[The Envious Man and the Miser.] And for that cause down he sent So it befel upon a day, This angel which him should inform And thus with tales he them led, And bade that one of them should sain,2 And he it shall of gift have. And over that ke forth with all He saith, that other have shall The double of that his fellow axeth; And thus to them his grace he taxeth. The Covetous was wonder glad; Tho was that other glad enough: The language at this time used in the lowland districts of Scotland was based, like that of England, in the Teutonic, and it had, like the contemporary English, a Norman admixture. To account for these circumstances, some have supposed that the language of England, in its various shades of improvement, reached the north through the settlers who are known to have flocked thither from England during the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries. Others suggest that the great body of the Scottish people, apart from the Highlanders, must have been of Teutonic origin, and they point to the very probable theory as to the Picts having been a German race. They further suggest, that a Norman admixture might readily come to the national tongue, through the large intercourse between the two countries during the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries. Thus, it is presumed, "our common language was separately formed in the two countries, and owed its identity to its being constructed of similar materials, by similar gradations, and by nations in the same state of society." Whatever might be the cause, there can be no doubt that the language used by the first Scottish vernacular writers in the fourteenth century, greatly resembles that used contemporaneously in England. that office in 1357. Little is known of his personal history: we may presume that he was a man of political talent, from his being chosen by the bishop of Aberdeen to act as his commissioner at Edinburgh when the ransom of David II. was debated; and of learning, from his having several times accompanied men of rank to study at Oxford. Barbour probably formed his taste upon the romance writers who flourished before him in England. A lost work of his, entitled The Brute, probably another in addition to the many versions of the story of Brutus of Troy, first made popular by Geoffrey of Monmouth, suggests the idea of an imitation of the romances; and * Ellis. his sole remaining work, The Bruce, is altogether of that character. It is not unlikely that, in The Brute, Barbour adopted all the fables he could find: in writing The Bruce, he would, in like manner, adopt every tradition respecting his hero, besides searching for more authoritative materials. We must not be surprised that, while the first would be valueless as a history, the second is a most important document. There would be the same wish for truth, and the same inability to distinguish it, in both cases; but, in the latter, it chanced that the events were of recent occurrence, and therefore came to our metrical historian comparatively undistorted. The Bruce, in reality, is a complete history of the memorable transactions by which King Robert I. asserted the independency of Scotland, and obtained its crown for his family. At the same time, it is far from being destitute of poetical spirit or rhythmical sweetness and harmony. It contains many vividly descriptive passages, and abounds in dignified and even in pathetic sentiment. This poem, which was completed in 1375, is in octo-syllabic lines, forming rhymed couplets, of which there are seven thousand. Barbour died at an advanced age in 1396. [Apostrophe to Freedom.] [Barbour, contemplating the enslaved condition of his country, breaks out into the following animated lines on the blessings of liberty.-Ellis.] A fredome is a nobill thing! He rade upon a little palfrey, Lawcht and joly arrayand His battle, with an ax in hand. Him sae range his men on raw, And by the crown that was set Saw him come, forouth all his fears, He thought that he should weel lichtly Have slain a knicht sae at a straik, Sae smartly that gude knicht has slain, Blamed him, as they durst, greatumly, [The Battle of Bannockburn.] When this was said The Scottismen commonally Sir Ingram said, Ye say sooth now- Mony a wicht man and worthy, Ready to do chivalry. Thus were they bound on either side; And Englishmen, with mickle pride, That were intill their avaward,1 To the battle that Sir Edward2 Governt and led, held straight their way. And mony gude man borne doun and slain ; The gude earl thither took the way, That men micht hear had they been by, # * A great frush of the spears that brast. That they wan place ay mair and mair The grass waxed with the blude all red. For till help them they held their way. That their faes felt their coming weel. That time thir three battles were There micht men hear mony a dint, Sir Edward the Bruce and his men Sae hardy, worthy, and sae fine, That their vaward frushit was. Almighty God! wha then micht see That Stewart Walter, and his rout, And the gude Douglas, that was sae stout, Fechting into that stalwart stour; He sould say that till all honour * There micht men sce mony a steed Flying astray, that lord had nane. * There micht men hear ensenzies cry: And Scottismen cry hardily, # On them! On them! On them! They fail !' With that sae hard they gan assail, And slew all that they micht o'erta'. And the Scots archers alsua2 Shot amang them sae deliverly, That what for them, that with them faucht, * [The appearance of a mock host, composed of the servants of the Scottish camp, completes the panic of the English army; the king flies, and Sir Giles D'Argentine is slain. The narrative then proceeds.] They were, to say sooth, sae aghast, 7 I promise you. & Cruel. 4 Shut up. 2 Also. 5 Rabble. 6 Slime, mud. ANDREW WYNTOUN. About the year 1420, ANDREW WYNTOUN, or, as he describes himself, Androwe of Wyntoune, prior of St Serf's Monastery in Lochleven, completed, in Lochleven. His eight-syllabled metre, an Orygynale Cronykil of Scotland, including much universal history, and extending down to his own time: it may be considered as a Scottish member of the class of rhymed chronicles. The genius of this author is inferior to that of Barbour; but at least his versification is easy, his language pure, and his style often animated. chronicle is valuable as a picture of ancient manners, as a repository of historical anecdotes, and as a specimen of the literary attainments of our ancestors.* It contains a considerable number of fabulous legends, such as we may suppose to have been told beside the parlour fire of a monastery of those days, and which convey a curious idea of the credulity of the age. Some of these are included in the following specimens, the first of which alone is in the original spelling : [St Serf's Ram.] This holy man had a ram, A theyf this scheppe in Achren stal, He that it stal arestyt was; [Interview of St Serf with Sathanas.] * Dr Irving. + St Serf lived in the sixth century, and was the founder of the monastery of which the author was prior. St Serf said, 'Gif I sae be, Foul wretch, what is that for thee?' I ask in our collation Say where was God, wit ye oucht, Before that heaven and erd was wroucht?' To make the creatures that he made ?' To that St Serf answered there, 'Of creatures made he was makèr. A maker micht he never be, But gif creatures made had he.' The devil askit him, Why God of noucht His werkis all full gude had wroucht.' St Serf answered, 'That Goddis will Was never to make his werkis ill, Gif nought but he full gude had been.' Where God made Adam, the first man?' St Serf said. And til him Sathanas, St Serf said, 'Where he was made.' 'Seven hours,' Serf said, 'bade he therein.' St Serf said, 'For that ye Frae that stead he held his way, And never was seen there to this day. [The Return of David II. from Captivity.] [David II., taken prisoner by the English at the battle of Durham, in 1346, was at length redeemed by his country in 1357. The following passage from Wyntoun is curious, as illus. trating the feelings of men in that age. The morning after his return, when the people who had given so much for their sove. reign, were pressing to see or to greet him, he is guilty of a gross outrage against them--which the poet, strange to say, justifies.] Yet in prison was King Davy. All privily went hame their way; Till Berwick him again brought they. And [while] the payment [payit] were, The whether, upon the morn, when he Radure3 in prince is a gude thing; He gart them all have sic dreading, That there was nane, durst nigh him near, But wha by name that called were. He led with radure sae his land, In all time that he was regnand, That nane durst well withstand his will, All winning bowsome to be him till. Wyntoun has been included in this section of our literary history, because, although writing after 1400, his work is one of a class, all the rest of which belong to the preceding period. Some other Scottish writers who were probably or for certain of the fifteenth century, may, for similar reasons, be here introduced. Of one named HUTCHEON, and designed "of the Awle Ryall"-that is, of the Hall Royal or Palace-it is only known that he wrote a metrical romance entitled the Gest of Arthur. Another, called CLERK, "of Tranent," was the author of a romance entitled The Adventures of Sir Gawain, of which two cantos have been preserved. They are written in stanzas of thirteen lines, with alternate rhymes, and much alliteration; and in a language so very obsolete, as to be often quite unintelligible. There is, however, a sort of wildness in the narrative, which is very striking.* The Howlate, an allegorical satirical poem, by a poet named HOLLAND, of whom nothing else is known, may be classed with the Prick of Conscience and Pierce Plowman's Vision, English compositions of the immediately preceding age. Thus, it appears as if literary tastes and modes travelled northward, as more frivolous fashions do at this day, and were always predominant in Scotland about the time when they were declining or becoming extinct in England. The last of the romantic or minstrel class of compositions in Scotland was The Adventures of Sir William Wallace, written about 1460, by a wander. ing poet usually called BLIND HARRY. Of the author nothing is known but that he was blind from his infancy; that he wrote this poem, and made a living by reciting it, or parts of it, before company. It is said by himself to be founded on a narrative of the life of Wallace, written in Latin by one Blair, chaplain to the Scottish hero, and which, if it ever existed, is now lost. The chief materials, however, have evidently been the traditionary stories told respecting Wallace in the minstrel's own time, which was a century and a half subsequent to that of the hero. In this respect, The Wallace resembles The Bruce; but the longer time which had elapsed, the unlettered character of the author, and the comparative humility of the class from whom he would chiefly derive his facts, made it inevitable that the work should be much less of a historical document than that of the learned archdeacon of Aberdeen. It is, in reality, such an account of Wallace as might be expected of Montrose or Dundee from some unlettered but ingenious poet of the present day, who should consult only Highland tradition for his authority. It abounds in marvellous stories respecting the prowess of its hero, and in one or two places grossly outrages real history; yet its value has on this account been perhaps understated. Within a very few years past, several of the transactions attributed by the blind minstrel to Wallace, and heretofore supposed to be fictitious-as, for example, his expedition to France -have been confirmed by the discovery of authentic evidence. That the author meant only to state real facts, must be concluded alike from the simple unaffectedness of the narration, and from the rarity of deliberate imposture, in comparison with credulity, as a fault of the literary men of the period. The poem is in ten-syllable lines, the epic verse of a later age, and it is not deficient in poetical effect or elevated sentiment. A paraphrase of it into modern Scotch, by William Hamilton of Gilbertfield, has long been a favourite volume amongst the Scottish peasantry: it was the study of this book which had so great an effect in kindling the genius of Robert Burns.* [Adventure of Wallace while Fishing in Irvine Water.] [Wallace, near the commencement of his career, is living in hiding with his uncle, Sir Ranald Wallace of Riccarton, near Kilmarnock. To amuse himself, he goes to fish in the river Irvine, when the following adventure takes place :-] So on a time he desired to play.† In Aperil the three-and-twenty day, *See his Life by Dr Currie. A few couplets in the original spelling are subjoined.— In Aperill the three-and-twenty day, Sic fantasye fell in his entent. To leide his net a child furth with him yeid; |