Blind Harry's Wallace (of about 1460, earlier than 1488) is clearly the source of this ballad. A-F are derived from vv. 1080-1119 of the Fifth Book. Here Wallace, on his way to the hostelry with a comrade, met a woman, who counselled them to pass by, if Scots, for Southrons were there, drinking and talking - of Wallace; twenty are there, making great din, but no man of fence. "Wallace went in and bad Benedicite." The Captain said, "Thou art a Scot, the devil thy nation quell." Wallace drew and ran the captain through; "fifteen he straik and fifteen has he slayn;" his comrade killed the other five. G prefixes to the story of the other versions another adventure of Wallace, taken from the Fourth Book of Blind Harry, vv. 704-87. The first half of G is plainly a late piece of work, very possibly of the nineteenth century, much later than the other, which itself need not be very old. But the portions of Blind Harry's poem out of which these ballads were made were perhaps themselves composed from older ballads, and the restitution of the lyrical form may have given us something not altogether unlike what was sung in the fifteenth, or even the fourteenth century.
This page most recently updated on 09-Dec-2010, 23:26:47. Return to main index
