Poetry
The Brus
John Barbour · 1375
Synopsis
Scotland, 1306. Robert Bruce has himself crowned king after killing his rival in a church, and the pope excommunicates him. The King of England marches against him, the Scottish army is crushed, and Bruce spends the winter hidden in the islands with a handful of men. The poem follows him in flight: the night crossings, the hounds set on his trail, the lords who rally to him one by one. Then, eight years later, the two armies meet before a stream south of Stirling.
Context
The text was composed around 1375, some fifty years after the events, by a man who had been able to question witnesses of the previous generation. It runs to nearly fourteen thousand lines of eight syllables and was written under the patronage of the new king, the hero's grandson, to transfer to him the prestige of his forebear; its author received a gift for it in 1377, then a pension. The narrative also follows the king's companion, and its central piece is the battle that ends the war.
Who it is for
Thirteen thousand lines in Older Scots, unreadable without an annotated edition. It is read today in extracts, and the first book is enough.
Prizes and reception
The first known literary text in Scots, and the source of everything Scotland tells of its war of independence.