Chapter XLVIII: Appendix: F

MR. BROWN’S “SOURCES” FOR THE “BRUCE.”

In pursuance of his “hypothesis of fifteenth-century redaction” of the _Bruce_, Mr. Brown applies what he claims to be “fair and ordinary tests” to six “selected examples,” in order to show that his hypothesis “has a basis in demonstrable fact.”[134] I shall notice such of these very briefly, premising that I do not consider Mr. Brown’s use of his tests either “fair” or “ordinary.” So much, I think, will appear.

[134] _The Wallace and The Bruce Restudied_, p. 92.

1. _The Trojan War_, _Alexander the Great_, _Julius Cæsar_, and _King Arthur_.

(_a_) The only thing urged against the _Trojan War_ passage[135] is that it is in the suspicious company of the others, and these, Mr. Brown suggests, are derived from Chaucer’s _Monk’s Tale_, from which he produces a selection of lines to parallel those in the _Bruce_. It may be urged,[136] at the outset, that two contemporary poets dealing with the same set of historical events are very likely to display similarities. As Chaucer himself begins by saying--

“The storie of Alisaundre is so commune,
That every wight that hath discrecioune
Hath herd somwhat or al of his fortune.”

[135] I. 521-8.

[136] _Bruce_, I. 529-548; _Monk’s Tale_, Group B., 3821-3908.

But even in Mr. Brown’s “selected” lines it is the divergencies rather than the similarities that stand out. Chaucer says nothing of “Babilony’s tour”; “his awyne hows” is no parallel to “of thyne owne folk”; and “Bot, ar he deit, his land delt he” has no equivalent whatsoever in the _Monk’s Tale_. Yet Chaucer has forty lines to Barbour’s eight. In fact, the “example” is a stock one, even to its phraseology, as witness these excerpts from sources half a century and more earlier than either poet: _Commendatio Lamentabilis_ on Edward I. in 1307, “magnus Alexander ... Nam ille annos regnans duodecim veneno hausto vita defungitur (15); _Vita Edwardi Sec._ (c. 1326). Sed ille magnus Græcorum imperator Alexander, _totius orbis domitor, cum cunctas nationes orbis subicit, per familiares proditores toxicatus occubuit_.” Do such close parallels prove that either Barbour or Chaucer borrowed from chronicles which they never saw?

(_b_) Mr. Brown argues that the _Julius Cæsar_ parallels are “not less remarkable for significant agreement, as regards the sequence of the narrative,”[137] and that “so far as concerns the diction it (the _Bruce_ passage) approaches even nearer the Chaucerian original.”[138] But where Chaucer speaks of Cæsar conquering “thoccident” and “the orient,” Barbour enumerates the countries. Is this similarity of diction? According to Mr. Brown, he is giving “simply an expansion of the Chaucerian phrases.”[139] Elsewhere, in such a case, Barbour is convicted of “summarising” or “assimilating,” here of “expanding.” This is Mr. Brown’s “fork” from which no author could escape. In twelve lines Barbour comments on Cæsar’s conquests, his imperial position, and his death, and in forty-eight Chaucer gives a detailed biography introducing Pompey, of whom Barbour says nothing, and Barbour is thereupon charged with following “the sequence of the narrative”--as if he could avoid doing so! That Cæsar by both poets is styled “Emperor” goes for nothing; that was the medieval way; as also was the statement that he was killed in “the Capitol,” as Shakespeare, too, believed. But the most striking note of difference remains. Barbour says of Cæsar--

“Hys eyn with his hand closit he,
For to dey with mar honeste.”[140]

[137] P. 98.

[138] P. 99.

[139] P. 97, note.

[140] I. 548, 549.

Now Chaucer remarks: “Of honestee yet had he remembrance,”[141] and Mr. Brown enrols the word “honestee” among the things “not to be explained either as commonplaces or as mere coincidences.”[142] We see Barbour’s idea of his “honeste”; this is Chaucer’s:

“His mantel over his hypes casteth he
For no man sholde seen his privetee.”[143]

[141] 3908.

[142] P. 99.

[143] 3904-5.

Mr. Brown here seems to have followed Cæsar’s example and “closit hys eyn”!

(_c_) The only point made with regard to the _Arthur_ lines[144] is the calling of Lucius “Emperor,” and regarding this see my note on the passage. Geoffrey of Monmouth does the same. That Wyntoun corrects Huchown, and not Barbour, in this usage--well, Mr. Brown can make all he can of that. Barbour’s dozen lines on the familiar _Arthur_ story is charged with being “an excellent summary of the _Morte Arthure_,”[145] a poem of 4,364 lines! No “expansion” here!

[144] I. 549-561.

[145] P. 99.

2. The _Alexander_ allusions in Bks. III., X. With reference to these see Appendix E. But why should Mr. Brown speak of “the famous grey palfrey of Lord Douglas” on the strength of one notice in Bk. II. 118? There is nothing to justify the epithet “famous”; and _Ferrand_ was no more an unusual name for a “grey” horse than _Blanchard_ for a white one. Bishop Lamberton might have had “a grey” as well as Eumynedus.[146]

[146] See note on passage.

3. _The Ferumbras Romance._ I have analyzed this passage in my notes to Bk. III., 435-462. Mr. Brown contends that the adoption of the form _Ferumbras_ for the French _Fierabras_ “points to a knowledge on the part of the Scottish poet” of either the _Syr Ferumbras_ or the _Sowdone of Babylone_, in both of which this form occurs. It is possibly an adaptation of the spelling _Fierenbras_, which occurs in _The Destruction of Rome_ and also in a fragment of the romance.[147] But there is nothing more remarkable in Barbour’s intrusion of the “m” here than in his calling Lubaut or Lybaut, _Lumbard_ in Bk. X. 324,[148] or Capaneus, _Campaneus_.[149] More significant is the name _Lavyne_ for _Balan_, which is the normal form for all the existing texts, French and English, save the _Sowdone_, where we have _Laban_, _Lavane_ and _Lavyne_, and _The Destruction of Rome_ (French), which has _Balan_ and _Laban_, the latter of which has given the spelling in “v.” Mr. Brown, however, rules out the _Destruction_ for Barbour, as being “merely related to the Charlemagne cycle,”[150] though Dr. Hausknecht accepts it as the original of the first part of the _Sowdone_.[151] Why, then, should Barbour, too, not have known it? Mr. Brown’s conclusion is that the name, with other material, points to the whole passage being based on the _Sowdone_, and the _Sowdone_ being post-Chaucerian--in which opinion he follows, and even goes beyond, Hausknecht--of the beginning of the fifteenth century, after Barbour’s death, it obviously follows that the lines cannot have been his work.[152] Against this may be put Hausknecht’s own conclusion, to which Mr. Brown makes no reference: “It is worthy of notice that the account of the Fierabras romance, as given by Barbour, may be considered, on the whole, as identical with the subject of the French _Fierabras_ or the English _Syr Ferumbras_, _but not with the_ _Sowdan_, as there is no mention made of the combat before Rome, nor any trace of what makes up the first part of the _Sowdan_.”[153] A few additional facts will substantiate Hausknecht’s statement.

[147] E.E.T.S. _The Sowdone of Babylone_, _Introd._, pp. xxxi, xxxii.

[148] See note.

[149] II. 534.

[150] P. 114.

[151] As cited, p. xxv.

[152] Pp. 115, 116.

[153] P. ix, note. The italics are mine.

In the _Sowdone_ the twelve peers are shut up in “Egrymor”; Barbour gives “bot eleven.”[154] Mr. Brown says of the _Bruce_ account that, “Every line is traceable in the _Sowdone_.”[155] There is no trace of line 452, or of Lavyne’s “flot” in 456; Charlemagne, instead of “being joyful” at the news that his peers were alive, there bursts out in anger against the traitor Ganelon.[156] Conclusive, on Mr. Brown’s own case, is the fact, noted by Hausknecht, that the relics mentioned by Barbour “differ from all other versions.”[157] It is not “off the croice a gret party”[158] in the _Sowdone_, but simply “the crosse, the crown, the nailes bente”;[159] and there is no mention of “the sper.”[160] Nothing is said of the cross in the _Fierabras_ or the _Syr Ferumbras_, and the _Destruction_ has the crown of thorns, the cross, the nails, and the “signe”[161] or shroud. Nor did Barbour invent “the sper,” for it is spoken of in this connection, though not in the final distribution, in the Provençal version of the _Fierabras_: “_e del fer d’una lansa_,” the spear-head.[162] It would seem, then, that Barbour was using a version of the romance different, in certain particulars, from any we now possess. At any rate, Mr. Brown has to get round these awkward corners before he can transfix Barbour on _Lavyne_.

[154] 444.

[155] P. 115, note.

[156] “_Genelyn_,” 2843-6.

[157] P. ix, note.

[158] P. 461.

[159] 665.

[160] _Bruce_, iii. 459.

[161] Hausknecht, note to line 665.

[162] _Der Roman von Fierabras, Provensalisch_, p. 5, line 15; Immanuel Bekker, Berlin, 1829.

4. _The Tydeus Episode_, Bk. VI. 179-268. It may be granted that Barbour here is not, as Skeat supposed, drawing directly on the _Thebaid_ of Statius, even in memory. But then no more is Lydgate in his _Story of Thebes_;[163] having used, according to Dr. Koeppel, some French prose epic based on the classical story,[164] now lost, or giving in his poem “a transcript from a French rendering of Statius.”[165] There was ample material, including even, as Gaston Paris has suggested, an abridgment of Statius in Latin prose. Mr. Brown contends that Barbour’s “redactor” borrowed from Lydgate. But here, again, the differences are sufficiently vital to thwart such a conclusion. “Betwix ane hye crag and the se”[166] has no equivalent either in Statius or Lydgate, as is clear from Mr. Brown’s own citations;[167] nor has the detail that the “gret stane ... throu the gret anciente, Wes lowsyt reddy for to fall,”[168] for which Lydgate has:

“Beside he saw with water turned down
An huge stone, large, round, and square.”[169]

[163] c. 1420.

[164] _Brown_, p. 117.

[165] Gregory Smith, _The Transition Period_, p. 8.

[166] P. 211.

[167] P. 118.

[168] Pp. 252-3.

[169] Ed. 1598, fol. 381.

In an inductive literary argument differences must be accounted for as well as similarities, and any other possible sources must be satisfactorily eliminated. Opinions as to “the classical parsimony of independent translators”[170] are purely speculative.

[170] P. 119.

5. _The Hannibal lines_, Bk. III. 207-248.--Here Mr. Brown’s argument needs only to be summarily stated to show its inadequacy. Wyntoun borrowed from Barbour in some instances, but not in this; therefore, since there are similarities in the way the same story is told, the _Bruce_ lines are drawn from the _Cronykil_.[171] Wyntoun confesses to having translated from Orosius, Mr. Brown says through Martinus Polonus, and he follows his author closely. Barbour’s narrative is brief and, in several details, faulty, in which he diverges from both the Latin author and his Scots translator.[172] The startling error in chronology, especially, “would not be readily made by one using Martinus at first hand,” but with the _Cronikyl_ before him the writer was quite likely to do so![173] The peculiar “touches” in the _Bruce_ passage are noted, but unexplained. It is assumed that “The agreement with Martinus is much too close for it to be considered to be written from memory;”[174] and “there is nothing in Martinus that should lead us to expect independent translators to ascribe such a victory to God and in terms so similar:

“Bot throw Goddis gret powste.”[175]
“Bot throw the mycht of Goddis grace.”[176]

[171] P. 125.

[172] P. 126. See notes on passage.

[173] P. 127.

[174] P. 126.

[175] _Wyntoun._

[176] _The Bruce, &c._, p. 126.

But the terms are not “similar,” and both are a mediæval rendering of _divina miseratio_ in Orosius and Polonus. The whole argument in this connection is involved and haphazard. What is there illegitimate in the simple hypothesis that Barbour wrote from a well-stored but not perfectly accurate memory, and that Wyntoun preferred the first-hand to the second-hand source? So we explain both similarities and differences. Wyntoun’s lines are a plain following of his Latin author; Barbour’s a brief summary, with expansions and comments of his own leading up to the moral he wishes to enforce; and in this case Mr. Brown cannot point to a single line in common.

6. _Froissart and the Bruce._--Here Mr. Brown prints his parallels in full, and the matter can be safely left to the judgment of the unprejudiced reader. It need only be remarked that Froissart (1) calls Douglas William instead of James; (2) sends the heart to the Holy Sepulchre[177]; (3) makes Bruce choose Douglas; (4) embarks him at Montrose; (5) takes him to Sluys; (6) lands him at Seville: while Barbour (1) is right as to Douglas; (2) sends the heart against “Goddis fayis”; (3) makes the barons choose Douglas; (4) embarks him at Berwick; (5) says nothing of Sluys; and (6) lands him at Valentia. Of Barbour’s “motive” lines, of the repentance for blood-spilling and the saving of his sins,[178] Froissart (or Le Bel) has no trace. The two narratives are independent, though, in their trend, alike.

[177] _Cf._, however, on XX. 181.

[178] 171-177.