He
probably
was some years older.
Cambridge History of English Literature - 1908 - v02
We lack evidence of the extent of Scandinavian inter-
ference in the northern Anglic dialect, structural and verbal, and
we know too little of the Anglo-French influences resulting from the
Norman culture which had grown up in the Lothians. Yet, while
1 See Chapter .
## p. 91 (#109) #############################################
Middle Scots
91
allowing for possibilities, or probabilities, of this kind, we may
conclude that, on the whole, the literary language of Scotland down
to the early fifteenth century was in close conformity with the
usage of northern England. The texts of Barbour and Hampole
force us to accept this. Any qualification which may be made
must be due, not to the testimony of facts (for they are wanting),
but to an acknowledgment of the general principle that languages
and dialects change slowly and that the differences in the latter
part of the fifteenth century (to which we are about to refer)
are too fundamental to have taken shape of a sudden.
A change in the habit of the literary language is discernible
from the middle of the fifteenth century. It is definite and of
general occurrence; and it continues with but few variations,
which are due to the idiosyncrasies of writers or the circumstances
of publication, down to the opening decades of the seventeenth
century. To this period (1450-1620) the name of 'Middle Scots'
has been given. The title is not altogether satisfactory, but it is
the best that has been found ; and it is useful in suggesting the
special linguistic phase which intervened between earlier and later
(or modern) Scots. It is applied only to the literary speech. The
spoken language pursued its own course and showed fewer points
of difference from both the literary and spoken dialects of northern
England. When the middle period closes, spoken Scots is again
restored to something of the dignity of a literary medium. This is
said advisedly, for diversity of dialect and the lack of a fixed
orthography in Modern Scots are the denial of the main charac-
teristics of a standard instrument. In Middle Scots, on the other
hand, the linguistic peculiarities are, with the allowances already
noted, uniform within the period, and deliberately followed.
The name 'Early Scots,' for the period ending c. 1450, is
even less satisfactory than 'Middle Scots' for the next (from
1450 to 1620); but it will do no harm if it be understood to be the
literary language of Teutonic Scotland during the century and
a half before 1450, when such differentiation from early northern
English as may be assumed, but cannot readily be proved, was
established. The names 'Northumbrian' and 'Early Northern
English' may be applied to the still earlier stages. Of 'Early Scots'
the typical examples are Barbour's Bruce and Wyntoun's Chronicle :
of Middle Scots the writings of Henryson, Dunbar, Douglas and
Lyndsay. In a more exhaustive scheme it is convenient to have
an intervening 'Early Transition Period'-say from 1420 to 1460—
represented by such important works as The Kingis Quair, Lancelot
of the Laik, and The Quare of Ielusy. The linguistic basis of
a
>
## p. 92 (#110) #############################################
92
The Scottish Language
these poems is Early Scots; but they show an artificial mixture
with southern and pseudo-southern forms derived from Chaucer.
Their language represents no type, literary or spoken; it is a
bookish fabrication; but, though exceptional and individual, it has
the historical interest of being the first expression of a habit
which, in Middle Scots, was neither exceptional nor individual
In this transition period the foreign elements are exclusively
Chaucerian : in Middle Scots, Chaucerian influence, though great
and all pervading, is not the sole cause of the differences ?
The statement that Middle Scots is uniform throughout its
many texts must not be misunderstood. Full allowance must be
made, in each case, for the circumstances of composition and
production. Translations from Latin or French will show a larger
percentage of Romance forms; a dream-poem will attract more
Chaucerian words and phrases and tricks of grammar; a recension
of a southern text or the writing of a Scot in exile in England
will carry over' certain southern mannerisms; French printers
in Paris, or Chepman and Myllar's English craftsmen in Edinburgh,
will bungle and alter; and poets like Gavin Douglas will deal in
archaisms which even an educated contemporary might not readily
understand. Yet these exceptions, and others which might be
named, but prove the validity of the general rule.
Middle Scots stands in marked contrast with Early Scots in
phonology and orthography, in accidence, in syntax and in
vocabulary and word-forms. It is not desirable to attempt even
an outline of each of these in this short chapter. The reader who
wishes further acquaintance is referred to the bibliography.
The remaining pages will be devoted to brief consideration of the
main causes of change and of their relative importance in the
transformation of the dialect, especially in the matter of vocabulary.
The persistence of certain popular misconceptions, or overstate-
ments, of the indebtedness of Scots justifies some discussion of the
question in this place.
An artificial dialect such as is used by the greater Middle Scots
poets is, in some respecte, unaffected by the processes which mould
a living speech? It draws from sources which are outside the
natural means of supply; it adopts consciously and in accordance
1 It may be well to add that these transition' texts are more strongly southern
than are the later texts which continued the habit of borrowing.
If the entire literature of the period (prose as well as verse) be considered, this
impression of artificiality will, of course, be modified. This must always be so, even
when eccentricity is more marked than it is in the present case. Yet we must not
underestimate the importance of a habit which was, after all, followed by all Middle
Scots writers who make any claim to literary style.
## p. 93 (#111) #############################################
Southern Influence on Middle Scots
93
with a deliberately accepted theory of style. If it borrow the forms
which come to all languages with the new things of the market-
place, it does so advisedly, just as it recovers the older forms which
have been lost to ordinary speech. Books are its inspiration, and
the making of books is its end. In this way the literary conscious-
ness of an age as it appears in writers like Henryson and Dunbar
is an index to its linguistic habit. When poets show a new pride
in the vernacular and are concerned with the problems of poetic
diction and form, their admiration of the models of style takes
a very practical turn. Scottish literature, in the full enjoyment
of a new fervour, showed the effect of its enthusiasm in the
fashion of its language. In it, as in the Italian and Burgundian,
the chief effort was to transform the simpler word and phrase into
'aureate' mannerism, to “illumine' the vernacular, to add 'fresch
anamalit termis celicall. ' This Crétinism was the serious concern
of the Scottish poets for at least a century, and even of prose-writers
such as the author of The Complaynt of Scotlande, or Abacuck
Bysset, so late as 1622. In the later stages of Middle Scots, and
especially in the prose, other influences were at work, but the tra-
dition establisbed during the so-called 'golden age still lingered.
The chief modifying forces at work during the middle period
are English, Latin and French. Otherssay Celtic and Scan-
dinavian-may be neglected, but the case for the former will be
glanced at later.
The southern, or English, influence, which is the strongest, is
exerted in three ways. It comes through the study of Chaucer
and the English 'Chaucerians'; through religious and controversial
literature; and, lastly, through the new political and social
relations with England, prior to and following the accession of
James VI to the English throne. The first of these is the most
important. In a later chapter, attention is drawn to the debt
of the Scottish 'makars' to the southern poet and his followers
for the sentiment and fabric of their verse. The measure of
that debt is not complete without acknowledgment to Chaucer's
language. The general effect on Middle Scots of this literary
admiration was an increase in the Romance elements. It may
be taken for granted that the majority of words of Anglo-French
origin which were incorporated at this time were Chaucerian ; but
it is not always easy to distinguish these words from the Anglo-
French which had been naturalised in the early period. It must
not be forgotten, especially in estimating the French contribution
to Middle Scots (see post) that the most active borrowing
from that quarter had been accomplished before this time. In
## p. 94 (#112) #############################################
94
The Scottish Language
6
The Kingis Quair and Lancelot, which illustrate the first Chaucerian
phase in Scots, the infusion is not confined to the vocabulary.
Fantastic grammatical forms are common : such as infinitives in
-en (even -ine), weren for war, past participles with y, frequent
use of finale—all unknown and impossible to the northern dialect.
In these cases there is no mistaking the writer's artifice and its
source. Such freaks in accidence are hardly to be found in the
poetry of James IV's reign ; though Gavin Douglas's eclectic taste
allows the southern ybound and the nondescript ysoupit. In the
verse of the 'golden age' it is the word, or tag, which is the
badge of Chaucerian affectation. The prose shows little or nothing
of this literary reminiscence. John of Ireland, whose writing is
the earliest extant example of original Scots prose of a literary
cast, speaks of 'Galfryde Chauceir' (by whom he really means
Occleve), but exhibits no trace of his influence. When the Middle
Scots prose-writer is not merely annalistic, or didactic, or argu-
mentative, he draws his aureat termis from the familiar Latin.
So, when The Complaynt of Scotlande varies from the norm, it
is, in Rabelais's phrase, to despumate the Latial verbocination,'
or to revel in onomatopoeia.
In the prose, the second and third English influences are
more easily noted, and they are found towards the end
of the period, when a general decadence has set in. Indeed,
they are the chief causes of the undoing of Middle Scots, of
breaking down the very differences which Chaucer, Latinity
and (in a minor degree) French intercourse had accomplished.
It is to be observed that the language of nearly all religious
literature from the middle of the sixteenth century is either
purely southern or strongly anglicised : it is worthy of special
note that, until the publication of the Bassandyne Bible in 1576–9,
all copies of the Scriptures were imported direct from England,
and that the Bassandyne, as authorised by the reformed kirk,
is a close transcript of the Genevan version. This must have
had a powerful influence on the language, spoken and written.
Even in Lyndsay, whose dialect is unmistakable, translated
passages from the Vulgate are taken direct from the English
text. The literary influence was strengthened by protestant
controversialists, notably by Knox, perhaps the most 'English'
of all Scottish prose-writers. This ‘knapping' of 'sudroun’ was
one of the charges preferred against them by catholic pamphleteers
- among others by John Hamilton, author of Ane Catholik and
Facile Traictise (1581), who even saw treason in the printing of
Scottish books at London 'in contempt of our native language. "
## p. 95 (#113) #############################################
The French Element in Middle Scots 95
The third English influence, latest in activity, emphasised these
tendencies. It is easy to trace in state documents and in the
correspondence of the court the intrusion of southern forms. Sal
and shall, till and to, quhilk and which, participles in -and and
-ing, -it and -ed, jostle each other continually. The going of the
court to England, and the consequent affectation of English ways,
undid the artificial Middle Scots which had been fashioned at, and
for, that court. Poetry was transferred, almost en bloc, as if by
act of the British Solomon, to the care of the southern muse : all
the singers, Alexander, Aytoun, Drummond and the rest became
'Elizabethan’ in language and sentiment, differing in nothing,
except an occasional Scotticism, from their southern hosts. When
Scottish literature revives in the mid-seventeenth century, and in
the next is again vigorous, its language is the spoken dialect, the
agrest termis of the Lothians and west country?
That the Romance contribution to Middle Scots is large is
obvious ; that it is found in writings which are not mere tours
de force of aureate' ingenuity is also obvious. But the sorting
out of the borrowings according to their origin has not been
so clear to amateurs of Scots etymology. There has been no lack
of speculation, which, in its generally accepted form, must be
seriously traversed.
The non-Teutonic elements (excluding Celtic) are Latin and
French. An exaggerated estimate of the political and social inter-
course with France, and a corresponding neglect or depreciation
of the position of Latin in Scottish culture, have given vogue to a
theory of French influence on the language which cannot be
accepted without serious modification. The main responsibility
for the popular opinion that Scots is indebted, inordinately, to
French must rest with the late Francisque Michel's Critical
Inquiry into the Scottish Language, with the view of illustrating
the Rise and Progress of Civilisation in Scotland (1882). It
may be true that, 'to thoroughly understand Scottish civilisation,
we must seek for most of its more important germs in French
sources'; but certain important qualifications are necessary.
The French element in Middle Scots represents three stages of
borrowing: first, the material incorporated in the early period
during the process of Anglo-French settlement in the Lothians;
next, the material, also Anglo-French in origin, drawn from Chaucer
and the 'Chaucerian' texts; and, finally, the material adopted from
i Sume qualification is, of course, necessary in Ramsay's case. His antiquarian
taste must be reckoned with by the philologer.
## p. 96 (#114) #############################################
96
The Scottish Language
central French during the close diplomatic intercourse of the
Scottish and French courts, and as a result of the resort of Scottish
students to the university of Paris, and, later, of the national
interest in Calvinistic protestantism. The last of these groups
commends itself readily to the popular imagination: its plausibility
is enforced by recalling the stories of the Scot abroad, of careers
like Buchanan’s, of the Quentin Durwards, and by pointing to the
copies of French institutions in the College of Justice and the older
universities. Yet, when all these are allowed for, the borrowings
from this third source are the smallest in extent, and by no means
important. From the second source, which is, in a sense, English
(for the borrowings were already naturalised English words), the
influx is much greater ; but from the first, certainly the greatest.
So far as the vocabulary is concerned, nearly all the Romance
elements in Middle Scots which cannot be traced to the first or
second, the Anglo-French or Chaucerian source, are of Latin origin.
Even many of the borrowings which are French in form and derived
through French were taken direct from the rhétoriqueurs because
they yielded a ready-made supply of aureate terms and helped the
purposes of writers who, like Gavin Douglas, had set themselves
to cut and carve Latin for the betterment of the vernacular. It
was of the nature of an accident that the media were French books.
The forms appealed to the Latin-speaking, Latin-thinking Scot.
Moreover, not a few of the words which are certainly French, such
as the hackneyed ashet and gigot, belong to the period of Modern
Scots; others, as attour, boule, which appear to yield evidence
of French origin, are 'English' dialectal forms. When Francisque
Michel refers the child-word bae to the bleat in Pathelin we
begin to understand what a Frenchified thing Middle Scots
must have been! Nor is it easy, even with the authority of
another investigator', to allow a French origin to certain well-
known eccentricities of grammar and syntax in Middle Scots-
badges of that period and of no other—the indefinite article
and numeral ane, in all positions; the adjectival plural, e. g. saidis,
quhilkis ; and the frequent placing of the adjective after the
noun, e. g. factis merciall, concepcioun virginale, inimy mortall.
The assumption that such a usage as ane man is an imitation
of the French un homme is, in the first place, entirely unsupported
by historical evidence ; secondly, it shows a grammatical inter-
ference in a place where intrusion is least likely, or hardly possible.
See J. A. H. Murray's Dialect of the Southern Counties of Scotland (Historical
Introduction).
## p. 97 (#115) #############################################
The Latin Element
97
In the case of the other alleged Gallicisms, criticism may be more
constructive, for they may be explained (when they are not the
outcome of verse necessity) as relics or reminiscences of Latin
syntactical habit. The tradition of theological and legal Latin
must be reckoned with ; and the fact that the adjectival plural
is admitted to be first found 'in legal verbiage' is an important
link in the evidence.
So far, we have assumed that the Romance influence which is
not Anglo-French or Chaucerian comes through Latin rather than
French. We may strengthen this position by pointing to the
ascertained importance of Latin in the moulding of Middle Scots.
There is, in the first place, the direct testimony of contemporary
writers to the vitality of Latin, which stands in remarkable contrast
with their silence on the subject of French borrowing. The
circumstances of the writer and the nature of his work must, of
course, be considered. It is to be expected that, in a translation
from Latin, or in treatises on theology, political science, or law,
the infusion will be stronger than in an original work of an
imaginative or descriptive cast. This consideration may affect
our conclusion as to the average strength of the infusion, but it
does not minimise the importance of the fact that Middle Scots
was liable to influence from this quarter. The testimony of such
different writers as John of Ireland, Gavin Douglas and the
author of The Complaynt of Scotlande is instructive. John
excuses his Scots style because he was 'thretty zeris nurist in
fraunce, and in the noble study of Paris in latin toung, and knew
nocht the gret eloquens of chauceir na colouris þat men usis in
þis Inglis metir. Nor was he (we may be certain) the only Scot
who, when it was a question of writing 'in the commoun langage
of bis cuntre,' sought help from Latin, 'the tounge that [he]
knew better. ' Gavin Douglas allows the general necessity of
“bastard latyne, french, or inglis' to a progressive Scots, but
he discusses the advantages of only the first, and shows that in his
task of translating Vergil he must draw freely from Latin, if his
work is not to be 'mank and mutilait' as Caxton's was. The
author of The Complaynt says plainly that “it is necessair at sum
tyme til myxt oure langage vitht part of termis dreuyn fra lateen,
be reson that oure scottis tong is nocht sa copeus as is the lateen
tong. '
These confessions are amply supported by the texts. There we
find not only words of unmistakable Latin lineage such as
translatory, praetermittit, caliginus, but others used in their Latin
7
6
E, L. II
CH, Y.
## p. 98 (#116) #############################################
98
The Scottish Language
6
sense, such as prefferris (excels), pretendis (aims at), and the like.
Further, there is ample evidence of the process, at which Douglas
clearly hints, that Latin was drawn upon without hesitation and
without any attempt to disguise the borrowing. The word mank
in the quotation already given is an illustration. It may be Old
French (through Anglo-French), but its natural parent is manc -us
Examples of direct association with Latin are plentiful : here, two
must suffice. “Withoutin more or delay' is plain sine mora aut
dilatione : no imaginary French 'more'intervenes. Even at the
close of the period a man may be described in kirk minutes as
‘apt and idoneus to enter the ministry. In accidence even, as in
the uninflected past participle, e. g. did fatigat, being deliberat,
salbe repute—a form which still lingers in Scottish legal style-the
derivation from Latin is direct.
On the whole, therefore, the Romance material in Middle
Scots, in so far as it is not Anglo-French, directly or mediately,
is largely Latin. Central French is certainly represented in such
words as preaux and charpentier, but they are in many cases ära
Reyóueva or the liking of certain authors. To counterbalance this, it
may be pointed out that in The Complaynt of Scotlande, that strange
mosaic of verbatim translation from French with encyclopaedic
digressions in Scots which are assumed to be original, the author
is a more deliberate Latinist in the latter than he is when rendering
the passages from the rhétoriqueurs. Here, again, it is the
‘rhetorical' quality which attracts him to the French authors.
He pays little heed to the French timbre of their work, and
hastens, when he must be original, to find the closest imitation
in diction of this sort.
Nou for conclusione of this prolog, i exort the, gade redar, to correct me
familiarly, ande be cherite, Ande til interpreit my intention fauorablye, for
doutles the motione of the compilatione of this tracteit procedis mair of the
compassione that i hef of the publio necessite nor it dois of presumptione or
vane gloir. thy cheretabil correctione maye be ane prouocatione to gar me
studye mair attentiulye in the nyxt verkis that i intend to set furtht, the
quhilk i beleif in gode sal be verray necessair tyl al them that desiris to lyue
verteouslye indurand the schort tyme of this oure fragil peregrinatione, & sa
fayr veil.
And this writer dares to call these words 'agrest termis,' and to
add that he thocht it nocht necessair til hef fardit ande lardit
this tracteit vitht exquisite termis, quhilkis ar nocht daly vsit' and
that he has employed domestic Scottis langage, maist intel-
ligibil for the vulgare pepil. '
It has been argued that an additional cause of the differences
## p. 99 (#117) #############################################
Alleged Celtic Contributions
99
between Early and Middle Scots is to be found in Celtic. Inter-
action has been assumed because the Lowlander and Highlander
were brought into a closer, though forced, association in a unified
Scotland, or because the anti-English policy of the former, threw
him back, no matter with what feelings, upon his northern and
western neighbours. There are, however, serious objections to the
general assumption and to the identification of many of the alleged
borrowings from Celtic. In regard to the first, it must be kept in
mind (a) that the only possible interaction, literary or otherwise, was
with the Gaels of the west and south-west ; 6) that the inhabitants
of Strathclyde and Galloway were, to a certain extent, Romanised
Celts; and (c) that race-antipathies, as shown in The Flyting
of Dunbar and Kennedie, were a strong barrier to linguistic
give-and-take, especially in grammatical structure and orthography.
On the marches there would be borrowing of words, perhaps even
breaking down of inflections and phonetic change. There is
evidence of such effects in the initial f for quh (hw) of the pronoun,
at the Aberdeenshire end of the 'Highland line'; but changes of
this kind do not affect the literary standard, or every dialect of the
spoken language.
The alleged contributions from Celtic are (a) verbal and
(b) orthographic, perhaps phonological. The first are admittedly
of the slightest, and are being gradually reduced. In the second
a contingency is assumed which, as in the case of central French
interference, was the least likely to happen. The closest intimacy
is necessary before one language, especially that which is domi-
nant, permits modifications of its grammatical and orthographic
habit. Our chief authority on Lowland dialects1 has described
some of the salient variations of Middle Scots, 'in the form of
words, and consequently in their written form,' as 'due mostly to
Celtic influence. While it may be admitted that Middle Scots
was not 'founded upon precisely the same dialectic type as the
written language of the early period,' it is by no means clear that
buik, moir, glaid, etc. for older northern forms, the loss of t as
in direck, or its addition as in witht, the inserted mute l in chalmer
(or chaumer, as pronounced), rolkis (rocks) and waltir (water), the
t in the past part. as defamet, or in the adverb, as in fraroart
-that any of these things are the result of the Lowlander's
unconscious affectation of Ersch' speech. The onus probandi
lies with the supporters of this view. At present no evidence has
been produced : it will be surprising if it can be produced.
· Dialect of the Southern Counties of Scotland.
>
6
1-2
## p. 100 (#118) ############################################
CHAPTER V
THE EARLIEST SCOTTISH LITERATURE
BARBOUR, BLIND HARRY, HUCHOUN, WYNTOUN, HOLLAND
As has been indicated in the preceding chapter, it is probable
that, from a very early period in the English colonisation of Britain,
an English dialect was spoken from Forth to Tweed, which was,
in most respects, practically indistinguishable from that spoken
between the Tweed and the Humber. Even along the north-eastern
coast, English was soon the language of the little towns that traded
by sea. Before 1124, the communities of Aberdeen, Banff, Elgin,
Forres, Nairn and Inverness had formed themselves into a minia-
ture Hanseatic league, on which David I conferred sundry privi-
leges. The inland country behind these communities remained
for long in the hands of a Gaelic-speaking people. In the north
of Aberdeenshire there is evidence that the harrying of Buchan,
carried out by Robert the Bruce, in 1308, as part of his vengeance
on his enemies the Comyns, introduced the English language to the
inland districts, for in local documents the names of persons change
speedily after that date from Gaelic to English.
Of a Scottish literature before the wars of independence
there is no trace. In the period preceding the death of Alex-
ander III, in 1286, Scotland was so prosperous that it is difficult to
believe no such literature existed. But, as the dialect of Scotland
was not yet differentiated from that south of the Tweed, such
a literature, unless it took the form of chronicles or was of a
strictly local character, could not easily be identified. It is notice-
able that there is no lack of literature of which the scene is
connected with Scotland. The romance of Sir Tristram, which is
associated with the name of True Thomas, the mysterious seer of
Erceldoune, is preserved only in a dialect which is not Scots.
Though the Gawain cycle appears in different forms in different
dialects, all of them seem to be English. Yet Gawain, according
## p. 101 (#119) ############################################
Early Fragments
I01
to the legend, was prince of Galloway; and, as we shall see, there
is some reason to connect some of these poems with a Scottish
author. The contradiction, however, is more in appearance than
in reality. If these poems were composed by a Scottish author,
they were, undoubtedly, intended rather for recitation than for
reading; and, even if they were meant to be read, a southern
scribe would be certain to adapt the forms to his own dialect.
This adaptation might be either intentional or unintentional. If
intentional, the purpose would be to make the poem more easily
intelligible to southern readers; if unintentional, it would typify
the result which always ensues in all languages from the mechanical
copying of an alien dialect.
In the Scots dialect itself, the political separation brought
about by the wars of Wallace and Bruce produced considerable
changes. The oldest fragments of the dialect are to be found in
the phrases introduced for greater precision into the Latin laws
of David I and his successors. In these we hear of blodewit, styn-
gisdynt, herieth and so forth, for which, in the later Scots version,
are substituted bludewyt, stokisdynt, hereyelde. Till Scotland has
become again an independent kingdom, such words as these, and
the vernacular glosses on the hard words in a Latin lease, are all
that survive to us of the old Scottish tongue. Of early continuous
prose there are no remains. The earliest poetry extant appears in
the few musical and pathetic verses on the death of Alexander III,
which have been quoted a thousand times:
Quhen Alysandyr oure kyng was dedo
That Scotland led in luve and le,
Away wes songoff ale and brede,
Off wyne and wax, off gamyn and gle;
Oure gold wes changyd into lede,
Cryst born into Vyrgynyté
Succoure Scotland and remede
That stad is in perplexyté.
Though preserved only by Wyntoun (c. 1420), they, no doubt,
are not far removed from the original form of a hundred and fifty
years earlier. In Fabyan's Chronicle are preserved some of the
flouts and gibes at the English, baffled in the siege of Berwick
and defeated at Bannockburn. But it is with Barbour, whose
poem The Bruce is the triumphant chronicle of the making of the
new kingdom of Scotland by Robert and Edward Bruce and the
great ‘James of Douglas,' that Scottish literature begins. As the
national epic, coloured, evidently, to a large extent by tradition,
1 abundance.
## p. 102 (#120) ############################################
102
The Earliest Scottish Literature
but written while men still lived who remembered Bannockburn
and the good king Robert, it is entitled to the first place, even
though conceivably some of the literature of pure romance be
not less old.
In John Barbour, the author of The Bruce, we have a typical
example of the prosperous churchman of the fourteenth century.
As we may surmise from his name, he had sprung from the
common folk. Of his early history we know nothing. We first
hear of him in 1357, when he applies to Edward III for a safe-
conduct to take him and a small following of three scholars to
Oxford for purposes of study. By that date, he was already arch-
deacon of Aberdeen, and, as an archdeacon, must have been at least
twenty-five years old.
He probably was some years older. He
died, an old man, in 1396, and we may reasonably conjecture that he
was born soon after 1320. In those days there was no university
in Scotland, and it may be assumed that the archdeacon of
Aberdeen was, in all probability, proceeding in 1357 to Oxford
with some young scholars whom he was to place in that university;
for the Latin of the safe-conduct need not mean, as has often been
assumed, that Barbour himself was to 'keep acts in the schools. '
The safe-conduct was granted him at the request of 'David
de Bruys,' king of Scotland, at that time a captive in king
Edward's hands; and Barbour's next duty, in the same year, was
to serve on a commission for the ransom of king David Other
safe-conducts were granted to Barbour in 1364, 1365 and 1368; that
of 1365 allowing him to pass to St Denis in France, while, in 1368,
he was allowed to cross into France for purposes of study. In 1372
and 1373, he was clerk of the audit of the king's household; and, in
1373, also one of the auditors of the exchequer. By the early
part of 1376, The Bruce was finished; and, soon after, we find him
receiving by command of the king (now Robert II) ten pounds
from the revenues of the city of Aberdeen. In 1378, a pension
a
of twenty shillings sterling from the same source was conferred
upon him for ever-a benefaction which, in 1380, he transferred to
the cathedral of Aberdeen, that the dean and canons might, once a
year, say mass for the souls of his parents, himself and all the
faithful dead. With northern caution, he lays down careful regu-
lations as to how the dean is to divide the twenty shillings among
the staff of the cathedral, not forgetting even the sacrist (the
name still survives in Aberdeen) who tolled the bell. Other sums
were paid to Barbour by the king's order from the revenues of
Aberdeen, and, in 1388, his pension was raised by the king, ‘for his
## p. 103 (#121) ############################################
John Barbour
103
faithful service, to ten pounds, to be paid half-yearly at the
Scottish terms of Whitsunday and Martinmas. He died on
13 March 1396. Like Chaucer, he received from the king in
1380—1) the wardship of a minor, who lived in his parish of
Rayne in Aberdeenshire. On at least one of the many occasions
when he was auditor of the exchequer, Sir Hew of Eglintoun,
who, as we shall see, is also reputed a poet, served along with
him.
Such are the simple annals of John Barbour's life, as known
to us.
For thirty-eight years at least he was archdeacon of Aber-
deen, then, probably, one of the most prosperous towns in the
realm. Fortunately for itself, it was far removed from the border,
and had not suffered so severely as most towns in the wars of
liberation, though it had been visited by all the leading combat-
ants, by Wallace, by Edward I and by Bruce. The records of the
city, unfortunately, do not begin till a few years after Barbour's
death. There is, however, some reason to believe that Barbour
was not alone in his literary activity. To the same district and
to the same period belong the Lives of the Saints, a manuscript
discovered in the Cambridge University Library by Henry Brad-
shaw, who assigned the authorship to Barbour himself. From
Wyntoun we learn that Barbour was the author of other works
which are now lost. In many passages he refers to themes treated
of in a quasi-historical poem, The Brut, which clearly, in matter,
bore a close resemblance to Layamon's poem with the same title.
To Barbour, Wyntoun attributes, also, another lost poem, The
Stewartis Oryginalle, which carried back the genealogy of the
Stewart kings from Robert II of Scotland to Ninus who built
Nineveh—a tour de force excelled only by another Aberdonian,
Sir Thomas Urquhart, the translator of Rabelais, who carried the
genealogy of his family back to Adam himself. It was perfectly
well known that the Stewarts were a branch of the ancient English
house of FitzAlan; but, in the bitter feeling against England
which by this time had come to prevail in Scotland, it was, no doubt,
desirable to find another and more remote origin for the Scottish
royal family. The feeling which led to the production of this fabu-
lous genealogy is vouched for by the author of the Lives of the
Saints already mentioned, who tells us, in the life of St Ninian,
that a paralytic English lord desired his squire, who had brought
home a Scot as prisoner, to put a knife in his mouth with the
blade outward, that he might ‘reave the Scot of his life. ' This
lord, having been dissuaded from his deed of murder, and
a
## p. 104 (#122) ############################################
104
The Earliest Scottish Literature
having listened to the advice of the prisoner that he should try a
visit to St Ninian's shrine as a cure for his paralysis, finds the cure
long in coming, and says that he might have known, if he had been
wise, that a Scotsman of Galloway, as Ninian was, would never
help an Englishman, and would prefer to make him ill rather
than assist him to recover. The genealogy survives for us in
the History of Hector Boece, where we are told that Fleance,
the son of Banquo, had a son Walter, who became steward
of Scotland—a genealogy which passed from Boece through
Holinshed to Shakespeare.
To Barbour also has been attributed a poem on the Siege of Troy,
translated from the popular medieval Latin Troy Book of Guido
delle Colonne, of which two considerable fragments are preserved
with Barbour's name in a manuscript in the Cambridge Univer-
sity Library. The second fragment is found also in a Douce MS
in the Bodleian Library. There is no doubt that these fragments,
which have been utilised to complete an imperfect copy of
Lydgate's translation of Guido, are in the same metre as The
Bruce, which is shorter than that of Lydgate. They are also, no
doubt, in Scots, but, in all probability, they are in the Scots of
the fifteenth, not of the fourteenth, century, and, in detail, do not
resemble Barbour's undoubted composition. More recently, and
with much more plausibility, George Neilson has contended
that The Buik of Alexander, a Scottish translation from two
French poems, is by the author of The Bruce. The similarities
of phraseology between The Buik of Alexander (which exists
only in a printed copy of about 1580, reprinted for the Ban-
natyne Club in 1831) and The Bruce are so numerous and so
striking that it is impossible to believe they are of independent
origin.
To return to The Bruce. This, the work by which the repu-
tation of John Barbour stands or falls, dates from his later
middle life. He must have been a man of between fifty and sixty
before it was finished. It is in no real sense a history, for Barbour
begins with the astounding confusion of Robert the Bruce with
his grandfather the rival of John Balliol in claiming the crown.
As Barbour's own life overlapped that of king Robert, it is im-
possible to believe that this is an accidental oversight. The story
is a romance, and the author treated it as such; 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. So confident of
this was Wyntoun, writing about a quarter of a century after
## p. 105 (#123) ############################################
Barbour's Bruce
105
Barbour's death, that he says he will lightly pass over the details
of Bruce's career because
The Archedene off Abbyrdene
In Brwyss his Buk has gert be sene,
Mare wysly tretyde in-to wryt
Than I can thynk with all my wyt.
Like any other hero of romance, Robert has no peer and no
superior, though inferior to him and to him only are two other
knights, James of Douglas and Edward Bruce. It is only natural,
therefore, that, when he fights against the English, the English
have much the worst of it, even when the odds are very much in
their favour. But, though Barbour is an ardent patriot, he does
his best to be fair, and, no doubt, the main historical events are
related with good faith and as accurately as tradition allowed.
The English are not all villains, the Scots are not all angels from
heaven. For Maknab the traitor, who betrayed Christopher Setoun
to the English, he reserves his bitterest indignation :
In hell condampnyt mot he be. iv, 26.
All Barbour's resources are lavished upon the characters of
king Robert and the good James of Douglas. Edward Bruce is a
fine warrior, but attains not unto these first two for lack of self
control (1x, 661 ff. , XVI, 391 ff. ). Had he had 'mesur in his deid' he
might have equalled any warrior of his time, always excepted
his brother anyrly1
To quhom, in-to chevelry,
I dar peira nane, wes in his day. IX, 664 ff.
Douglas, too, is noble, but he is a darker spirit than king
Robert and more cruel in his treatment of the English, for he
has greater wrongs to revenge. Nothing becomes him better than
his reply to king Robert's advice not to venture into Douglasdale:
Schir, neidwais I will wend
And tak auentur that God will giff
Quhether sa it be till de or liff. V, 242 ff.
Barbour does not often draw full length portraits of his heroes;
but, almost at the end of his poem, tells us how Douglas looked
and what were his chief characteristics (xx, 511 ff. ). The only
other with whom he deals as fully is Sir Thomas Randolph,
earl of Murray (x, 280 ff. ). In both cases he praises, above all
else, their hatred of treason (from which the Scots, both in the
wars of Wallace and of Bruce, had suffered so much) and their
love of loyalty. Douglas, he thinks, can be compared only with
I alone.
compare.
## p. 106 (#124) ############################################
106
The Earliest Scottish Literature
Fabricius, who scorned the offer of Pyrrhus's physician to poison
him.
The kindliness and humour of king Robert he illustrates by
numerous instances—his delaying the army, in order that a poor
laundress, too ill to be moved, may not be left behind to the mercy
of Irish savages (XVI, 270 ff. ); his modesty in declaring that he
slew but one foe while God and his hound had slain two (VII,
484); his popularity among the country folk, when, disguised, he
seeks a lodging and is told by the goodwife
all that traualand ere
For saik of ane ar velcom here,
and that one
Gud kyng Robert the Bruce is he
That is rycht lord of this ountre. VII, 243 ff.
On occasion Barbour displays a dry, caustic humour character-
istic of his country. Once on a time there were such prophets as
David, Samuel, Joel and Isaiah,
Bot thai prophetis so thyn are sawin
That thair in erd now nane is knawin. IV, 685 f.
Of king Edward he remarks that
of othir mennis landis large wes he. XI, 148.
When O’Dymsy let out a loch in Ireland upon Edward Bruce's
men, Barbour's comment is that though they lacked meat, they
were well wet (XIV, 366).
Barbour does not often moralise; but, here and there, he turns
aside from his narrative to express a general sentiment. The
most famous passage of this kind is that on Liberty which, to
Barbour, born when his country was just emerging from a life and
death struggle for its independence, must have had a vividness
beyond what the modern reader can realise. Truth to tell, the
.
passage reads better as an extract than in its original setting,
where it ends in a curious piece of medieval monkish casuistry.
A! fredome is a noble thing!
Fredome mayss man to haiff liking;
Fredome all solace to man giffis:
He levys at ess that frely levys!
A noble hart may haiff nane ese
Na ellys nocht that may him pless,
Gyff fredome failzhel; for fre liking
Is zharnyt2 our all othir thing.
Na he, that ay hass levyt fre
May nocht knaw weill the propyrte,
The angyr, na the wrechyt dome,
That is cowplyt to foule thyrldome;
; desired.
1 fail.
## p. 107 (#125) ############################################
Barbour's Bruce
107
Bot gyff he had assayit it
Than all perqueri he suld it wyty
And suld think fredome mar to pryss
Than all the gold in warld that is. I, 225 ff.
Less well known is his praise of love as that which
mony tyme maiss tender wychtis
Off swilk strenthtis, and swilk mychtis
That thai may. mekill paynys endur. 11, 522 ff.
The tears of joy with which Lennox and his men welcome
Bruce and his followers, whom they meet half-famished among the
hills after they believed them dead, lead the poet on to a curious
disquisition on what makes men and women weep (III, 596 ff. ).
But, generally speaking, these yuai are confined to a single
verse such as
Bot quhar god helpys, qubat may withstand ? I, 456.
The changes and chances of the long-continued war brought
home to him very vividly the fickleness of fortune
That quhile upon a man will smyle
And prik him syne ane othir qubile. XIII, 633 f.
Bot oft falzies the fulys thoucht
And wiss men's etling? cumis nocht
Til sic end as thai weyn alwayis.
A little stane oft, as men sayis,
May ger weltir ane mekill wane.
Na manis myoht may stand agano
The grace of God, that all thing steiris. XI, 21 ff.
Barbour was not of the order whose eye in a fine frenzy
rolling, Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven. '
He was a God-fearing churchman and statesman, who thought it
well to put on record his country's deliverance, before, in the in-
glorious days of Bruce's successors, its memory should have perished.
And what he aimed at he achieved. Like Scott, whose poetry he
inspired, he finds his metre so facile that, at times, he falls into the
merest commonplace. The battle of Bannockburn occupies an
altogether disproportionate space in the poem. Nevertheless,
the description of the battle is Barbour's masterpiece. He must
often have talked with men who had fought at Bannockburn; he
obviously had a very clear conception of the manner in which the
day was lost and won. In his narrative he combines the qualities
which Matthew Arnold assigns to the highest epic style ; he is
rapid in movement, plain in words and in style, simple in ideas
and noble in manner. The only one of these characteristics which
can be disputed is the last. But the description which follows
1 thoroughly.
: endeavour.
## p. 108 (#126) ############################################
108
The Earliest Scottish Literature
speaks for itself. How it appealed to the most Homeric of
Barbour's admirers all readers of Scott's Lord of the Isles are
aware :
And quhen schir Gelis de Argente
Saw the king thus and his menze1
Schape theme to fle so spedely,
He com richt to the kyng in hy),
And said, 'schir, sen that it is swa
That 30 thusgat zour gat will ga,
Haffis gud day! for agane will I;
3heit fled I neuir sekirly,
And I cheiss heir to byde and de
Than till lif heir and schamfully fle. '
His brydill than but mair abaid 3
He turnyt, and agane he raid,
And on schir Eduard the Brysis rout
That was so sturdy and so stout,
As dreid of nakyn thing had he,
He prykit, cryand 'Argente! '
And thai with speris swa him met,
And swa feill speris on hym set,
That he and horss war chargit swa
That bath doune to the erd can ga;
And in that place than slayne wes he. XII, 299 ff.
Barbour's achievement in his age and circumstances is
very remarkable. This is more vividly realised, if his work be
compared with the other national epic, Blind Harry's Wallace,
which, in its own country, secured a more permanent and more
general popularity than The Bruce. Till into the nineteenth
century, one of the few books in every cottage was the Wallace.
The causes of this popularity are to be sought in the fact that
Wallace, being more genuinely a Scot than Bruce, as time went
on, came more and more to be regarded as the national hero, and
his exploits were magnified so as to include much with which
Wallace had nothing to do. The very defects of Harry's poem
commended it to the vulgar. It professes to be the work of a
burel man, one without special equipment as a scholar, though it
is clear that Harry could at least read Latin. 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.
Harry's work, on the other hand, obviously is little but a tradition
of facts seen through the mists of a century and a half. Historians
are unable to assign to the activity of Wallace in his country's cause
a space of more than two years before the battle of Falkirk in
1 following.
; in haste.
without more delay.
• In the eighteenth century modernised by Hamilton of Gilbertfield.
## p. 109 (#127) ############################################
Blind Harry's Wallace
109
1298. Harry, though nowhere consistent, represents his hero as
fighting with the English from his eighteenth year to his forty-
fifth, which is, practically, the period from the death of Alex-
ander III to the battle of Bannockburn. But Wallace was
executed in 1305. The contents of the work are as unhistorical
as the chronology. If Barbour took care, on the whole, that
Bruce should have the best of it, though recognising that he
suffered many reverses, Wallace's path is marked by uniform
success. Where Bruce slays his thousands, Wallace slays his ten
thousands. The carnage is indiscriminate and disgusting. But,
by the time that Wallace was composed, a long series of injuries
subsequent to the wars of independence had engrained an un-
reasoning hate of everything English, which it has taken centuries
of union between the countries to erase from the Scottish mind.
Hence, the very violence of Wallace commended it to its readers.
To the little nation, which suffered so severely from its powerful
neighbour, there was comfort amid the disasters of Flodden or
of Pinkie in the record of the doughty Wallace.
Of the author of this poem we know next to nothing. Accord-
ing to John Major (Mair) the historian, Wallace was written in
his boyhood by one Henry, who was blind from his birth, and
who, by the recitation of his poem in the halls of the great coram
principibus), obtained the food and clothing he had earned. The
date of the composition of the poem may be fixed, approximately,
with the clue supplied by Major, as 1460. In the treasurer's
accounts various payments of a few shillings are entered as having
been made to 'Blin Hary. ' The last of these payments is in 1492.
Harry probably died soon after. Sixteen years later, Dunbar,
in his Lament for the Makaris, enters him in the middle of his
roughly chronological list of deceased poets. From Major's account
it is clear that Harry belonged to the class of the wandering
minstrels who recited, like Homer of old, the deeds of heroes
to their descendants. In Scotland, when the descendants of the
heroes were no longer interested in such compositions, the bards
appeared before humbler audiences; and many persons still alive
can remember the last of them as, in the centre of a crowd of
applauding yokels, he recited his latest composition on some
popular subject of the day.
The sole manuscript of the poem, now in the Advocates' Library
at Edinburgh, was written in 1488 by the same John Ramsay who,
about the same time, wrote the two existing manuscripts of The
Bruce. That he was a more faithful transcriber than he generally
gets credit for having been, is shown by the well-marked differences
a
## p. 110 (#128) ############################################
IIO
The Earliest Scottish Literature
between the language of the two poems. While, in Barbour, hardly
a trace is to be found of the characteristic Scottish dropping of the
final ll in all, small, pull, full, etc. , we find this completely developed
in Wallace, where call has to rime with law, fall with saw, etc.
Here also pulled appears as powed, while pollis is mistakenly put
for paws and malwaris for mawaris (mowers). As Harry was
alive at the time when Ramsay wrote the manuscript, it may have
been written from the author's dictation. Be that as it may, there
is nothing in Harry, any more than in Homer, to show that the
author was born blind. On the contrary, some of his descriptions
seem to show considerable powers of observation, though the
descriptions of natural scenes with which he prefaces several of
the books are an extension of what is found, though rarely, in
Barbour (e. g. V, 1-13, XVI, 63 ff. ) and had been a commonplace
since Chaucer. The matter of his poem he professes to have
derived from a narrative in Latin by John Blair, who had been
chaplain to Wallace and who, if many of Wallace's achievements
are well nigh as mythical as those of Robin Hood, was himself
comparable in prowess to Little John. He was, however, a modest
champion withal, for Harry tells us that Blair's achievements were
inserted in the book by Thomas Gray, parson of Liberton. The
book is not known to exist; but there is no reason to doubt that
it had once existed. According to Harry (xi, 1417), its accuracy was
vouched for by bishop Sinclair of Dunkeld, who had been an eye-
witness of many of Wallace's achievements. But, either the book
from which Harry drew was a later forgery, or Harry must have
considerably embroidered his original; it is inconceivable that
a companion of Wallace could have produced a story widely
differing in chronology, to say nothing of facts, from real history.
But, when the poem has been accepted as a late traditional
romance, founded upon the doings of a national hero of whom little
was known, Wallace is by no means without merit. Harry manages
his long line with considerable success, and so firmly established
it in Scotland that the last romantic poem written in Scots-
Alexander Ross's Helenore, or the Fortunate Shepherde88-carries
on, after three centuries, the rhythm of Harry with the greatest
exactitude. There is no lack of verve in his battle scenes; but they
are all so much alike that they pall by repetition. The following
is typical (II, 398 ff. ). Longcastell (Lancaster), we are told,
Hynt out his suerd, that was of nobill hew,
Wallace with that, at hys lychtyn, him drew;
Apon the crag with his suerd has him tayne;
Throw brayne and seyne in sondyr straik the bayne.
## p. 111 (#129) ############################################
Blind Harry's Wallace III
The ferocity of Wallace is such that he says:
I lik bettir to se the Sothren de
Than gold or land that thai can giff to me. V, 397 f.
Harry feels that the fame of his hero is a little dimmed by the
fact that he belonged only to the ranks of the smaller gentry, but
at once proclaims, like a greater successor, that the 'rank is but the
guinea stamp,' and strengthens his case by the example of the
knights of St John at Rhodes:
Wallace a lord he may be clepyt weyll,
Thocht raryk folk tharoff haiff litill feill;
Na deyme na lord, bot landis be thair part.
Had he the warld, and be wrachit off hart,
He is no lord as to the worthiness;
It can nocht be, but fredome, lordlyknes.
At the Roddis thai mak full mony ane
Quhilk worthy ar, thocht landis haiff thai nane. VII, 397 ff.
In Harry we find the same dry humour as in Barbour; but here
it is of a grimmer cast when the English are in question. When
Wallace, to escape his enemies, had to disguise himself as a maid
spinning, Harry says quaintly
he sat still, and span full connandly
As of his tym, for he nocht leryt lang. I, 248 f.
When their enemies were upon them,
His falow Stewyn than thocht no tyme to bide. V, 154.
When Wallace set the Englishmen's lodging on fire,
Till slepand men that walkand1 was nocht soft VII, 440,
and on another occasion
Quhar Sotheroun duelt, thai maid thair byggyngis hayt.
IX, 1692
Even to Julius Caesar he applies a quip:
Gret Julius, that tribute gat off aw,
His wynnyng was in Scotland bot full smaw. VIII, 1339 f.
In his Chaucerian passages at the beginning of several books,
and in the apostrophe to Scotland in the last book (XI, 1109 ff. ),
Harry employs those 'aureate' terms which, through the following
century, were to be a snare to Scottish literature. But the use
of them proves that Harry was not, after all, a burel man. Here
and there he makes pretensions to classical learning, and, like
Barbour, occasionally refers to the heroes of old romance, to
1 waking
• made their buildings hot.
## p. 112 (#130) ############################################
II2
The Earliest Scottish Literature
Charlemagne at Roncesvalles, to king Arthur slaying the giant at
Mont St Michel, to the Alexander story of Gawdyfer at Gaddris,
also referred to by Barbour. He assumes that all men know
Barbour's book; though, curiously enough, the name of Wallace is
not once to be found in Barbour's poem. A still more recent writer
is probably referred to in the apologue of the owl in borrowed
plumes, which Stewart applies to Wallace, when angry because
Wallace refused to let him lead the vanguard. For, only a few
years before 1460, this story had been the subject of Holland's
Howlat.
With the Buke of the Howlat, which is the proper title of this
work, we pass from historical romance to the last type of the
romance proper, with its metre founded on the old alliterative long
line, but fashioned into an elaborate lyrical stanza of nine long
verses of four beats and four short verses of two beats. The scheme
is ababababcdddc, and no better example of its treatment in the
Howlat can be found than the second stanza:
This riche Revir dovn ran, but resting or rufi
Throwe ane forest on fold, that farly was fair
All the brayis of the brym bair branchis abuf,
And birdis blythest of ble on blossomes bair;
The land lowne was and lea, with lyking and luf,
And for to lende by that laike thocht me levar,
Becauss that thir hartes in heirdis couth hof,
Pransand and prunzeand, be pair and be pair.
ference in the northern Anglic dialect, structural and verbal, and
we know too little of the Anglo-French influences resulting from the
Norman culture which had grown up in the Lothians. Yet, while
1 See Chapter .
## p. 91 (#109) #############################################
Middle Scots
91
allowing for possibilities, or probabilities, of this kind, we may
conclude that, on the whole, the literary language of Scotland down
to the early fifteenth century was in close conformity with the
usage of northern England. The texts of Barbour and Hampole
force us to accept this. Any qualification which may be made
must be due, not to the testimony of facts (for they are wanting),
but to an acknowledgment of the general principle that languages
and dialects change slowly and that the differences in the latter
part of the fifteenth century (to which we are about to refer)
are too fundamental to have taken shape of a sudden.
A change in the habit of the literary language is discernible
from the middle of the fifteenth century. It is definite and of
general occurrence; and it continues with but few variations,
which are due to the idiosyncrasies of writers or the circumstances
of publication, down to the opening decades of the seventeenth
century. To this period (1450-1620) the name of 'Middle Scots'
has been given. The title is not altogether satisfactory, but it is
the best that has been found ; and it is useful in suggesting the
special linguistic phase which intervened between earlier and later
(or modern) Scots. It is applied only to the literary speech. The
spoken language pursued its own course and showed fewer points
of difference from both the literary and spoken dialects of northern
England. When the middle period closes, spoken Scots is again
restored to something of the dignity of a literary medium. This is
said advisedly, for diversity of dialect and the lack of a fixed
orthography in Modern Scots are the denial of the main charac-
teristics of a standard instrument. In Middle Scots, on the other
hand, the linguistic peculiarities are, with the allowances already
noted, uniform within the period, and deliberately followed.
The name 'Early Scots,' for the period ending c. 1450, is
even less satisfactory than 'Middle Scots' for the next (from
1450 to 1620); but it will do no harm if it be understood to be the
literary language of Teutonic Scotland during the century and
a half before 1450, when such differentiation from early northern
English as may be assumed, but cannot readily be proved, was
established. The names 'Northumbrian' and 'Early Northern
English' may be applied to the still earlier stages. Of 'Early Scots'
the typical examples are Barbour's Bruce and Wyntoun's Chronicle :
of Middle Scots the writings of Henryson, Dunbar, Douglas and
Lyndsay. In a more exhaustive scheme it is convenient to have
an intervening 'Early Transition Period'-say from 1420 to 1460—
represented by such important works as The Kingis Quair, Lancelot
of the Laik, and The Quare of Ielusy. The linguistic basis of
a
>
## p. 92 (#110) #############################################
92
The Scottish Language
these poems is Early Scots; but they show an artificial mixture
with southern and pseudo-southern forms derived from Chaucer.
Their language represents no type, literary or spoken; it is a
bookish fabrication; but, though exceptional and individual, it has
the historical interest of being the first expression of a habit
which, in Middle Scots, was neither exceptional nor individual
In this transition period the foreign elements are exclusively
Chaucerian : in Middle Scots, Chaucerian influence, though great
and all pervading, is not the sole cause of the differences ?
The statement that Middle Scots is uniform throughout its
many texts must not be misunderstood. Full allowance must be
made, in each case, for the circumstances of composition and
production. Translations from Latin or French will show a larger
percentage of Romance forms; a dream-poem will attract more
Chaucerian words and phrases and tricks of grammar; a recension
of a southern text or the writing of a Scot in exile in England
will carry over' certain southern mannerisms; French printers
in Paris, or Chepman and Myllar's English craftsmen in Edinburgh,
will bungle and alter; and poets like Gavin Douglas will deal in
archaisms which even an educated contemporary might not readily
understand. Yet these exceptions, and others which might be
named, but prove the validity of the general rule.
Middle Scots stands in marked contrast with Early Scots in
phonology and orthography, in accidence, in syntax and in
vocabulary and word-forms. It is not desirable to attempt even
an outline of each of these in this short chapter. The reader who
wishes further acquaintance is referred to the bibliography.
The remaining pages will be devoted to brief consideration of the
main causes of change and of their relative importance in the
transformation of the dialect, especially in the matter of vocabulary.
The persistence of certain popular misconceptions, or overstate-
ments, of the indebtedness of Scots justifies some discussion of the
question in this place.
An artificial dialect such as is used by the greater Middle Scots
poets is, in some respecte, unaffected by the processes which mould
a living speech? It draws from sources which are outside the
natural means of supply; it adopts consciously and in accordance
1 It may be well to add that these transition' texts are more strongly southern
than are the later texts which continued the habit of borrowing.
If the entire literature of the period (prose as well as verse) be considered, this
impression of artificiality will, of course, be modified. This must always be so, even
when eccentricity is more marked than it is in the present case. Yet we must not
underestimate the importance of a habit which was, after all, followed by all Middle
Scots writers who make any claim to literary style.
## p. 93 (#111) #############################################
Southern Influence on Middle Scots
93
with a deliberately accepted theory of style. If it borrow the forms
which come to all languages with the new things of the market-
place, it does so advisedly, just as it recovers the older forms which
have been lost to ordinary speech. Books are its inspiration, and
the making of books is its end. In this way the literary conscious-
ness of an age as it appears in writers like Henryson and Dunbar
is an index to its linguistic habit. When poets show a new pride
in the vernacular and are concerned with the problems of poetic
diction and form, their admiration of the models of style takes
a very practical turn. Scottish literature, in the full enjoyment
of a new fervour, showed the effect of its enthusiasm in the
fashion of its language. In it, as in the Italian and Burgundian,
the chief effort was to transform the simpler word and phrase into
'aureate' mannerism, to “illumine' the vernacular, to add 'fresch
anamalit termis celicall. ' This Crétinism was the serious concern
of the Scottish poets for at least a century, and even of prose-writers
such as the author of The Complaynt of Scotlande, or Abacuck
Bysset, so late as 1622. In the later stages of Middle Scots, and
especially in the prose, other influences were at work, but the tra-
dition establisbed during the so-called 'golden age still lingered.
The chief modifying forces at work during the middle period
are English, Latin and French. Otherssay Celtic and Scan-
dinavian-may be neglected, but the case for the former will be
glanced at later.
The southern, or English, influence, which is the strongest, is
exerted in three ways. It comes through the study of Chaucer
and the English 'Chaucerians'; through religious and controversial
literature; and, lastly, through the new political and social
relations with England, prior to and following the accession of
James VI to the English throne. The first of these is the most
important. In a later chapter, attention is drawn to the debt
of the Scottish 'makars' to the southern poet and his followers
for the sentiment and fabric of their verse. The measure of
that debt is not complete without acknowledgment to Chaucer's
language. The general effect on Middle Scots of this literary
admiration was an increase in the Romance elements. It may
be taken for granted that the majority of words of Anglo-French
origin which were incorporated at this time were Chaucerian ; but
it is not always easy to distinguish these words from the Anglo-
French which had been naturalised in the early period. It must
not be forgotten, especially in estimating the French contribution
to Middle Scots (see post) that the most active borrowing
from that quarter had been accomplished before this time. In
## p. 94 (#112) #############################################
94
The Scottish Language
6
The Kingis Quair and Lancelot, which illustrate the first Chaucerian
phase in Scots, the infusion is not confined to the vocabulary.
Fantastic grammatical forms are common : such as infinitives in
-en (even -ine), weren for war, past participles with y, frequent
use of finale—all unknown and impossible to the northern dialect.
In these cases there is no mistaking the writer's artifice and its
source. Such freaks in accidence are hardly to be found in the
poetry of James IV's reign ; though Gavin Douglas's eclectic taste
allows the southern ybound and the nondescript ysoupit. In the
verse of the 'golden age' it is the word, or tag, which is the
badge of Chaucerian affectation. The prose shows little or nothing
of this literary reminiscence. John of Ireland, whose writing is
the earliest extant example of original Scots prose of a literary
cast, speaks of 'Galfryde Chauceir' (by whom he really means
Occleve), but exhibits no trace of his influence. When the Middle
Scots prose-writer is not merely annalistic, or didactic, or argu-
mentative, he draws his aureat termis from the familiar Latin.
So, when The Complaynt of Scotlande varies from the norm, it
is, in Rabelais's phrase, to despumate the Latial verbocination,'
or to revel in onomatopoeia.
In the prose, the second and third English influences are
more easily noted, and they are found towards the end
of the period, when a general decadence has set in. Indeed,
they are the chief causes of the undoing of Middle Scots, of
breaking down the very differences which Chaucer, Latinity
and (in a minor degree) French intercourse had accomplished.
It is to be observed that the language of nearly all religious
literature from the middle of the sixteenth century is either
purely southern or strongly anglicised : it is worthy of special
note that, until the publication of the Bassandyne Bible in 1576–9,
all copies of the Scriptures were imported direct from England,
and that the Bassandyne, as authorised by the reformed kirk,
is a close transcript of the Genevan version. This must have
had a powerful influence on the language, spoken and written.
Even in Lyndsay, whose dialect is unmistakable, translated
passages from the Vulgate are taken direct from the English
text. The literary influence was strengthened by protestant
controversialists, notably by Knox, perhaps the most 'English'
of all Scottish prose-writers. This ‘knapping' of 'sudroun’ was
one of the charges preferred against them by catholic pamphleteers
- among others by John Hamilton, author of Ane Catholik and
Facile Traictise (1581), who even saw treason in the printing of
Scottish books at London 'in contempt of our native language. "
## p. 95 (#113) #############################################
The French Element in Middle Scots 95
The third English influence, latest in activity, emphasised these
tendencies. It is easy to trace in state documents and in the
correspondence of the court the intrusion of southern forms. Sal
and shall, till and to, quhilk and which, participles in -and and
-ing, -it and -ed, jostle each other continually. The going of the
court to England, and the consequent affectation of English ways,
undid the artificial Middle Scots which had been fashioned at, and
for, that court. Poetry was transferred, almost en bloc, as if by
act of the British Solomon, to the care of the southern muse : all
the singers, Alexander, Aytoun, Drummond and the rest became
'Elizabethan’ in language and sentiment, differing in nothing,
except an occasional Scotticism, from their southern hosts. When
Scottish literature revives in the mid-seventeenth century, and in
the next is again vigorous, its language is the spoken dialect, the
agrest termis of the Lothians and west country?
That the Romance contribution to Middle Scots is large is
obvious ; that it is found in writings which are not mere tours
de force of aureate' ingenuity is also obvious. But the sorting
out of the borrowings according to their origin has not been
so clear to amateurs of Scots etymology. There has been no lack
of speculation, which, in its generally accepted form, must be
seriously traversed.
The non-Teutonic elements (excluding Celtic) are Latin and
French. An exaggerated estimate of the political and social inter-
course with France, and a corresponding neglect or depreciation
of the position of Latin in Scottish culture, have given vogue to a
theory of French influence on the language which cannot be
accepted without serious modification. The main responsibility
for the popular opinion that Scots is indebted, inordinately, to
French must rest with the late Francisque Michel's Critical
Inquiry into the Scottish Language, with the view of illustrating
the Rise and Progress of Civilisation in Scotland (1882). It
may be true that, 'to thoroughly understand Scottish civilisation,
we must seek for most of its more important germs in French
sources'; but certain important qualifications are necessary.
The French element in Middle Scots represents three stages of
borrowing: first, the material incorporated in the early period
during the process of Anglo-French settlement in the Lothians;
next, the material, also Anglo-French in origin, drawn from Chaucer
and the 'Chaucerian' texts; and, finally, the material adopted from
i Sume qualification is, of course, necessary in Ramsay's case. His antiquarian
taste must be reckoned with by the philologer.
## p. 96 (#114) #############################################
96
The Scottish Language
central French during the close diplomatic intercourse of the
Scottish and French courts, and as a result of the resort of Scottish
students to the university of Paris, and, later, of the national
interest in Calvinistic protestantism. The last of these groups
commends itself readily to the popular imagination: its plausibility
is enforced by recalling the stories of the Scot abroad, of careers
like Buchanan’s, of the Quentin Durwards, and by pointing to the
copies of French institutions in the College of Justice and the older
universities. Yet, when all these are allowed for, the borrowings
from this third source are the smallest in extent, and by no means
important. From the second source, which is, in a sense, English
(for the borrowings were already naturalised English words), the
influx is much greater ; but from the first, certainly the greatest.
So far as the vocabulary is concerned, nearly all the Romance
elements in Middle Scots which cannot be traced to the first or
second, the Anglo-French or Chaucerian source, are of Latin origin.
Even many of the borrowings which are French in form and derived
through French were taken direct from the rhétoriqueurs because
they yielded a ready-made supply of aureate terms and helped the
purposes of writers who, like Gavin Douglas, had set themselves
to cut and carve Latin for the betterment of the vernacular. It
was of the nature of an accident that the media were French books.
The forms appealed to the Latin-speaking, Latin-thinking Scot.
Moreover, not a few of the words which are certainly French, such
as the hackneyed ashet and gigot, belong to the period of Modern
Scots; others, as attour, boule, which appear to yield evidence
of French origin, are 'English' dialectal forms. When Francisque
Michel refers the child-word bae to the bleat in Pathelin we
begin to understand what a Frenchified thing Middle Scots
must have been! Nor is it easy, even with the authority of
another investigator', to allow a French origin to certain well-
known eccentricities of grammar and syntax in Middle Scots-
badges of that period and of no other—the indefinite article
and numeral ane, in all positions; the adjectival plural, e. g. saidis,
quhilkis ; and the frequent placing of the adjective after the
noun, e. g. factis merciall, concepcioun virginale, inimy mortall.
The assumption that such a usage as ane man is an imitation
of the French un homme is, in the first place, entirely unsupported
by historical evidence ; secondly, it shows a grammatical inter-
ference in a place where intrusion is least likely, or hardly possible.
See J. A. H. Murray's Dialect of the Southern Counties of Scotland (Historical
Introduction).
## p. 97 (#115) #############################################
The Latin Element
97
In the case of the other alleged Gallicisms, criticism may be more
constructive, for they may be explained (when they are not the
outcome of verse necessity) as relics or reminiscences of Latin
syntactical habit. The tradition of theological and legal Latin
must be reckoned with ; and the fact that the adjectival plural
is admitted to be first found 'in legal verbiage' is an important
link in the evidence.
So far, we have assumed that the Romance influence which is
not Anglo-French or Chaucerian comes through Latin rather than
French. We may strengthen this position by pointing to the
ascertained importance of Latin in the moulding of Middle Scots.
There is, in the first place, the direct testimony of contemporary
writers to the vitality of Latin, which stands in remarkable contrast
with their silence on the subject of French borrowing. The
circumstances of the writer and the nature of his work must, of
course, be considered. It is to be expected that, in a translation
from Latin, or in treatises on theology, political science, or law,
the infusion will be stronger than in an original work of an
imaginative or descriptive cast. This consideration may affect
our conclusion as to the average strength of the infusion, but it
does not minimise the importance of the fact that Middle Scots
was liable to influence from this quarter. The testimony of such
different writers as John of Ireland, Gavin Douglas and the
author of The Complaynt of Scotlande is instructive. John
excuses his Scots style because he was 'thretty zeris nurist in
fraunce, and in the noble study of Paris in latin toung, and knew
nocht the gret eloquens of chauceir na colouris þat men usis in
þis Inglis metir. Nor was he (we may be certain) the only Scot
who, when it was a question of writing 'in the commoun langage
of bis cuntre,' sought help from Latin, 'the tounge that [he]
knew better. ' Gavin Douglas allows the general necessity of
“bastard latyne, french, or inglis' to a progressive Scots, but
he discusses the advantages of only the first, and shows that in his
task of translating Vergil he must draw freely from Latin, if his
work is not to be 'mank and mutilait' as Caxton's was. The
author of The Complaynt says plainly that “it is necessair at sum
tyme til myxt oure langage vitht part of termis dreuyn fra lateen,
be reson that oure scottis tong is nocht sa copeus as is the lateen
tong. '
These confessions are amply supported by the texts. There we
find not only words of unmistakable Latin lineage such as
translatory, praetermittit, caliginus, but others used in their Latin
7
6
E, L. II
CH, Y.
## p. 98 (#116) #############################################
98
The Scottish Language
6
sense, such as prefferris (excels), pretendis (aims at), and the like.
Further, there is ample evidence of the process, at which Douglas
clearly hints, that Latin was drawn upon without hesitation and
without any attempt to disguise the borrowing. The word mank
in the quotation already given is an illustration. It may be Old
French (through Anglo-French), but its natural parent is manc -us
Examples of direct association with Latin are plentiful : here, two
must suffice. “Withoutin more or delay' is plain sine mora aut
dilatione : no imaginary French 'more'intervenes. Even at the
close of the period a man may be described in kirk minutes as
‘apt and idoneus to enter the ministry. In accidence even, as in
the uninflected past participle, e. g. did fatigat, being deliberat,
salbe repute—a form which still lingers in Scottish legal style-the
derivation from Latin is direct.
On the whole, therefore, the Romance material in Middle
Scots, in so far as it is not Anglo-French, directly or mediately,
is largely Latin. Central French is certainly represented in such
words as preaux and charpentier, but they are in many cases ära
Reyóueva or the liking of certain authors. To counterbalance this, it
may be pointed out that in The Complaynt of Scotlande, that strange
mosaic of verbatim translation from French with encyclopaedic
digressions in Scots which are assumed to be original, the author
is a more deliberate Latinist in the latter than he is when rendering
the passages from the rhétoriqueurs. Here, again, it is the
‘rhetorical' quality which attracts him to the French authors.
He pays little heed to the French timbre of their work, and
hastens, when he must be original, to find the closest imitation
in diction of this sort.
Nou for conclusione of this prolog, i exort the, gade redar, to correct me
familiarly, ande be cherite, Ande til interpreit my intention fauorablye, for
doutles the motione of the compilatione of this tracteit procedis mair of the
compassione that i hef of the publio necessite nor it dois of presumptione or
vane gloir. thy cheretabil correctione maye be ane prouocatione to gar me
studye mair attentiulye in the nyxt verkis that i intend to set furtht, the
quhilk i beleif in gode sal be verray necessair tyl al them that desiris to lyue
verteouslye indurand the schort tyme of this oure fragil peregrinatione, & sa
fayr veil.
And this writer dares to call these words 'agrest termis,' and to
add that he thocht it nocht necessair til hef fardit ande lardit
this tracteit vitht exquisite termis, quhilkis ar nocht daly vsit' and
that he has employed domestic Scottis langage, maist intel-
ligibil for the vulgare pepil. '
It has been argued that an additional cause of the differences
## p. 99 (#117) #############################################
Alleged Celtic Contributions
99
between Early and Middle Scots is to be found in Celtic. Inter-
action has been assumed because the Lowlander and Highlander
were brought into a closer, though forced, association in a unified
Scotland, or because the anti-English policy of the former, threw
him back, no matter with what feelings, upon his northern and
western neighbours. There are, however, serious objections to the
general assumption and to the identification of many of the alleged
borrowings from Celtic. In regard to the first, it must be kept in
mind (a) that the only possible interaction, literary or otherwise, was
with the Gaels of the west and south-west ; 6) that the inhabitants
of Strathclyde and Galloway were, to a certain extent, Romanised
Celts; and (c) that race-antipathies, as shown in The Flyting
of Dunbar and Kennedie, were a strong barrier to linguistic
give-and-take, especially in grammatical structure and orthography.
On the marches there would be borrowing of words, perhaps even
breaking down of inflections and phonetic change. There is
evidence of such effects in the initial f for quh (hw) of the pronoun,
at the Aberdeenshire end of the 'Highland line'; but changes of
this kind do not affect the literary standard, or every dialect of the
spoken language.
The alleged contributions from Celtic are (a) verbal and
(b) orthographic, perhaps phonological. The first are admittedly
of the slightest, and are being gradually reduced. In the second
a contingency is assumed which, as in the case of central French
interference, was the least likely to happen. The closest intimacy
is necessary before one language, especially that which is domi-
nant, permits modifications of its grammatical and orthographic
habit. Our chief authority on Lowland dialects1 has described
some of the salient variations of Middle Scots, 'in the form of
words, and consequently in their written form,' as 'due mostly to
Celtic influence. While it may be admitted that Middle Scots
was not 'founded upon precisely the same dialectic type as the
written language of the early period,' it is by no means clear that
buik, moir, glaid, etc. for older northern forms, the loss of t as
in direck, or its addition as in witht, the inserted mute l in chalmer
(or chaumer, as pronounced), rolkis (rocks) and waltir (water), the
t in the past part. as defamet, or in the adverb, as in fraroart
-that any of these things are the result of the Lowlander's
unconscious affectation of Ersch' speech. The onus probandi
lies with the supporters of this view. At present no evidence has
been produced : it will be surprising if it can be produced.
· Dialect of the Southern Counties of Scotland.
>
6
1-2
## p. 100 (#118) ############################################
CHAPTER V
THE EARLIEST SCOTTISH LITERATURE
BARBOUR, BLIND HARRY, HUCHOUN, WYNTOUN, HOLLAND
As has been indicated in the preceding chapter, it is probable
that, from a very early period in the English colonisation of Britain,
an English dialect was spoken from Forth to Tweed, which was,
in most respects, practically indistinguishable from that spoken
between the Tweed and the Humber. Even along the north-eastern
coast, English was soon the language of the little towns that traded
by sea. Before 1124, the communities of Aberdeen, Banff, Elgin,
Forres, Nairn and Inverness had formed themselves into a minia-
ture Hanseatic league, on which David I conferred sundry privi-
leges. The inland country behind these communities remained
for long in the hands of a Gaelic-speaking people. In the north
of Aberdeenshire there is evidence that the harrying of Buchan,
carried out by Robert the Bruce, in 1308, as part of his vengeance
on his enemies the Comyns, introduced the English language to the
inland districts, for in local documents the names of persons change
speedily after that date from Gaelic to English.
Of a Scottish literature before the wars of independence
there is no trace. In the period preceding the death of Alex-
ander III, in 1286, Scotland was so prosperous that it is difficult to
believe no such literature existed. But, as the dialect of Scotland
was not yet differentiated from that south of the Tweed, such
a literature, unless it took the form of chronicles or was of a
strictly local character, could not easily be identified. It is notice-
able that there is no lack of literature of which the scene is
connected with Scotland. The romance of Sir Tristram, which is
associated with the name of True Thomas, the mysterious seer of
Erceldoune, is preserved only in a dialect which is not Scots.
Though the Gawain cycle appears in different forms in different
dialects, all of them seem to be English. Yet Gawain, according
## p. 101 (#119) ############################################
Early Fragments
I01
to the legend, was prince of Galloway; and, as we shall see, there
is some reason to connect some of these poems with a Scottish
author. The contradiction, however, is more in appearance than
in reality. If these poems were composed by a Scottish author,
they were, undoubtedly, intended rather for recitation than for
reading; and, even if they were meant to be read, a southern
scribe would be certain to adapt the forms to his own dialect.
This adaptation might be either intentional or unintentional. If
intentional, the purpose would be to make the poem more easily
intelligible to southern readers; if unintentional, it would typify
the result which always ensues in all languages from the mechanical
copying of an alien dialect.
In the Scots dialect itself, the political separation brought
about by the wars of Wallace and Bruce produced considerable
changes. The oldest fragments of the dialect are to be found in
the phrases introduced for greater precision into the Latin laws
of David I and his successors. In these we hear of blodewit, styn-
gisdynt, herieth and so forth, for which, in the later Scots version,
are substituted bludewyt, stokisdynt, hereyelde. Till Scotland has
become again an independent kingdom, such words as these, and
the vernacular glosses on the hard words in a Latin lease, are all
that survive to us of the old Scottish tongue. Of early continuous
prose there are no remains. The earliest poetry extant appears in
the few musical and pathetic verses on the death of Alexander III,
which have been quoted a thousand times:
Quhen Alysandyr oure kyng was dedo
That Scotland led in luve and le,
Away wes songoff ale and brede,
Off wyne and wax, off gamyn and gle;
Oure gold wes changyd into lede,
Cryst born into Vyrgynyté
Succoure Scotland and remede
That stad is in perplexyté.
Though preserved only by Wyntoun (c. 1420), they, no doubt,
are not far removed from the original form of a hundred and fifty
years earlier. In Fabyan's Chronicle are preserved some of the
flouts and gibes at the English, baffled in the siege of Berwick
and defeated at Bannockburn. But it is with Barbour, whose
poem The Bruce is the triumphant chronicle of the making of the
new kingdom of Scotland by Robert and Edward Bruce and the
great ‘James of Douglas,' that Scottish literature begins. As the
national epic, coloured, evidently, to a large extent by tradition,
1 abundance.
## p. 102 (#120) ############################################
102
The Earliest Scottish Literature
but written while men still lived who remembered Bannockburn
and the good king Robert, it is entitled to the first place, even
though conceivably some of the literature of pure romance be
not less old.
In John Barbour, the author of The Bruce, we have a typical
example of the prosperous churchman of the fourteenth century.
As we may surmise from his name, he had sprung from the
common folk. Of his early history we know nothing. We first
hear of him in 1357, when he applies to Edward III for a safe-
conduct to take him and a small following of three scholars to
Oxford for purposes of study. By that date, he was already arch-
deacon of Aberdeen, and, as an archdeacon, must have been at least
twenty-five years old.
He probably was some years older. He
died, an old man, in 1396, and we may reasonably conjecture that he
was born soon after 1320. In those days there was no university
in Scotland, and it may be assumed that the archdeacon of
Aberdeen was, in all probability, proceeding in 1357 to Oxford
with some young scholars whom he was to place in that university;
for the Latin of the safe-conduct need not mean, as has often been
assumed, that Barbour himself was to 'keep acts in the schools. '
The safe-conduct was granted him at the request of 'David
de Bruys,' king of Scotland, at that time a captive in king
Edward's hands; and Barbour's next duty, in the same year, was
to serve on a commission for the ransom of king David Other
safe-conducts were granted to Barbour in 1364, 1365 and 1368; that
of 1365 allowing him to pass to St Denis in France, while, in 1368,
he was allowed to cross into France for purposes of study. In 1372
and 1373, he was clerk of the audit of the king's household; and, in
1373, also one of the auditors of the exchequer. By the early
part of 1376, The Bruce was finished; and, soon after, we find him
receiving by command of the king (now Robert II) ten pounds
from the revenues of the city of Aberdeen. In 1378, a pension
a
of twenty shillings sterling from the same source was conferred
upon him for ever-a benefaction which, in 1380, he transferred to
the cathedral of Aberdeen, that the dean and canons might, once a
year, say mass for the souls of his parents, himself and all the
faithful dead. With northern caution, he lays down careful regu-
lations as to how the dean is to divide the twenty shillings among
the staff of the cathedral, not forgetting even the sacrist (the
name still survives in Aberdeen) who tolled the bell. Other sums
were paid to Barbour by the king's order from the revenues of
Aberdeen, and, in 1388, his pension was raised by the king, ‘for his
## p. 103 (#121) ############################################
John Barbour
103
faithful service, to ten pounds, to be paid half-yearly at the
Scottish terms of Whitsunday and Martinmas. He died on
13 March 1396. Like Chaucer, he received from the king in
1380—1) the wardship of a minor, who lived in his parish of
Rayne in Aberdeenshire. On at least one of the many occasions
when he was auditor of the exchequer, Sir Hew of Eglintoun,
who, as we shall see, is also reputed a poet, served along with
him.
Such are the simple annals of John Barbour's life, as known
to us.
For thirty-eight years at least he was archdeacon of Aber-
deen, then, probably, one of the most prosperous towns in the
realm. Fortunately for itself, it was far removed from the border,
and had not suffered so severely as most towns in the wars of
liberation, though it had been visited by all the leading combat-
ants, by Wallace, by Edward I and by Bruce. The records of the
city, unfortunately, do not begin till a few years after Barbour's
death. There is, however, some reason to believe that Barbour
was not alone in his literary activity. To the same district and
to the same period belong the Lives of the Saints, a manuscript
discovered in the Cambridge University Library by Henry Brad-
shaw, who assigned the authorship to Barbour himself. From
Wyntoun we learn that Barbour was the author of other works
which are now lost. In many passages he refers to themes treated
of in a quasi-historical poem, The Brut, which clearly, in matter,
bore a close resemblance to Layamon's poem with the same title.
To Barbour, Wyntoun attributes, also, another lost poem, The
Stewartis Oryginalle, which carried back the genealogy of the
Stewart kings from Robert II of Scotland to Ninus who built
Nineveh—a tour de force excelled only by another Aberdonian,
Sir Thomas Urquhart, the translator of Rabelais, who carried the
genealogy of his family back to Adam himself. It was perfectly
well known that the Stewarts were a branch of the ancient English
house of FitzAlan; but, in the bitter feeling against England
which by this time had come to prevail in Scotland, it was, no doubt,
desirable to find another and more remote origin for the Scottish
royal family. The feeling which led to the production of this fabu-
lous genealogy is vouched for by the author of the Lives of the
Saints already mentioned, who tells us, in the life of St Ninian,
that a paralytic English lord desired his squire, who had brought
home a Scot as prisoner, to put a knife in his mouth with the
blade outward, that he might ‘reave the Scot of his life. ' This
lord, having been dissuaded from his deed of murder, and
a
## p. 104 (#122) ############################################
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The Earliest Scottish Literature
having listened to the advice of the prisoner that he should try a
visit to St Ninian's shrine as a cure for his paralysis, finds the cure
long in coming, and says that he might have known, if he had been
wise, that a Scotsman of Galloway, as Ninian was, would never
help an Englishman, and would prefer to make him ill rather
than assist him to recover. The genealogy survives for us in
the History of Hector Boece, where we are told that Fleance,
the son of Banquo, had a son Walter, who became steward
of Scotland—a genealogy which passed from Boece through
Holinshed to Shakespeare.
To Barbour also has been attributed a poem on the Siege of Troy,
translated from the popular medieval Latin Troy Book of Guido
delle Colonne, of which two considerable fragments are preserved
with Barbour's name in a manuscript in the Cambridge Univer-
sity Library. The second fragment is found also in a Douce MS
in the Bodleian Library. There is no doubt that these fragments,
which have been utilised to complete an imperfect copy of
Lydgate's translation of Guido, are in the same metre as The
Bruce, which is shorter than that of Lydgate. They are also, no
doubt, in Scots, but, in all probability, they are in the Scots of
the fifteenth, not of the fourteenth, century, and, in detail, do not
resemble Barbour's undoubted composition. More recently, and
with much more plausibility, George Neilson has contended
that The Buik of Alexander, a Scottish translation from two
French poems, is by the author of The Bruce. The similarities
of phraseology between The Buik of Alexander (which exists
only in a printed copy of about 1580, reprinted for the Ban-
natyne Club in 1831) and The Bruce are so numerous and so
striking that it is impossible to believe they are of independent
origin.
To return to The Bruce. This, the work by which the repu-
tation of John Barbour stands or falls, dates from his later
middle life. He must have been a man of between fifty and sixty
before it was finished. It is in no real sense a history, for Barbour
begins with the astounding confusion of Robert the Bruce with
his grandfather the rival of John Balliol in claiming the crown.
As Barbour's own life overlapped that of king Robert, it is im-
possible to believe that this is an accidental oversight. The story
is a romance, and the author treated it as such; 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. So confident of
this was Wyntoun, writing about a quarter of a century after
## p. 105 (#123) ############################################
Barbour's Bruce
105
Barbour's death, that he says he will lightly pass over the details
of Bruce's career because
The Archedene off Abbyrdene
In Brwyss his Buk has gert be sene,
Mare wysly tretyde in-to wryt
Than I can thynk with all my wyt.
Like any other hero of romance, Robert has no peer and no
superior, though inferior to him and to him only are two other
knights, James of Douglas and Edward Bruce. It is only natural,
therefore, that, when he fights against the English, the English
have much the worst of it, even when the odds are very much in
their favour. But, though Barbour is an ardent patriot, he does
his best to be fair, and, no doubt, the main historical events are
related with good faith and as accurately as tradition allowed.
The English are not all villains, the Scots are not all angels from
heaven. For Maknab the traitor, who betrayed Christopher Setoun
to the English, he reserves his bitterest indignation :
In hell condampnyt mot he be. iv, 26.
All Barbour's resources are lavished upon the characters of
king Robert and the good James of Douglas. Edward Bruce is a
fine warrior, but attains not unto these first two for lack of self
control (1x, 661 ff. , XVI, 391 ff. ). Had he had 'mesur in his deid' he
might have equalled any warrior of his time, always excepted
his brother anyrly1
To quhom, in-to chevelry,
I dar peira nane, wes in his day. IX, 664 ff.
Douglas, too, is noble, but he is a darker spirit than king
Robert and more cruel in his treatment of the English, for he
has greater wrongs to revenge. Nothing becomes him better than
his reply to king Robert's advice not to venture into Douglasdale:
Schir, neidwais I will wend
And tak auentur that God will giff
Quhether sa it be till de or liff. V, 242 ff.
Barbour does not often draw full length portraits of his heroes;
but, almost at the end of his poem, tells us how Douglas looked
and what were his chief characteristics (xx, 511 ff. ). The only
other with whom he deals as fully is Sir Thomas Randolph,
earl of Murray (x, 280 ff. ). In both cases he praises, above all
else, their hatred of treason (from which the Scots, both in the
wars of Wallace and of Bruce, had suffered so much) and their
love of loyalty. Douglas, he thinks, can be compared only with
I alone.
compare.
## p. 106 (#124) ############################################
106
The Earliest Scottish Literature
Fabricius, who scorned the offer of Pyrrhus's physician to poison
him.
The kindliness and humour of king Robert he illustrates by
numerous instances—his delaying the army, in order that a poor
laundress, too ill to be moved, may not be left behind to the mercy
of Irish savages (XVI, 270 ff. ); his modesty in declaring that he
slew but one foe while God and his hound had slain two (VII,
484); his popularity among the country folk, when, disguised, he
seeks a lodging and is told by the goodwife
all that traualand ere
For saik of ane ar velcom here,
and that one
Gud kyng Robert the Bruce is he
That is rycht lord of this ountre. VII, 243 ff.
On occasion Barbour displays a dry, caustic humour character-
istic of his country. Once on a time there were such prophets as
David, Samuel, Joel and Isaiah,
Bot thai prophetis so thyn are sawin
That thair in erd now nane is knawin. IV, 685 f.
Of king Edward he remarks that
of othir mennis landis large wes he. XI, 148.
When O’Dymsy let out a loch in Ireland upon Edward Bruce's
men, Barbour's comment is that though they lacked meat, they
were well wet (XIV, 366).
Barbour does not often moralise; but, here and there, he turns
aside from his narrative to express a general sentiment. The
most famous passage of this kind is that on Liberty which, to
Barbour, born when his country was just emerging from a life and
death struggle for its independence, must have had a vividness
beyond what the modern reader can realise. Truth to tell, the
.
passage reads better as an extract than in its original setting,
where it ends in a curious piece of medieval monkish casuistry.
A! fredome is a noble thing!
Fredome mayss man to haiff liking;
Fredome all solace to man giffis:
He levys at ess that frely levys!
A noble hart may haiff nane ese
Na ellys nocht that may him pless,
Gyff fredome failzhel; for fre liking
Is zharnyt2 our all othir thing.
Na he, that ay hass levyt fre
May nocht knaw weill the propyrte,
The angyr, na the wrechyt dome,
That is cowplyt to foule thyrldome;
; desired.
1 fail.
## p. 107 (#125) ############################################
Barbour's Bruce
107
Bot gyff he had assayit it
Than all perqueri he suld it wyty
And suld think fredome mar to pryss
Than all the gold in warld that is. I, 225 ff.
Less well known is his praise of love as that which
mony tyme maiss tender wychtis
Off swilk strenthtis, and swilk mychtis
That thai may. mekill paynys endur. 11, 522 ff.
The tears of joy with which Lennox and his men welcome
Bruce and his followers, whom they meet half-famished among the
hills after they believed them dead, lead the poet on to a curious
disquisition on what makes men and women weep (III, 596 ff. ).
But, generally speaking, these yuai are confined to a single
verse such as
Bot quhar god helpys, qubat may withstand ? I, 456.
The changes and chances of the long-continued war brought
home to him very vividly the fickleness of fortune
That quhile upon a man will smyle
And prik him syne ane othir qubile. XIII, 633 f.
Bot oft falzies the fulys thoucht
And wiss men's etling? cumis nocht
Til sic end as thai weyn alwayis.
A little stane oft, as men sayis,
May ger weltir ane mekill wane.
Na manis myoht may stand agano
The grace of God, that all thing steiris. XI, 21 ff.
Barbour was not of the order whose eye in a fine frenzy
rolling, Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven. '
He was a God-fearing churchman and statesman, who thought it
well to put on record his country's deliverance, before, in the in-
glorious days of Bruce's successors, its memory should have perished.
And what he aimed at he achieved. Like Scott, whose poetry he
inspired, he finds his metre so facile that, at times, he falls into the
merest commonplace. The battle of Bannockburn occupies an
altogether disproportionate space in the poem. Nevertheless,
the description of the battle is Barbour's masterpiece. He must
often have talked with men who had fought at Bannockburn; he
obviously had a very clear conception of the manner in which the
day was lost and won. In his narrative he combines the qualities
which Matthew Arnold assigns to the highest epic style ; he is
rapid in movement, plain in words and in style, simple in ideas
and noble in manner. The only one of these characteristics which
can be disputed is the last. But the description which follows
1 thoroughly.
: endeavour.
## p. 108 (#126) ############################################
108
The Earliest Scottish Literature
speaks for itself. How it appealed to the most Homeric of
Barbour's admirers all readers of Scott's Lord of the Isles are
aware :
And quhen schir Gelis de Argente
Saw the king thus and his menze1
Schape theme to fle so spedely,
He com richt to the kyng in hy),
And said, 'schir, sen that it is swa
That 30 thusgat zour gat will ga,
Haffis gud day! for agane will I;
3heit fled I neuir sekirly,
And I cheiss heir to byde and de
Than till lif heir and schamfully fle. '
His brydill than but mair abaid 3
He turnyt, and agane he raid,
And on schir Eduard the Brysis rout
That was so sturdy and so stout,
As dreid of nakyn thing had he,
He prykit, cryand 'Argente! '
And thai with speris swa him met,
And swa feill speris on hym set,
That he and horss war chargit swa
That bath doune to the erd can ga;
And in that place than slayne wes he. XII, 299 ff.
Barbour's achievement in his age and circumstances is
very remarkable. This is more vividly realised, if his work be
compared with the other national epic, Blind Harry's Wallace,
which, in its own country, secured a more permanent and more
general popularity than The Bruce. Till into the nineteenth
century, one of the few books in every cottage was the Wallace.
The causes of this popularity are to be sought in the fact that
Wallace, being more genuinely a Scot than Bruce, as time went
on, came more and more to be regarded as the national hero, and
his exploits were magnified so as to include much with which
Wallace had nothing to do. The very defects of Harry's poem
commended it to the vulgar. It professes to be the work of a
burel man, one without special equipment as a scholar, though it
is clear that Harry could at least read Latin. 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.
Harry's work, on the other hand, obviously is little but a tradition
of facts seen through the mists of a century and a half. Historians
are unable to assign to the activity of Wallace in his country's cause
a space of more than two years before the battle of Falkirk in
1 following.
; in haste.
without more delay.
• In the eighteenth century modernised by Hamilton of Gilbertfield.
## p. 109 (#127) ############################################
Blind Harry's Wallace
109
1298. Harry, though nowhere consistent, represents his hero as
fighting with the English from his eighteenth year to his forty-
fifth, which is, practically, the period from the death of Alex-
ander III to the battle of Bannockburn. But Wallace was
executed in 1305. The contents of the work are as unhistorical
as the chronology. If Barbour took care, on the whole, that
Bruce should have the best of it, though recognising that he
suffered many reverses, Wallace's path is marked by uniform
success. Where Bruce slays his thousands, Wallace slays his ten
thousands. The carnage is indiscriminate and disgusting. But,
by the time that Wallace was composed, a long series of injuries
subsequent to the wars of independence had engrained an un-
reasoning hate of everything English, which it has taken centuries
of union between the countries to erase from the Scottish mind.
Hence, the very violence of Wallace commended it to its readers.
To the little nation, which suffered so severely from its powerful
neighbour, there was comfort amid the disasters of Flodden or
of Pinkie in the record of the doughty Wallace.
Of the author of this poem we know next to nothing. Accord-
ing to John Major (Mair) the historian, Wallace was written in
his boyhood by one Henry, who was blind from his birth, and
who, by the recitation of his poem in the halls of the great coram
principibus), obtained the food and clothing he had earned. The
date of the composition of the poem may be fixed, approximately,
with the clue supplied by Major, as 1460. In the treasurer's
accounts various payments of a few shillings are entered as having
been made to 'Blin Hary. ' The last of these payments is in 1492.
Harry probably died soon after. Sixteen years later, Dunbar,
in his Lament for the Makaris, enters him in the middle of his
roughly chronological list of deceased poets. From Major's account
it is clear that Harry belonged to the class of the wandering
minstrels who recited, like Homer of old, the deeds of heroes
to their descendants. In Scotland, when the descendants of the
heroes were no longer interested in such compositions, the bards
appeared before humbler audiences; and many persons still alive
can remember the last of them as, in the centre of a crowd of
applauding yokels, he recited his latest composition on some
popular subject of the day.
The sole manuscript of the poem, now in the Advocates' Library
at Edinburgh, was written in 1488 by the same John Ramsay who,
about the same time, wrote the two existing manuscripts of The
Bruce. That he was a more faithful transcriber than he generally
gets credit for having been, is shown by the well-marked differences
a
## p. 110 (#128) ############################################
IIO
The Earliest Scottish Literature
between the language of the two poems. While, in Barbour, hardly
a trace is to be found of the characteristic Scottish dropping of the
final ll in all, small, pull, full, etc. , we find this completely developed
in Wallace, where call has to rime with law, fall with saw, etc.
Here also pulled appears as powed, while pollis is mistakenly put
for paws and malwaris for mawaris (mowers). As Harry was
alive at the time when Ramsay wrote the manuscript, it may have
been written from the author's dictation. Be that as it may, there
is nothing in Harry, any more than in Homer, to show that the
author was born blind. On the contrary, some of his descriptions
seem to show considerable powers of observation, though the
descriptions of natural scenes with which he prefaces several of
the books are an extension of what is found, though rarely, in
Barbour (e. g. V, 1-13, XVI, 63 ff. ) and had been a commonplace
since Chaucer. The matter of his poem he professes to have
derived from a narrative in Latin by John Blair, who had been
chaplain to Wallace and who, if many of Wallace's achievements
are well nigh as mythical as those of Robin Hood, was himself
comparable in prowess to Little John. He was, however, a modest
champion withal, for Harry tells us that Blair's achievements were
inserted in the book by Thomas Gray, parson of Liberton. The
book is not known to exist; but there is no reason to doubt that
it had once existed. According to Harry (xi, 1417), its accuracy was
vouched for by bishop Sinclair of Dunkeld, who had been an eye-
witness of many of Wallace's achievements. But, either the book
from which Harry drew was a later forgery, or Harry must have
considerably embroidered his original; it is inconceivable that
a companion of Wallace could have produced a story widely
differing in chronology, to say nothing of facts, from real history.
But, when the poem has been accepted as a late traditional
romance, founded upon the doings of a national hero of whom little
was known, Wallace is by no means without merit. Harry manages
his long line with considerable success, and so firmly established
it in Scotland that the last romantic poem written in Scots-
Alexander Ross's Helenore, or the Fortunate Shepherde88-carries
on, after three centuries, the rhythm of Harry with the greatest
exactitude. There is no lack of verve in his battle scenes; but they
are all so much alike that they pall by repetition. The following
is typical (II, 398 ff. ). Longcastell (Lancaster), we are told,
Hynt out his suerd, that was of nobill hew,
Wallace with that, at hys lychtyn, him drew;
Apon the crag with his suerd has him tayne;
Throw brayne and seyne in sondyr straik the bayne.
## p. 111 (#129) ############################################
Blind Harry's Wallace III
The ferocity of Wallace is such that he says:
I lik bettir to se the Sothren de
Than gold or land that thai can giff to me. V, 397 f.
Harry feels that the fame of his hero is a little dimmed by the
fact that he belonged only to the ranks of the smaller gentry, but
at once proclaims, like a greater successor, that the 'rank is but the
guinea stamp,' and strengthens his case by the example of the
knights of St John at Rhodes:
Wallace a lord he may be clepyt weyll,
Thocht raryk folk tharoff haiff litill feill;
Na deyme na lord, bot landis be thair part.
Had he the warld, and be wrachit off hart,
He is no lord as to the worthiness;
It can nocht be, but fredome, lordlyknes.
At the Roddis thai mak full mony ane
Quhilk worthy ar, thocht landis haiff thai nane. VII, 397 ff.
In Harry we find the same dry humour as in Barbour; but here
it is of a grimmer cast when the English are in question. When
Wallace, to escape his enemies, had to disguise himself as a maid
spinning, Harry says quaintly
he sat still, and span full connandly
As of his tym, for he nocht leryt lang. I, 248 f.
When their enemies were upon them,
His falow Stewyn than thocht no tyme to bide. V, 154.
When Wallace set the Englishmen's lodging on fire,
Till slepand men that walkand1 was nocht soft VII, 440,
and on another occasion
Quhar Sotheroun duelt, thai maid thair byggyngis hayt.
IX, 1692
Even to Julius Caesar he applies a quip:
Gret Julius, that tribute gat off aw,
His wynnyng was in Scotland bot full smaw. VIII, 1339 f.
In his Chaucerian passages at the beginning of several books,
and in the apostrophe to Scotland in the last book (XI, 1109 ff. ),
Harry employs those 'aureate' terms which, through the following
century, were to be a snare to Scottish literature. But the use
of them proves that Harry was not, after all, a burel man. Here
and there he makes pretensions to classical learning, and, like
Barbour, occasionally refers to the heroes of old romance, to
1 waking
• made their buildings hot.
## p. 112 (#130) ############################################
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The Earliest Scottish Literature
Charlemagne at Roncesvalles, to king Arthur slaying the giant at
Mont St Michel, to the Alexander story of Gawdyfer at Gaddris,
also referred to by Barbour. He assumes that all men know
Barbour's book; though, curiously enough, the name of Wallace is
not once to be found in Barbour's poem. A still more recent writer
is probably referred to in the apologue of the owl in borrowed
plumes, which Stewart applies to Wallace, when angry because
Wallace refused to let him lead the vanguard. For, only a few
years before 1460, this story had been the subject of Holland's
Howlat.
With the Buke of the Howlat, which is the proper title of this
work, we pass from historical romance to the last type of the
romance proper, with its metre founded on the old alliterative long
line, but fashioned into an elaborate lyrical stanza of nine long
verses of four beats and four short verses of two beats. The scheme
is ababababcdddc, and no better example of its treatment in the
Howlat can be found than the second stanza:
This riche Revir dovn ran, but resting or rufi
Throwe ane forest on fold, that farly was fair
All the brayis of the brym bair branchis abuf,
And birdis blythest of ble on blossomes bair;
The land lowne was and lea, with lyking and luf,
And for to lende by that laike thocht me levar,
Becauss that thir hartes in heirdis couth hof,
Pransand and prunzeand, be pair and be pair.
