1 - The Manuscript and Print Contexts of Barbour’s Bruce

Summary

Evidence suggests that Barbour’s Bruce circulated widely in early fifteenthcentury Scotland – it was used directly by Wyntoun in his Original Chronicle (c.1408–20), drawn upon in The Buik of Alexander (c.1438), and cited by Bower in his Scotichronicon (c.1441–47) – but its earliest manuscript witnesses date from 1487 and 1489, thus over one hundred years after the poem’s composition. The earliest surviving printed edition was produced much later still in 1571 by the Edinburgh printer Robert Lekpreuik (fl.1561– 81), for the printer and bookseller Henry Charteris (d.1599) (STC 1377.5).

This chapter examines the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century manuscript and early print contexts of The Bruce in further detail. It begins with a full description of the two manuscript witnesses – Cambridge, St John’s College, MS G.23 (1487) and Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, Advocates’ MS 19.2.2 (1489) – followed by an analysis of their scribes, owners and readers. Particular attention is paid to the relationship between the two manuscripts and to the vexed identity of their scribe(/s).

The second half of the chapter provides a full description of the 1571 print and focuses in particular upon the relationship of this text to the fifteenth-century manuscript witnesses. It also considers evidence for nowlost manuscript and print witnesses and concludes with a brief analysis of later prints and editions.

Cambridge, St John’s College, MS G.23

Cambridge, St John’s College, MS G.23 (olim 191) (MS C) is the earlier of the poem’s two surviving manuscript witnesses, and is internally dated to 1487. In addition to The Bruce, this paper manuscript, measuring c.21 × 15cm, also contains a version of the mid-fifteenth-century Scottish advisory poem known as The Thewis of Gudwomen (fols 164^r–167^v) and a Scotticized version of John Lydgate’s Dietary (167^v–168^v). Traces of red ink on the right-hand margin of fol. 168^v suggest that a further text(/s) may also once have followed.

The manuscript has been collated by its cataloguer, M. R. James: a¹², b¹² both lost, c¹² (wants 1), d¹², e¹², f¹⁴, g¹² – 12¹², o¹² (wants 11, 12). The loss of the manuscript’s first two gatherings means that The Bruce is acephalous, beginning at Book 4, line 57. The text is copied in single columns, at an average of between 42 and 45 lines per page.