Chapter XLVII: Appendix: E

THE “ALEXANDER” AND THE “BRUCE”

_The Buik of the Most Noble and Vailyeand Conquerour, Alexander the Great_ is an anonymous Scots translation of three French romances in the Alexander cycle, dated, in a rhyming colophon, 1438, and published for the Bannatyne Club in 1831. Between this translation and the _Bruce_ there is a remarkably intimate and undisguised connection, not only in spirit and method, but in “the diction as a whole, the choice of words and the arrangement of the sentences, (and) the abundant use of alliteration,” to such an extent that “in reading the _Buik of Alexander_ one would often think that he discerned the singer of the _Bruce_.”[125] A few examples have been given in the notes, but for a full survey of this literary phenomenon the reader must go to the dissertation quoted from above, or to Mr. J. T. T. Brown’s _The Wallace and the Bruce Restudied_, pp. 100-112 (Bonn, 1900), or Mr. Neilson’s _John Barbour, Poet and Translator_ (London, 1900), which is devoted to the subject; or, for the parallels in the Bannockburn account, to Mr. Neilson’s article on Barbour in Chambers’s _Cyclopædia of English Literature_, vol. i.

[125] _Untersuchungen über das schottische Alexanderbuch._ Albert Hermann, Halle, 1893, pp. 26, 27.

On the facts there is no dispute; for explanation three hypotheses have been put forward. Hermann, accepting the 1438 date, concludes that the translator of the _Alexander_ was so familiar with the language of the _Bruce_--“here and there, indeed, knew it by heart” (_stellenweise es wohl auswendig wusste_)--that his translation was necessarily strongly influenced thereby.[126] This is inadmissible; the French poems are earlier than the _Bruce_, and to these the links of connection ultimately go back. The relationship is really deeper than the mere language of the translation, as Hermann himself indicates. Mr. Neilson, accordingly, in a detailed and forcible argument, claims Barbour himself as the translator of the _Alexander_, arguing that, the literary proofs being so conclusive, the date given must be an error, “scribal or printer’s.”[127] Given Roman numerals to begin with, such a slip is not in the least unlikely; variations of this sort occur in the _Bruce_ itself,[128] and 1438 may have been a misreading of 1338, or the date may be that of the scribe’s copy, not of the actual work. Mr. Neilson has an ingenious section on the wayward fortunes of dates.[129] Thus, reversing Hermann’s thesis, he holds that “Barbour’s mind and memory had been steeped in the _Alexander_ when he wrote the _Bruce_.”[130] Mr. Neilson’s argument and conclusion are vigorously contested by Mr. Brown in a _Postscript_ to the work cited. His more elaborate hypothesis is that David Rate translated the _Alexander_ in 1437, and that “John Ramsay, Sir John the Ross, wishful to improve the plain song of John Barbour, used the translation of the _Alexander_ extensively, taking freely whatever he required.”[131] Mr. Brown’s negative criticism is independent of this proposition which is involved in his wider theory regarding the construction of the _Bruce_. The eclectic conclusion of the writer in the _Cambridge History of English Literature_, vol. ii., is: “Either the book (_i.e._, the _Alexander_) is the work of Barbour preserved in a somewhat later form, or the author was saturated with Barbour’s diction, so that he continually repeats his phrases.”[132]

[126] As cited, p. 35.

[127] As cited, p. 45.

[128] _Cf._ p. 292.

[129] Pp. 43-47.

[130] P. 56.

[131] P. 162.

[132] P. 448.

In the dust of the conflict a crucial fact has gone unobserved--namely, that one of the parallel lines enumerated by Brown and Hermann appears in the portion of the _Bruce_ incorporated in his own work by Wyntoun.[133] _Here, then, we have a line of the alleged translation of 1438 occurring in the “Bruce” as it existed before 1420._ Thus the only outstanding difficulty of Mr. Neilson’s proposition disappears. The effect on the rival propositions is obvious.

[133] The _Bruce_, I. 160; _Alexander_, 8, 8; _Wyntoun_, Book viii. chap. ii. 246; _Brown_, p. 110.