Blind Harry's "Wallace" [Hardcover]

Recorded by a blind minstrel, name of Harry, this epic poem of classical proportions records the life of one William Wallace. It was written over 100 years after Wallace died for his part in the Scottish Wars of Independance, yet it is considered the main source of information on the life of the warrior knight, famously portrayed by Mel Gibson in the film 'Braveheart'.
This particular version is the William Hamilton translation, which cleans-up and modernises much of the original in a way which allows the 21st century reader to enjoy the poem without having to scratch their head at every single word. Therefore I would recommend this 1722 version above the original. I am from Scotland, but even I would struggle with the Blind Harry version.
The poem follows Wallace from his days as an Ayrshire boy, through much splitting of skulls and slicing of throats, to his death in London in 1305 and each page is alive with both humour and dare I say it, an anti-English sentiment. But I feel we can forgive Blind Harry for this as he did live in an era where things were happening in Scotland which were not unlike what has recently happened in the Balkan Wars.
I must salute Luath Press for their book. It is the first Luath book I have owned and I particularlly love the illustrations by Owain Kirby, especially the way they are placed at key pieces of the text to indicate when, for example, a female figure appears in the poem.
This book is Scotland's Homer (not Simpson - Doh!) and deserves to be presented to a wider audience, which I'm sure this edition will do.

This heroic ballad, some will say epic, concerns a Scot who left behind him a trail of courage, fame and blood all wrapped up in Scottish nationalism defeated mind you by the English King Edward I. The Stirling Battle is by far best known, though when you visit the bridge, it looks so small. The book has two interests. the first one is that it became a legend as soon as it was published, because among other reasons it was continuing some kind of oral or written tradition, and it has inspired the Scots through all the centuries of their being submitted to the English Crown, though we will forget the four Stuart Kings who did not exactly impress onto history a very positive mark. But Scottish nationalism never died and is still alive after devolution. The legend of that warrior is interesting, including in its cinema career. Mel Gibson was a nice Wallace but the film, Braveheart, is a very much tamed down version of the man. Though the poem is even tamer as for the end of the hero who was dragged through London, hanged and brought down still alive, emasculated, eviscerated, dismembered, quartered and beheaded, his head presented to the crowd so that its eyes could see it in their last seven seconds of vision in Smithfield on the day before the Bartholomew Fair to be held there. The second interest is the description of the feudal society that is behind. William Wallace is not a nobleman, is not a knight, not even a feudal soldier of any kind attached to the service of a nobleman. He is a plain simple free person in those days, living on and around small towns and villages and making some kind of a living hiring himself to various masters for some kind of service, including fighting. That was his real handicap. He could not in any way pretend to be a "leader" of Scotland. Even when he was knighted later on, that did not give him any legitimacy in that line. Blind harry is very careful about that detail and insists over and over again on the fact Wallace does not want to become King of Scotland, or whatever. His life, the way it is depicted, is that of a warrior, someone who becomes a warrior, but he is independent. He does not depend on any one in particular, not even the Bruce who is the legitimate candidate for kingship in Scotland. He is at the most a captain, a man responsible for armed forces, and most of the time these armed forces are voluntary, gathered by Wallace himself, in the sole name of the independence of Scotland that is trampled down upon by Edward I. This feudal society has strange customs that we must try to understand. First a fief was a piece of land with all its infrastructures and the people (mainly serfs) attached to that land. To conquer a piece of land was also to conquer everything it contained. The Magna Carta is extremely clear about what is part of an estate (infrastructures, real estate and equipment, cattle, chattel, and that includes the serfs). The poem is kind of clearly mute on that subject. It never speaks of the serfs. It never speaks of the people attached to this or that estate. Wallace conquers many areas and many cities and most of the time burns them down, kills all the men and let the women and the children (under what age is not specified, but we can think 12 probably) go. Some cities were burnt down two or three times in less than ten years. The South'on (English) men were killed, their wives and children were free to go, but then the city was replenished with good Scots. This is of course absolutely unbelievable. Burning down to the ground, looting and raiding everything valuable, killing all males, etc, is not even thinkable once in those days, but two or three times in ten years is absurd. That explains the fact that he will be delivered to the English King by the Scots themselves. You can call them traitors if you want, but I would rather think it is self-protection, survival when confronted to that killing machine. I did not count all the people who were killed but we are not far from one million. That again is absurd because it would be three, four or five times the population of London at the time (according to how far you go in the definition of London: City of London, City of London and City of Westminster, or the present territory of London). At times it turns laughable: once Wallace and a few companions are followed by eight hundred soldiers in arms in the countryside and Wallace does not hear anything. Maybe we should have provided him with subtitles for hard of hearing people. By doing too much the credibility of the story is at stake. In the same way what he does when in the service to Philip IV of France is in many ways absurd, like killing a lion. Yet that feudal society is clearly depicted with its classes: nobility at the top, their soldiers at their service and then all the rest of the population. It is also clear that you conquered a territory for the income it provided and that these wars were destroying the income, and that paying a share to the English King or to a Scottish King was just the same for the feudal lords as well as for the laboring population. The role of the church yet is definitely downgraded. In those days they had the power to excommunicate anyone and that was enough to stop such rampage. A fascinating book, a legend in a way, but nothing but a romance.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Paris 8 Saint Denis, University Paris 12 Créteil, CEGID

For the person wanting to have a balanced view of Wallace, they need to include this text. Blind Harry or Blin Hary the Minstrel is believed to live from 1440-1493. Very little is really known about him. However, he is recalled for this major achievement of gathering and recording stories of Wallace. Supposedly the first written work about Wallace. He sang or recited these stories in verse form, and it is noted that he was well received at the Renaissance Court of James IV. One must recall these tales were collected well over 100 years after Wallace's death, giving plenty of time for the legend to already take root. Many of the details of Harry's epic are very accurate, some are not (but then he certainly is a lot closer than Randall Wallace!!).

William Hamilton(c1665-1751) brought Wallace back into the minds of everyone with the translation of Blind Harry's original poem.

One needs to understand this is written from a very pro Scots point of view, and tends to see Scots as the good guys and English as the bad ones, with few areas of grey. But taken on a whole, with most of the works on Wallace stemming from English records, it gives a balanced picture in studying Wallace.