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PREFACE
By reason of the archaic
language in which it is written, Barbour's famous metrical history of
The Bruce has long been a sealed book to all but expert students of
ancient literature. It has now been translated for the first time in the
hope that it may resume the popularity to which it is entitled by the
splendid merits of its heroic tale.
John Barbour has long
been looked upon as the father of Scottish poetry, and he occupies
almost the same position in the literature of North Britain as the
author of the Canterbury Tales does in that of the south. The Bruce is
the earliest great poem we possess in the vernacular of the country.
Other early Scottish poems, like 'The Taill of Rauf Coilzear,' 'The
Awntyrs of Arthure', 'Sir Tristrem', and 'The Pystyl of Swete Susan',
were written in the more inflected language and in the alliterative and
accented verse-forms of an earlier time. It was Barbour's Bruce which
first defined and fixed the language of Scotland in the shape it was to
keep as a literary vehicle for two hundred years, and it was Barbour's
Bruce which definitely committed the poetry of Scotland to metre and
rhyme, instead of the older alliteration and accent, as its
distinguishing features. These were exactly the services which Chaucer
rendered to the literature of Southern Britain at exactly the same time.
And exactly as Chaucer's work remains the classic or standard of the
English language before Shakespeare's day, so Barbour's remains the
classic or standard of 'Braid Scots' during the same period, to the
Union of the Crowns.
Barbour and Chaucer were
contemporaries, but the Scottish 'maker' was in no sense inspired or
stimulated by the work of the English poet. Barbour, in fact, was
considerably the elder, and had finished his work before Chaucer had
much more than begun his. Barbour was born about 1316 or 1320, and he
died in 1395, while Chaucer was born in 1340, and died in 1400. And
Barbour, by his own statement, finished The Bruce in 1375, when Chaucer
had written little more than his early translation of 'The Romaunt of
the Rose,' the lament for his great patron's wife, 'Blaunche the
Duchesse,' and perhaps the first drafts of one or two of his Tales. In
1357 and 1364 Barbour had passports from Edward III of England,
allowing him to journey to Oxford with certain scholars and knights for
purposes of study, and he had similar permits in 1365 and 1368 allowing
him to travel with a suite through England to France for purposes of
scholarship. It has been suggested that upon some of these occasions the
two poets may have met. But in 1357 Barbour was a man of some forty
years, and a great church dignitary, Archdeacon of Aberdeen, while
Chaucer was a stripling of seventeen, a page in the household of
Elizabeth, wife of Lionel, Duke of Clarence.
As a matter of fact, both
poets derived their inspiration from, and took for their first models,
the great romances of chivalry, which had been introduced by the
trouveres of Normandy, and just then, in the fourteenth century, had
reached their greatest vogue and perfection. 'The Romance of Fierabras',
which Barbour describes Robert the Bruce as himself reciting to his
companions while they were two by two ferried across Loch Lomond, was
one of these productions; and again and again the poet illustrates his
poem with episodes from others. It was from these romances that the new
fashion of metre and rhyme came into the poetry of this country, and it
was in their octosyllabic measure and rhyming couplets that Barbour
wrote his great work. rho poet's own idea, indeed, was to write a
romance, after the fashion of the Arthurian, Charlemagnian, and other
romance cycles of his time, with the deeds of the great Scottish king
and his companions for its subject. Thus near the beginning he
announces,
Lordingis, quha likis for
till her,
The Romanys now begynnys her.
In accordance with this
poetic purpose his work is written in a strain of noble sentiment which
befits well the high-hearted enthusiasm of that heroic time. Many of its
passages, too, as pure poetry, can hold their own with anything in our
language of their vein. The famous panegyric on Freedom, the portrait of
James of Douglas, and the description of Spring at Bruce's setting forth
from Arran, with many other passages, remain classics of their kind.
But Barbour's purpose,
after all, was not so much poetic as historic. He was familiar, not only
with the Norman-French metrical romances, and their translations in the
vernacular, which were the popular entertainment of his age, but also
with the historical rhyming chronicles which were then in fashion.
Robert of Gloucester and Robert Manning, otherwise Robert of Brunne, had
both written their metrical chronicles of British history in the earlier
years of the century, and Barbour himself, we know from Wyntoun,
followed the same example, and wrote a metrical history of early
Britain, founded, like theirs, on the Brut of Wace, the Norman-French
trouvere, or perhaps on Wace's original, Geoffrey of Monmouth, and
describing the legendary descent and deeds of the Scottish kings, from
Brutus, great-grandson of Æneas, to his own day. Clearly the historic
motive was strongest in Barbours mind. His opening lines declare his
intention to "say nocht bot suthfast thing." And as a result we have a
record, in eloquent and glowing phrase, which on all hands is admitted
to be not only a noble masterpiece of poetic literature, but a
trustworthy and minute account of the most thrilling and heroic period
of Scottish history.
The general truth and
accuracy of Barbour's narrative has never been questioned. Here and
there the order of events is transposed. The great conspiracy of Lord
Soulis, for instance, is made to come after the battle of Byland,
instead of before it; Edward Bruce's assumption of kingship in Ireland
is antedated by a few weeks; and the Earl of Arundel's expedition
against Douglas is said to have been commanded by Sir Thomas of
Richmond, who was only a knight in its ranks. These are but slight and
trivial matters, detracting little from the general truth of the tale.
It is true that Professor Skeat, in his notes to the latest edition of
Barbour's poem, is inclined to treat as exaggerations some of the feats
of personal prowess attributed to Bruce. And he and a still later
critic, Mr. J. T. T. Brown, seem to consider the story of the Brooch of
Lorne to be merely repeated in the later slaying of the three traitors
in Carrick, and the three robbers at Cumnock. But such conclusions may
be too hastily reached. The details of the three episodes mentioned are
altogether different, and in no way improbable, and the king's single-
handed slaughter of several assailants on these and other occasions
becomes feasible enough when we remember that Bruce was not only of
uncommon strength, but clad in complete mail, while his assailants were
ill-armed peasants, or "naked" men. There is the story, too, of Douglas
setting forth with Bruce's heart for the Holy Land. This might have been
looked upon as a mere embellishment in the style of the favourite
romance literature of the period, and Mr. Brown indeed seeks to insist
that it is a story taken by a later scribe from the romantic narrative
of Froissart, and embodied in Barbour's poem. But the whole event must
have been well enough known to Barbour himself, who was a boy of twelve
when it occurred; and if confirmation of the fact were needed for modern
readers, it was supplied when the tomb of Bruce at Dunfermline was
opened a hundred years ago, and the breastbone of the royal skeleton was
found sawn through.
Much more serious is
another charge brought against Barbour's bona fides. In both of the
extant manuscripts of the poem, the Robert Bruce who conquered at
Bannockburn is made out to be the same person as the Robert Bruce who
suffered indignity at the hands of Edward I. Several editors have argued
that this travesty of truth was deliberately perpetrated by Barbour in
order to cover up the fact that his hero had in reality been a knight at
Edward's court, and had sworn homage to the English king; as if the
indignity suffered by the grandfather justified the broken fealty of the
grandson. Such a glaring figment, Sir Herbert Maxwell has said, is
enough to render all that follows it, in the eyes of some people, of no
historical importance. But Mr. J. T. T. Brown has happily shown that the
whole mistake has arisen from a very slight corruption of the MSS. The
passage in these MSS. runs,
This lord the Brwyss I
spak of ayr
Saw all the kynryk swa forfayr,
And swa trowblyt the folk saw he
That he tharoff had gret pitte.
The same passage, quoted
in Wyntonn's Cronykil, from an older and fuller MS. of The Bruce,
altogether avoids the mistake:
Quhen all this sawe the
Brwss Robert
That bare the crowne swne eftirwart
Gret pytte off the folk he had
Set few wordis tharoff he mad.
Barbour had the best of
means for ascertaining the events he described. In his youth he must
have known many of the personages who had taken part in the great
struggle, and again and again he mentions his authority. In one case,
the exploit of Edward Bruce in Galloway, he even names his informant:
A knycht that then wes in
his rowt...
Schyr Alane off Catkert by name
Tauld me this taile as I sail tell.
The poet further was in
close touch with the court and its authentic sources of information,
while his clerical office brought him in his earlier years into contact
with the common people, their songs, traditions, and impressions of the
great struggle which was only a matter of yesterday. As a result
Barbour's Bruce remains the chief storehouse of information for the
detail, character, and circumstance which lend colour to the great
historic drama of the fourteenth century in Scotland. The accuracy of
The Bruce was recognized by Barbour's own contemporary, Andro of Wyntoun,
in his Grygynale Cronykil of Scotland, and a century and a half later by
the historian, Hector Boece, both of whom excused their brevity in
dealing with the reign of King Robert by referring their readers to
Barbour.
The ascertained facts of
Barbour's own life are vouched for by no fewer than fifty-one entries in
contemporary documents. These entries the editor of the latest edition
of The Bruce has been at the pains to extract and print verbatim in his
preface. They show the poet to have been not only a churchman of high
rank, but a man of affairs of considerable note at the Scottish court,
and persona grata to the king. In the earliest of them, the four permits
to pass through England above mentioned, the poet is already named
Archdeacon of Aberdeen. He was named also in 1357 as one of the Scottish
commissioners to arrange at Edinburgh for the ransom of David II, then
a prisoner in England, and it is possible that his journey to England
was in reality to interview that king. But it is not till after the
accession of the first Stewart monarch that we have a mention of his
employment at court. In 1372 he was appointed clerk of audit to the
household of Robert II. at Perth. In 1373, 1382, 1383, and 1384 he was
one of the auditors of exchequer, and received various payments for his
services. In 1376 or 1377 he received from the king a gift of ten
pounds, probably in acknowledgment of the first part of The Bruce, down
to the battle of Bannockburn, which was completed, according to
Barbour's own statement, in 1375. In 1378 he received a perpetual
pension of twenty shillings sterling, which may have been a royal
recognition of the second part of the great poem. In the entry, indeed,
of the payment of the pension in 1428, the words are added, "qui
compilavit librum de gestis illustrissimi principis quondam domini regis
Roberti Bruys," which seems to connect the pension with the work. In
1386 he received as gifts from the king the sums of £5 and £6 13s. 4d.,
which may have marked the royal approval of his second great work, The
Brut, He had also a crown wardship, and in 1388 King Robert granted him
a pension of £10, possibly in recognition of the third great poem which,
on Andro of Wyntoun's authority, is attributed to him, The Stewartis
Orygenalle. These facts are shown by entries in the Exchequer Rolls of
Scotland. Entries in the Register of the Bishopric of Aberdeen show
Barbour to have taken an active part in the affairs of the diocese, both
temporal and spiritual, and to other entries in the same record we are
indebted for knowlede of the fact that he died on the 13th Mardi, 1395.
Even one of the Archdeacon's petty lapses is on record, for in a
catalogue of the cathedral library the Register contains the note that a
missing book of decretals had been lost "per magistrum Johannem
Barbour." There is evidence in the Register that the poet took a real
interest in the affairs of his own prebend, the parish of Rayne in the
Garioch. His piety is shown by a deed dated there, in which he assigned
his pension of twenty shillings to the cathedral chapter for the saying
of a yearly mass for the souls of himself, his parents, and all the
faithful dead. And he appears to have died on the scene of his proper
labours, for a marble memorial stone now on the inner wall of Aberdeen
Cathedral is said to have marked till a few years ago his grave in the
burying-ground outside.
The text of Barbour's
great poem has been preserved in two manuscripts—one signed "J. de B."
and dated 1487, in the Library of St. John's College, Cambridge, and
another signed "Johannes Ramsay," dated 1489, and bound up with a MS. of
The Wallace by the same hand, in the Advocates' Library, Edinburgh.
There is also an edition of The Bruce printed at Edinburgh by Andrew Hart
in 1616, which appears to have been taken from a third and ampler MS.
than either of the two extant. Of the more recent printed editions the
most important are Dr. Jamieson 's of 1820, Cosmo Innes's for the
Spalding Club in 1856, Professor Skeat's for the Early English Text
Society in 1870, and another by the same editor for the Scottish Text
Society in 1894.
Barbour's composition of
The Bruce and other poems has recently been made the subject of much
minute and interesting criticism. Following the criticisms of Kappel and
Buss, Professor Skeat rejects as by another hand some two thousand lines
in Lydgate's Siege of Troy in Cambridge University Library, which were
formerly believed to be extracted from Barbour's lost poem, The Brut.
The reasons for rejection are certain "variations in poetical
expression, in small technical usages, and in the rimes". Against this
criticism must be noted the fact that the writer of the Lydgate MS.
distinctly marks his quoted passages with the inscription, "Her endis
Barbour and begynnis the Monk," and "Her endis the Monk ande bygynnis
Barbour." The differences, too, between the style of the extracts and of
The Bruce are balanced by the likenesses, and are not much greater than
are to be found between the first and second parts of The Bruce itself.
[A very striking falling off in style takes place in the poem after the
description of Bannockburn. The subsequent narrative is marked by a
looseness of treatment in recording facts, and an inadequacy in the
description of great events, in singular contrast with the vigour,
fulness, and general accuracy of the earlier books. Had the battle of
Byland been described with the same detail and spirit as the battle of
Bannockburn, it might have held almost as great a place in history.]
Mr. J. T. T. Brown,
again, in his highly interesting volume, The Wallace and The Bruce
Restudied (Bonn, 1900), declares for the fragments in the Lydgate MS.
being Barbour's work, but holds against Professor Skeat, on the other
hand, that Barbour's Brut and his Stewartis Orygenalle were one single
work, referred to by Wyntoun under different names.
The point is indifferent
here. Of more importance is the greater issue which forms the burden of
Mr. Brown's treatise. His effort is to show that the "Johannes Ramsay"
and "J. de B." who transcribed the MSS. of The Bruce were the same
person, and that that person was otherwise "Sir John the Ross," or Ross
Herald, mentioned in the Treasurer's Accounts as receiving twenty
unicorns (£18 sterling) from James IV. in 1490, and in Dunbar's Lament
for the Makaris, a few years. later, as one of the notable poets of the
time.
The conjecture is highly
interesting, but Mr. Brown goes much farther. In order to provide a
foundation for the poetic fame of Sir John the Ross he seeks to prove,
first, that that personage was the substantial author of The Wallace,
Henry the Minstrel merely furnishing the rough material of the poem,
and, second, that, in transcribing Barbours Bruce, he extensively
improved and embellished it. To prove his theory, Mr. Brown cites
numerous instances of striking similarity between passages and
expressions in The Bruce and passages and expressions in works produced
after Barbour was in his grave.
This is not the place to
enter upon the minute details of so ingenious a thesis. It may only be
suggested that it is possible, in pursuit of a theory, to set over-much
value upon chance likenesses of expression, and that in any case it
appears much more probable that later writers borrowed expressions and
ideas from a great and famous poem like The Bruce, than that a late
transcriber set to work to make a minute and marvellous mosaic out of
Barbour's poem and the works of a dozen other authors. This is the view
of Dr. Albert Hermann, whom Mr. J. T. T. Brown quotes in a footnote.
Apart, however, from such
criticism, there can be no question of the transcendent merits of
Barbour's great epic. The work is full of passages that are models of
graphic force, natural description, and lofty moral apostrophe. Here and
there the pages are lit up with a flash of grim humour, as when the
Scots in Ireland on the verge of starvation find their camp suddenly
flooded, and the poet declares that though O'Dymsy gave them nothing to
eat, he sent them plenty to drink. And, for true tenderness and pathos,
the story of Bruce and the poor laundress, and the account of the great
king's death, must for ever remain among the immortal things of our
literature.
The translator cannot
hope to have accomplished his task to the complete satisfaction of every
admirer of the original work. In Barbour's case the ordinary
difficulties of translation are increased by the fact that the language
of Scotland in the fourteenth century contained infinitely fewer forms
of expression than the language now in use, and the same epithet had
perforce to do duty in a variety of ways and with a variety of meanings.
But if the translation helps to render better known at the present day
Barbour's matchless account of the adventures of the great Scottish king
and his band of fighting heroes, with something of the atmosphere and
temper of their time, the work will not have been undertaken in vain.
Professor Skeat's edition
of The Bruce, published by the Scottish Text Society, has been almost
exclusively followed in making the present translation. Apart from the
admirably clear and carefully edited text, the translator desires to
make the fullest acknowledgment to Professor Skeat's notes and
glossaries for the elucidation of many obscure and difficult passages.
You can also read the original text here!
or download a zip file of
the complete text here!
The Real Bannockburn
The Battle of Bannockburn.
A Study in Mediaeval Warfare. By W. M. Mackenzie, M. A. 1913. (pdf)
The long-standing controversy as to what
actually happened at Bannockburn seems likely now to be laid to rest.
Mr. Mackenzie’s interesting little book settles for ever the plan of
operations that brought about that memorable victory. Indeed, so clear
and unmistakable is the narrative of events here detailed that one
wonders why any dubiety should ever have arisen. Yet Hume Brown, Andrew
Lang, Scott, Sir Herbert Maxwell, and General Sir Evelyn Wood are all at
variance. These experts having landed themselves in confusion, no wonder
if humbler compilers have copied each other with variations, until the
whole affair became an insoluble tangle. Mr. Mackenzie has gone straight
to Barbour’s “ Brus,” and, checking him by other authorities, finds the
narrative perfectly explicit and thoroughly intelligible.
The key to the proper explanation lies in the fact that there were two
days’ actual fighting, Sunday (23 June), with the Clifford and de Bohun
incidents, and Monday (24th) when the Scots charged the English. The
Sunday engagement took place in the New Park and was intended to clear
the approach to the Castle of Stirling in two directions, through the
New Park and on the level ground below St. Ninian’s. Repulsed at the two
roads, the English moved on, crossed the Bannock, and bivouacked in the
Carse. When Monday morning came, the situation had materially changed.
The English were congested and trapped in very unsuitable ground between
the Forth and the Bannock mouth. Bruce’s generalship saw its opportunity
and at once took advantage of it.
The modern versions are vitiated by a very natural error, which is
common to them all. They make out that Edward forced his men against the
Scots. The fact is, that the Scots, to the utter amazement of the
English, who expected a walk over, began the attack on Monday morning.
This proves that they were independent of the hypothetical bogs and pits
which figure in the modern plans of the battle, for by their advance
they lost all the tactical advantage that lay with such forms of
defence. They took the initiative and forced the battle. Hence an
explanation is found for Edward, in the breakup, .fleeing to Stirling
Castle. If the English were in the Carse, the Castle was quite close to
their right wing. In the same way we find it easy to understand why so
many English were drowned in the Forth and in the Bannock which at that
part is tidal. Every incident in Barbour fits in harmoniously with this
readjustment. The wonder is that the historians missed it, which they
could not have done, if they had been students of Barbour’s “Brus”.
Probably they neglected his story, imagining that it was romance and not
authentic history.
All this tends to increase our respect for John Barbour, Archdeacon of
Aberdeen. His romance of “The Bruce” has been oft-times discredited as
no true historical document, but it is gratifying to find his narrative
so fully vindicated in detail by Mr. Mackenzie. The sex-centenary of
Bannockburn in 1914 is sure to revive an interest in Barbour and his
patriotic poem, which prompts us to raise the question, “why has
Aberdeen no memorial of this our first national poet ? ” Burns has his
monument; Beattie lives for us in Sir Joshua’s picture at Marischal
College; Byron is destined to be honoured soon by a statue in bronze,
but the father of Scottish literature, whose connexion with Aberdeen was
both close and lasting, remains uncommemorated.
A. Mackie. |
