ON BLIND HARRY'S WALLACE
Poet and Quasi-Historian
The contrast between Barbour's Bruce, a poetical narrative of history written in 1375–6 on the one hand, and Blind Harry's Wallace on the other, is among the most interesting in literature. The exact date of the Wallace has not been ascertained beyond that it was after 1470 and before 1488. The personality of the author is dark: there is little in John Major's biographical paragraph[1] about him, and as little in the entries in the Treasurer's Accounts,[2] that would explain. A greater gulf than usual stands between the poem and the poet. John Major was no enthusiast, and his paragraph illustrates perhaps the scholastic contempt for the 'burel man'. Major says that in his (the historian's) childhood, Harry, blind from his birth, composed a whole book of Wallace, and wrote in vernacular verse, in which he was skilful, the things which were commonly reported. By reciting the stories before the nobles he procured food and clothing, of which, Major condescendingly thought, he was worthy.
It is hardly possible to believe that the author of the Wallace was blind from birth. It is infinitely more likely that Major blundered in saying so, for the work bears too many marks of distinctly literary origins to have been written by one who was congenitally blind. That he was blind, however, in his later years is certain. Dunbar as well as Major attests him both blind and a poet. It is easy to delete the words 'from birth' in Major's paragraph.
- ↑ John Major's Historia, lib. iv. cap. 15.
- ↑ Accounts of the Lord High Treasurer of Scotland, vol. I. xcix. 133, 174, 176, 181, 184.
