John Barbour 1316 – 1395 Scottish Poet
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John Barbour (c.1320 – 13 March 1395) was a Scottish poet and the first major named literary figure to write in Scots. His principal surviving work is the historical verse romance, The Brus (The Bruce), and his reputation from this poem is such that other long works in Scots which survive from the period are sometimes thought to be by him. He is known to have written a number of other works, but other titles definitely ascribed to his authorship, such as The Stewartis Oryginalle (Genealogy of the Stewarts) and The Brut (Brutus), are now lost.
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Memorial to John Barbour, St Machar’s Cathedral
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Notable work: The Brus – 1375 (written in 20 books & 13000 lines)
The sentiment underlying the poem.
The Brus, Barbour’s major surviving work, is a long narrative poem written while he was a member of the king’s household in the 1370s. Its subject is the ultimate success of the prosecution of the First War of Scottish Independence. Its principal focus is Robert the Bruce and Sir James Douglas, but the second half of the poem also features actions of Robert II’s Stewart forebears in the conflict.
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A history of Scotland’s Struggle for freedom from the year 1286 till the death of Bruce and the burial 1332. Battle of Bannockburn.
Barbour’s purpose in the poem was partly historical and partly patriotic. He celebrates The Bruce (Robert I) and Douglas throughout as the flowers of Scottish chivalry. The poem opens with a description of the state of Scotland at the death of Alexander III (1286) and concludes (more or less) with the death of Douglas and the burial of the Bruce’s heart (1332). Its central episode is the Battle of Bannockburn. Patriotic as the sentiment is, this is expressed in more general terms than is found in later Scottish literature. In the poem, Robert I’s character is a hero of the chivalric type common in contemporary romance, Freedom is a “noble thing” to be sought and won at all costs, and the opponents of such freedom are shown in the dark colours which history and poetic propriety require, but there is none of the complacency of the merely provincial habit of mind.
Barbour’s style in the poem is vigorous, his line generally fluid and quick, and there are passages of high merit. The most quoted part is Book 1, lines 225-228:
A! fredome is a noble thing!
Fredome mayss man to haiff liking;
Fredome all solace to man giffis:
He levys at ess that frely levys!
Stewartis OryginalleEdit
One of Barbour’s known lost work is The Stewartis Oryginalle which is described as having traced the genealogy of the Stewarts. The Stewart name replaced that of Bruce in the Scottish royal line when Robert II acceded to the throne after the death of David II, his uncle.
Robert II was Barbour’s royal patron. It is not known how the work came to be lost.
Buik of Alexander
Attempts have been made to name Barbour as the author of the Buik of Alexander, a Scots translation of the Roman d’Alexandre and other associated pieces. This translation borrows much from The Brus. It survives and is known to us from the unique edition printed in Edinburgh, c. 1580, by Alexander Arbuthnot.
Legends of the Saints
Another possible work was added to Barbour’s canon with the discovery in the library of the University of Cambridge, by Henry Bradshaw, of a long Scots poem of over 33,000 lines, dealing with Legends of the Saints, as told in the Legenda Aurea and other legendaries. The general likeness of this poem to Barbour’s accepted work in verse-length, dialect and style, and the facts that the lives of English saints are excluded and those of St. Machar (the patron saint of Aberdeen) and St. Ninian are inserted, make this ascription plausible. Later criticism, though divided, has tended in the contrary direction, and has based its strongest negative judgment on the consideration of rhymes, assonance and vocabulary.
