Scottish Lords and Their Leaders in the Narratives About Great Moments in Community History (Between John Barbour’S the Bruce and Blind Hary’S Wallace)

154 Michalski

Chapter 9 Creating Knightly Identities? Scottish Lords and Their Leaders in the Narratives about Great Moments in Community History (between John Barbour’s The Bruce and Blind Hary’s Wallace)

Wojciech Michalski

John Barbour’s The Bruce (ca. 1376) and Blind Hary’s Wallace (ca. 1478)1 are long epic poems which could without exaggeration be described as master- pieces of Scottish medieval literature.2 Their main themes are the heroic biographies of two famous Scottish leaders who emerged during the Anglo- Scottish war of 1296-1328 which is often called the Scottish war of independence: William Wallace, an important leader in the anti-English rebellion and the guardian of the kingdom in 1298 and Robert the Bruce, King of the Scots in 1306-1329, who after a long struggle managed to be recognized as a sovereign ruler by the English.3

1 Barbour’s Bruce: ‘A fredome is a noble thing’, eds. M.P. McDiarmid and J.A.C. Stevenson, Scottish Text Society, 4th ser., 15, 12, 13, 3 vols. (Edinburgh 1980-1985, repr. 2004) vol. 3, 76-77 13.709-717, vol. 1, 94; Hary’s Wallace (Vita Nobilissimi Defensoris Scotie Wilelmi Wallace Militis), ed. M.P. McDiarmid, Scottish Text Society, 4th Series, 4, 5, 2 vols. (Edinburgh 1968-1969, reprinted 2004), vol. 1, IX, XIV–XXVI. Citations of The Bruce and Wallace are by page, book and verse. Translations are made by the author. Early and Middle Scots letter yogh is changed to ‘y’; Matthew P. McDiarmid, “The Date of “Wallace””, Scottish Historical Review 34, 1, (1995) 26-31. 2 Stefan Thomas Hall, “Quham dowis thow Scot? Scottish Identity in Blind Hary’s Wallace”, Studies in Scottish Literature, 33, 1 (2004) 177-194, 185-186; Grace G. Wilson, “Barbour’s Bruce and Hary’s Wallace: Complements, Compensations and Conventions”, Studies in Scottish Literature 25, 1 (1990) 189-201, 190. 3 The classic work on the subject is G.W.S. Barrow, Robert Bruce and the Community of the Realm of Scotland (Edinburgh, 2005); On William Wallace see recently: Fiona Watson, “Sir William Wallace: What We Do – and Don’t – Know”, in Wallace Book, ed. E.J. Cowan (Edinburgh, 2007) 26-41; On Wallace’s descent see especially A.A.M. Duncan, “William, Son of Alan Wallace: The Documents”, in Wallace Book, 42-63; G.W.S. Barrow, Kingdom of the Scots. Government, Church and Society from the eleventh to the fourteenth century (Edinburgh, 2003) 324-325.

The poems of John Barbour – a well educated archdeacon of Aberdeen and of Blind Hary – a well-read poet, most probably coming from central Scotland,4 are powerful and vivid narratives about pivotal moments in Scottish community history when it was seriously threatened by a foreign power.5 Therefore it has been highlighted that already in late medieval times the traditions of Bruce and Wallace served Scottish society to strengthen its coherence and the sense of identity of its members, forming a very important part of the Scottish mythomoteur.6 Although both authors claim to be writing historical narratives, Hary’s approach to his subject is much more unrestrictive and indeed imaginative.7 It is widely known that Wallace was to no small extent influenced by The Bruce. Although Blind Hary made use of sources dealing with the history of Wallace’s deeds directly,8 it was Barbour’s poem (which does not feature

4 D.E.R. Watt, A Biographical Dictionary of Scottish Graduates to A. D. 1410 (Oxford, 1977) 28-29; Barbour’s Bruce, vol. 1, 1-13; Hary’s Wallace, vol. 1, XXVI–XXXIV, LVIII esp. L. As McDi- armid points out, the family names Hary or Henry, rare in fifteenth-century Scotland, may be found with some significant frequency in the area of Linlithgow and neighbouring parishes; Stefan Thomas Hall, The Role of Medieval Scottish Poetry in Creating Scottish Identity. “Textual Nationalism” (Lewiston – Queenston, 2006) 170-174; J.T.T. Brown, The Wallace and The Bruce Restudied, Bonner Beiträge zur Anglistik. Heft VI (Bonn, 1900) 7-10. Hary is given nickname ‘Blind’ by poet William Dunbar and historian John Mair. In the treasurer’s accounts from the 1490s, payments for one Blind Hary are recorded. 5 And therefore this period was very important in the process of the development of Scot- tish national identity, see the review of the discussion on this subject in R.R. Davies, “Pres- idential Address: The Peoples of Britain and Ireland 1100-1400. II. Names, Boundaries and Regnal Solidarities”, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, Sixth Series, 5 (1995) 1-20, 17-18. 6 See Hall, The Role, esp. 4-5, 16, 187-188, 215-217; Carol Edington, “Paragons and Patriots: National Identity and the Chivalric Ideal in Late-Medieval Scotland”, in Image and Iden- tity: the Making and Re-making of Scotland Through Ages, eds. D. Broun, R.J. Finlay and M. Lynch (Edinburgh, 1998), 69-81, 77-78; Roger Mason, “Chivalry and Citizenship: Aspects of National Identity in Renaissance Scotland”, in People and Power in Scotland: Essays in Honour of T.C. Smout, ed. R. Mason, N. Macdougall (Edinburgh, 1992) 50-73, esp. 56-58. 7 See R. James Goldstein, The Matter of Scotland: Historical Narrative in Medieval Scotland (Lincoln, 1993) 251-265; Hary’s Wallace, vol. 1, LIX–LX, LXXVII–LXXXI; Marinell Ash, “Wil- liam Wallace and Robert the Bruce. The life and death of a national myth”, in The Myths We Live By, eds. R. Samuel and P. Thomson (New York, 1990) 83-94, 89; Wilson, “Barbour’s Bruce”, 192-194; Edward J. Cowan, “Wallace Factor in Scottish History”, in Images of Scot- land, ed. R. Jackson, S. Wood, The Journal of Scottish Education, Occasional Paper 1 (1997) 5-17, 14. 8 Hary’s Wallace, vol. 1, XXXVII–XXXVIII, LXIV–LXXIII, LXXVI; Brown, The Wallace and The Bruce, 8-9, 12-13, 20-23, 58. The most notable historical sources of Hary’s narrative were