STARN: Scots Teaching and Resource Network
The Brus by John Barbour
Introduction: Fredome is a noble thing
Emeritus Professor A A M Duncan
The Bruce is a narrative poem, 13,000 lines long, with a strong storyline - the undying loyalty of Scotland's leaders, Bruce, Douglas and Moray, to each other and to the freedom of their country. These qualities moved the author, John Barbour, about 1375, to write his 'romance', the name for a poem in . the vernacular about the quality and lifestyle which was above all praise: 'chivalry'. But it is history too, based upon a lost life of Douglas and a chronicle or chronicles which told of King Robert and his times.
Like all historians Barbour has a methodology - what happened had usually been planned. He also has a a weakness - accepting, or guessing at, huge numbers for the size of any army; a social attitude - nobles count, the rabble are unreliable; a gender bias - women weep, men don't; and a tolerant acceptance of what we see as the horrors of war - pain and death are a small price to pay for chivalry. Through his poem we can come to understand the mind-set of another generation and to recognise that some ideals we cherish may be as transitory as Barbour's chivalry. On the other hand, one of his famous lines, 'Fredome mays man to haiff liking', could mean 'Freedom lets a man have choice' and would serve very well on the coat of arms of a certain a iron Lady !
Barbour was a churchman, for 40 years archdeacon of Aberdeen. He must have said mass many times and presumably understood what it was about. Yet the 'church' is wholly absent from the poem, and the churchmen are decidedly unspiritual: one bishop tells Douglas to steal his best horse to ride to Bruce, but at all costs to conceal the bishop's connivance; another is riding along in full armour and weaponry under a cloak when he turns the fleeing Fifers round to repel English invaders.
These are ordinary men who happen to have a job in the church and that is rather how I see Barbour too. His knights do not forgive nor turn the other cheek in Christian humility, for on their courage, loyalty, moderation - secular virtues all - depend the lives of themselves, their wives and children. Many people have known arbitrary tyranny but the Scottish experience of the throwing-off of foreign conquest in two wars, Wallace's and Bruce's, inspired in the Declaration of Arbroath and in Barbour's Bruce a precocious appreciation of 'freedom' as the proper destiny of 'our country', of all who dwell in 'the land'.
Why should we read the poem? To that there's only one possible answer: for enjoyment. But this is a poem written in the language of Scotsmen of Bruce's century, the earliest surviving literary work in our language, and presenting it to a modern reader raises immediate problems of obscure spellings, some obsolete words and constructions, and some pretty relentless rhyming. You have to become easy with the language, and for that the usual crutch, a glossary, still leaves you hobbling through unfamiliar sentence structures. So in this book we have gone the whole hog with a facing-page version in modern English. It's not peotic; it's a way into the poem, not a substitute for it. But it means that you are never left floundering in incomprehension, the worst turn-off in any book, no matter how grand its theme.
Two things you won't find in it. The first, Bruce and the spider, a story which, however true it is to Bruce's spirit, is unknown before the 18th century. And secondly, a suggestion as to Barbour's origins. I am pretty sure that his father was a barber, and, exclusive to Scotland on Sunday, I'd like to suggest that he was barber to William Sinclair, bishop of Dunkeld, called by Bruce, Barbour tells us, 'my own bishop', because he so gallantly turned the Fifers round. Barbour's first known job was at Dunkeld cathedral; anyway, I like to think he was an Atholman like myself.
From 1919 European countries set about publishing documents on the causes of the 1914 war, each seeking to prove that the fault was someone else's. Historians were told to do their patriotic duty, documents were edited suppressed, and the public was told what was thought good for it. In a way Barbour's poem was a like effort, patriotic history written to throw behind the new king, Robert II (who gave Barbour a pension) the weight of his grandfather's (Bruce's) achievements and reputation. And while Barbour disliked a few of the enemy, there is no general condemnation of 'the English' to stir any xenophobia hiding in our Scottish souls.
That it is now totally ignored in syllabuses south of the Tweed may be understandable, but shows what a hollow absurdity Major's 'thousand years of British history' is. But for most of the 20th century it was ignored in school (not university) syllabuses in Scotland - if anyone earlier than Shakespeare got into Higher English, it was Chaucer.
I'm glad I have lived long enough to see the end of Stalinism, apartheid, and the educational establishment cringe at the mention of anything Scots from an ignorant fear that it might not be 'respectable' history or literature. The Bruce was not very available, an excuse which has now vanished. And, to be fair, they do seem to want to give Scotland's history and literature a place in our schools at last. The Bruce should share in that place
Bruce's address to his captains before Bannockburn
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And certis me think well that ye ... Giff ye will wyrk apon this wis |
I think indeed that you ... If you will behave in this way |