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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
When a poet has been convicted of sin against fact, we poor pedantic critics incline, merely on that account, to question his literary power. The chance, or the need, to display some superiority in knowledge to a writer whose work we undertake to discuss, is apt to inflate us with such an undue sense of our own importance that we unfairly minimize his merit.
1 For the Early English Text Society, 1888, p. lvii; for the Scottish Text Society, 1898, p. lxii.
2 James Moir, in his edition of The Wallace for the Scottish Text Society, 1889, Introd., p. xxxii; W. A. Craigie, The Scottish Review, July, 1893, p. 177; Henry Morley, English Writers, 1896, iv, p. 39; George Saintsbury, Short History of English Literature, p. 172; Aeneas Mackay, Dict. Nat. Biog., under Barbour; A. H. Millar, A Literary History of Scotland, New York, 1903, p. 15; etc.
“Robert Bruce,” wrote Professor Freeman,“ has become so thoroughly mythical a being that it may be necessary to explain to many people who he was. One Scottish romance goes so far as to make him defeat Edward the First at Bannockburn! Another, of older date, identifies him with his own grandfather, makes him the competitor for the crown, but makes him also proudly refuse to do homage for it” (Historical Essays, 1st Series, 1896, p. 76—“The Relations between the Crowns of England and Scotland”).
3 Robert the Bruce (Heroes of the Nations Series), 1897, pp. 5 ff.
4 In his edition of The Bruce for the Spalding Club, Preface, pp. ix-x.
5 John M. Ross, Scottish History and Literature, Glasgow, 1884, pp. 53-54.
6 Scottish Vernacular History, London, 1898; 3rd rev. edition, Edinburgh, 1910, pp. 44 f.
7 Bonner Beiträge zur Anglistik, Bonn, 1900, pp. 92 ff.
8 London, 1908, ii, p. 104.
9 Mr. Eyre-Todd does not seem to know what to think. In his Early Scottish Poetry (Glasgow, 1891, p. 67), eager to defend Barbour, he caught willingly at Cosmo Innes's straw of poetic justice. “In one conspicuous instance only,” he says, “did Barbour depart from actual fact. With true instinct he perceived the one possible exception which might be taken to his hero's history,—the fact that he, bred at Edward's court, had renounced his allegiance; and in order to display briefly the underlying right of Bruce's action, he took the liberty of attributing to the grandson the wrong which had been done to the grandfather by the English king. It made a point of poetic justice that the noble who had suffered the wrong should be he who finally took redress at the hands of fortune.”
In the preface of his prose rendering of The Bruce (1907, p. ix) he appears to accept Mr. Brown's suggestion, remarking that “the whole mistake has arisen from a very slight corruption of the mss… . . The same passage quoted in Wyntoun's Cronykil, from an older and fuller ms. of The Bruce, altogether avoids the mistake.” But in his text (p. 12) he translates the disputed line: “This lord, the Bruce, of whom I spoke before,” and comments in a note: “Barbour here, for epic purposes, uses a poetic license.” Cf. W. MacNeile Dixon, English Epic and Heroic Poetry, 1912, p. 141.
10 Cf. “Of stalwart folk that lywyt ar” (i, 19); “Off this twa that I tauld off ar” (i, 76); “As 
e herd me deuiss it are” (iv, 569): “as I tald 
ow are” (v, 123); “of the bargane I tald of er” (ix, 542); “As I tald air” (xvi, 1); “as I said ere befor” (x, 432); “as said wes ar” (xii, 168); “as I said ar” (xii, 5, 335; xiii, 254, 501; xviii, 211); “as to 
ow ere said I” (xiii, 449); etc.
11 The Bruce, ix, 575.
12 Wyntoun, after skipping 58 lines of The Bruce (including the oft-quoted apostrophe to freedom), quotes the following six without change, but then introduces six of his own (hardly in Barbour's style) about the “tyrant” Edward, before he begins again with the words quoted above.
A comparison of Wyntoun's text with Barbour's in the parallel passages shows that Wyntoun departs frequently in minor details from The Bruce, which he was merely using for his own convenience, but never with any noteworthy change in the sense. Occasionally he tries to make things a little clearer, as when in the following passage he introduces the name Edward, which Barbour had not mentioned for 65 lines, thus necessitating other changes:
13 Wyntoun a little before had written of The Bruce:
14 Cf. vi, 443; xii, 505.
15 Cf. “As I tald jow heir” (vi, 452); “In this tyme that I tell of her” (xiii, 225, 741).
16 The word “fair” is used by Barbour for “fare” in all senses, “welfare,” “go,” etc.
17 Barbour uses constantly such constructions as: “Him that was off England king” (ii, 132); “James alsua of Douglas” (ii, 132); “Of Glasgow Byshop Robert” (iv, 13); “Of Vallanch schir Amery” (vi, 457, 476, etc.); “Off Crauford als schyr Ranald” (iv, 38); “Off Strathern als the erll” (ix, 340); “Off Bonkill the lord” (ix, 691); “Schir Morisz alsua de Berclay” (xiii, 417).
18 Here are characteristic inversions: “The quehethir with him dwell wald I” (ii, 108); “The tothir part went in the toune is” (iii, 240); “And bot eleven within war thai And a woman” (iii, 444); “And with glaid hart it thaim gaiff he” (iii, 538); “His sone syne eftir kyng he wes” (iv, 335); “Thai that enbuschit was thame saw” (iv, 412); “So did this kyng that I of reid” (ix, 100).
19 Compare, e. g., in later books, xvi, 526 ff., xvii, 235, xix, 263 ff.
20 Compare: “To the byshop of Androwss towne” (ii, 81): “and Dowglass baner saw planly” (xvi, 410); (with which cf. “sum of the lord Douglassis men” (xx, 481); cf. in The Wallace: “Off Wallace lyff rycht famous of renoun” (v, 541); “Himselff had seyn gret part off Wallace deid” (xl, 1420); “Off Wallace lyff quha has a forthar feill” (xi, 1410).
21 For the form of the proper name, cf. “domini regis Robert Bruys,” in the Exchequer Rolls, iv, p. 457 (quoted Skeat, Preface, p. xxvii); “ad supplicationem David de Bruys” (Rolls, i, p. 808).
22 Cf. i, 181 ff., xi, 521.
23 Cf. also viii, 139 ff.; 1537 ff.; 1611 f.
24 Bk. IV, ch. xvii. Constable's translation, p. 213.
25 At the close of his life, Bruce, still solicitous for his heritage, is represented as sending messengers to the English court to sue for peace,
Eventually he provides that if his son David died without “air male of his body gotten,” Robert Stewart should be king. (xx, 129 ff.)