliest printed versions ofThe Bruceraise 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.
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.
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 arenot 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 theCanterbury Talesfrom the Ellesmere to the so disturbing Harleian.
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 exampleof 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 ofThe Bruce, and from “modernization” to “improvement” is a tempting transition.
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. ofThe Wallace, which accompanies that ofThe Brucebut 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 forfifteenth-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’smakars, the real author ofThe Wallace, and the wholesale redactor ofThe Bruce. The details of Mr. Brown’s argument and all that flows therefrom must be read inThe 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”—whichhedoes not claim to have been—“was entitled to the courtesy title ofSir,”[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 ofThe 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 inThe 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]
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 differencesaredue 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 formIfor theIcorIkof E, and substitutescanfor the latter’sgan; that it regularly prefersofto theoffwhich distinguishes E and in certain positionsifory—these with other minor peculiarities, not being vital in character, are certainly due to individual idiosyncrasies in spelling. Ramsay is an honest scribe, who, atplaces, 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.
The present edition ofThe Bruceis 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.,luffysforliffysin Bk. II. 527,oftforoffin III. 194,Fyn allforFyngallin II. 69, etc. I have profited, too, by criticism of the published text as in the adoption of Dr. Neilson’scorn-butin 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 Theswith the ornamental curl I read as merelys; Jamieson and Skeat take it as, generally, =ss. But such alternative forms asParys,[22]purches,[23]andpurpos,[24]on the one hand, and the actual use of the tailed letter following the ordinary type indress,press,[25]fix the usage I have adopted.[26]There are a few exceptions in which this letter is probably a contraction foris—e.g., II. 366, 459.
2. I have distributed their modern values toi,j,u,v,w. There is no advantage in preserving such forms asiugis,Evrope,wndyr: the hedge of the language—to use Lowell’s simile—is prickly enough without these accessories. Moreover, I have throughout writtenEdwardforEduuardorEduardandInglisforYnglis(C).
3. As Skeat has substituted “th” for the “thorn” (þ), I have done likewise with the ancient Englishg(ȝ), the “yok” letter, resolving it into the digraphyh. As ultimately, in almost every case, significant of the consonantaly, I might have simply replaced it by that letter. But alternative forms, nearly without exception, show the digraph, both inThe Bruceand in Wyntoun, givingyhe,yhet,yharnit,fenyhe, etc., and in Wyntoun’s extractsfeyhnnyng,senyhoury,yhystir-day,bayhllys, etc. Even with the original letter thehis 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, asz, and survives in such forms asCadzow,capercailzie, etc.[27]In I. 16, however, it has been read asginforget, thoughforyhetis to be found inRatis Raving, and in XV. 75 it is obviouslyzinFi(t)z-Waryne.
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 ofThe Bruceas anhistoric 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.
PAGEPrefacev-xii1. MSS. and Editionsv2. The Scribesviii3. The Present EditionxIntroductionxv-xxiii1.The Bruceas Romancexv2. John Barbourxvi3. Historic value ofThe BrucexxText of “The Bruce.” Books I-XX.1-377Notes to Text378Appendix A.--The Site of the Battle of Bannockburn496„ B.--Bruce’s Speech at Bannockburn497„ C.--The Numbers at Bannockburn498„ D.--The Throwing of the Heart502„ E.--TheAlexanderandThe Bruce505„ F.--Mr. Brown’s “Sources” forThe Bruce506„ G.--Language and Orthography511„ H.--Grammar513Glossary519List of Principal Works545
The literary relationships ofThe Brucemay 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 ofThe Brucecharacterizes 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 natureand associations of his subject, for which only the literature of romance could furnish a parallel or supply the appropriate setting. The literary qualities ofThe Bruceare, 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.
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, theSt. Ninianin theLegends of the Saintsbe 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 Afberdeen 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 theSt. Ninianmust 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 withhereandmatere; in a few cases it is Barbar. As we might expect, the name was common enough in the English-speaking districts of Scotland.
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 learnsomething 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.
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 uponThe 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, aspayment 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.
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. ButThe Bruceof 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 andthe concrete, and so, as his time and circumstances would make him, an amateur and idealist of chivalry.
BesidesThe Bruce, Wyntoun credits Barbour withThe 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 aBruton 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 aTrojan WarorTroy Book, portions of which have been used to fill up gaps in a MS. of Lydgate’sSiegewith 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 inAnglia, ix., pp. 493-514, and by E. Koeppel inEnglische 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-toSulde gif credence—that I defend,[40]
Bot na gude Cristene mane her-toSulde gif credence—that I defend,[40]
Bot na gude Cristene mane her-toSulde gif credence—that I defend,[40]
is significantly similar to the argumentation on astrology inTheBruce, 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 theTroyfragments would clinch the case for Barbour’s claims on theAlexander, with which I deal elsewhere. The garrulous and drearyLegends of the Saintsprobably contain, at least, contributions by Barbour; even Buss admits peculiar features in theSt. Ninian,[42]andSt. Macharis 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.
A comparison of judgments on the value ofThe Bruceas 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 ashistorian, 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 theCambridge History of English Literatureit is thus written ofThe 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.
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 inThe 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 ofThe 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 pronounceThe Bruceto 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.
Moreover the reflection is forced upon us at many points that, in addition to the oral accounts of which he makes use, those of actual participators like Sir Allan of Cathcart, and John Thomson for the Irish campaigns, besides relations and reminiscences otherwise derived, Barbour had various contemporary writings at his command. Such was certainly the case with Sir Thomas Gray, who wrote, a prisoner in Edinburgh Castle, twenty years before. HisScalacronicaembodies the results of research in the library of his prison where he found Scottish chronicles in verse and prose, in Latin, French, and English, and he expressly refers to such chronicles in his account of Bruce, letting us know that there was in existencea description of the Battle of Bannockburn, and, incidentally, that Barbour even has not exhausted the fund of stories of adventure told of the fugitive King. More curious and suggestive is the citation, in the bye-going, by Jean le Bel, Canon of Liège, of a “history made by the said King Robert” (en hystoire faitte par le dit roy Robert), that is the King Robert whom, he tells us, Edward I. had chased by hounds in the forests.[55]It is an allowable inference that these accessible materials were known to the learned and inquiring Barbour, when he took to deal with a subject familiar to him from his earliest years, and so congenial to his instincts, literary and national.
It is worth noting that Sir Walter Scott, on the publication of theLord of the Isles, which draws so handsomely uponThe Bruce, was accused of a lack of proper patriotism, meaning the pungent and rather aggressive patriotism of a long-irritated Scotland distinctive ofThe Wallaceand certain subsequent productions, but not ofThe Bruce, the spirit of which, too, was in harmony with that of the great reviver of romance. There is no malice inThe Bruce; the malice and bitterness are in the contemporary war-literature of the other side. And Barbour is no sentimentalist; his patriotism is not pretentious or exclusive, nor such as leads him to depreciate an opponent, and is therefore not a distorting influence on facts, as Mr. Henderson postulates it must have been.[56]It is not possible to point to a single error on Barbour’s part which is fairly traceable to this cause. And his faults and errors, such as they are, may be paralleled over and over again from the most reputable of that century’s historians, to say nothing of those who, in later times, had to weave their web from less tangled and broken material.
THE BRUCE