ANDREW WYNTOUN.

THIS author, who was prior of St Serf's monastery in Loch Leven, is the author of what he calls 'An Orygynale Cronykil of Scotland.' It appeared about the year 1420. It is much inferior to the work of Barbour in poetry, but is full of historical information, anecdote, and legend. The language is often sufficiently prosaic. Thus the poet begins to describe the return of King David II. from his captivity, referred to above.

'Yet in prison was king Davy,

And when a lang time was gane bye,
Frae prison and perplexitie

To Berwick castle brought was he,
With the Earl of Northamptoun,
For to treat there of his ransoun;
Some lords of Scotland come there,

And als prelates that wisest were,' &c.

Contemporary, or nearly so, with Wyntoun were several other Scottish writers, such as one Hutcheon, of whom we know only that he is designated of the 'Awle Ryall,' or of the Royal Hall or Palace, and that he wrote a metrical romance, of which two cantos remain, called 'The Gest of Arthur;' and another, named Clerk of Tranent, the author of a romance, entitled 'The Adventures of Sir Gawain.' Of this latter also two cantos only are extant. Although not perhaps deserving to have even portions of them extracted, they contain a good deal of poetry. A person, too, of the name of Holland, about whose history we have no information, produced a satirical poem, called 'The Howlate,' written in the allegorical form, and bearing some resemblance to 'Piers Plowman's Vision.'

BLIND HARRY.

ALTHOUGH there are diversities of opinion as to the exact time when this blind minstrel flourished, we prefer alluding to him at this point, where he stands in close proximity to Barbour, the author of a poem on a subject so cognate to 'Wallace' as 'Bruce.' Nothing is known of Harry but that he was blind from infancy, that he composed this poem, and gained a subsistence by reciting or singing portions of it through the country. Another Wandering Willie, (see 'Redgauntlet,') he passed like night from land to land,' led by his own instincts, and wherever he met with a congenial audience, he proceeded to chant portions of the noble knight's achievements, his eyes the while twinkling, through their sad setting of darkness, with enthusiasm, and often suffused with tears. In some minds the conception of this blind wandering bard may awaken ludicrous emotions, but to us it suggests a certain sublimity. Blind Harry has powerfully described Wallace standing in the light and shrinking from the ghost of Fawdoun, (see the 'Battle of Black-Earnside,' in the 'Specimens,') but Harry himself seems walking in the light of the ghost of Wallace, and it ministers to him, not terror, but inspiration. Entering a cot at night, and asked for a tale, he begins, in low tones, to recite that frightful apparition at Gaskhall, and the aged men and the crones vie with the children in drawing near the 'ingle bleeze,' as if in fire alone lay the refuge from

'Fawdoun, that ugly sire,

That haill hall he had set into a fire,

As to his sight, his OWN HEAD IN HIS HAND.'

Arriving in a village at the hour of morning rest and refreshment, he charms the swains by such words as

'The merry day sprang from the orient
With beams bright illuminate the occident,
After Titan Phoebus upriseth fair,

High in the sphere the signs he made declare.

Zephyrus then began his morning course,

The sweet vapour thus from the ground resourse,' &c.—

and the simple villagers wonder at hearing these images from one who is blind, not seeing the sun. As the leaves are rustling down from the ruddy trees of late autumn, he sings to a little circle of wayside wanderers

'The dark region appearing wonder fast,
In November, when October was past,

Good Wallace saw the night's messenger,
Phoebus had lost his fiery beams so clear;
Out of that wood they durst not turn that side
For adversours that in their way would hide.'

And while on the verge of the December sky, the wintry sun is trembling and about to set as if for ever, then is the Minstrel's voice heard sobbing amidst the sobs of his hearers, as he tells how his hero's sun went down while it was yet day.

'On Wednesday the false Southron furth brocht
To martyr him as they before had wrocht,
Of men in arms led him a full great rout,

With a bauld sprite guid Wallace blent about.'

There can be little doubt that Blind Harry, during his lifetime, became a favourite, nay, a power in the realm. Wherever he circulated, there circulated the fame of Wallace; there, his deeds were recounted; there, hatred of a foreign foe, and love to their native land, were inculcated as first principles; and long after the Homer of Scotland had breathed his last, and been consigned perhaps to some little kirkyard among the uplands, his lays continued to live; and we know that such a man as Burns (who read them in the modern paraphrase of William Hamilton of Gilbertfield, a book which was, till within a somewhat recent period, a household god in the libraries of the Scots) derived from the old singer much of that national prejudice which boiled in his breast till the floodgates of life shut in eternal rest.' . If Barbour, as we said, was fortunate in his subject, still

B 2

more was Blind Harry in his. The interest felt in Wallace is
of a deeper and warmer kind than that which we feel in Bruce.
Bruce was of royal blood; Wallace was from an ancient but
not wealthy family. Bruce stained his career by one great
crime-great in itself, but greater from the peculiar notions of
the age-the murder of Comyn in the sanctuary of Dumfries;
on the character of Wallace no similar imputation rests. Wal-
lace initiated that plan of guerilla warfare,-that fighting now on
foot and now on the wing, now with beak and now with talons,
now with horns and now with hoofs,-which Bruce had only to
perfect. Wallace was unsuccessful, and was besides treated by
the King of England with revolting barbarity; while Bruce
became victorious: and, as we saw in our remarks on Chaucer,
it is the unfortunate brave who stamp themselves most forcibly
on a nation's heart, and it is the red letters, which tell of suf-
fering and death, which are with most difficulty erased from a
nation's tablets. On Bruce we look somewhat as we regard
Washington, a great, serene man, who, after long reverses,
nobly sustained, gained a notable national triumph; to Wallace
we feel, as the Italians do to Garibaldi, as a demon of warlike
power, blending courage and clemency, enthusiasm and skill,
daring and determination, in proportions almost superhuman,—
and we cry
with the poet,

The sword that seem'd fit for archangel to wield,
Was light in his terrible hand.'

We have often regretted that Sir Walter Scott, who, after all, has not done full justice to Bruce in that very unequal and incondite poem The Lord of the Isles,' had not bent his strength upon the Ulysses bow of Wallace, and filled up that splendid sketch of a part of his history to be found near the beginning of 'The Fair Maid of Perth.' As it is, after all that a number of respectable writers, such as Miss Porter, Mrs Hemans, Findlay, the late Mr Macpherson of Glasgow, and others, have done--in prose or verse, in the novel, the poem, or the drama-to illustrate the character and career of the Scottish hero, Blind Harry remains his poet.

It is necessary to notice that Harry derived, by his own

account, many of the facts of his narrative from a work by John Blair, a Benedictine monk from Dundee, who acted as Wallace's chaplain, and seems to have composed a life of him in Latin, which is lost. Besides these, he doubtless mingled in the story a number of traditions—some true, and some false -which he found floating through the country. His authority in reference to certain disputed matters, such as Wallace's journey to France, and his capture of the Red Rover, Thomas de Longueville, who became his fast friend and fellow-soldier, was not long ago entirely established by certain important documents brought to light by the Maitland Club. It is probable that some other of his supposed misstatements-always excepting his ghoststories-may yet receive from future researches the confirmation they as yet want. Blind Harry, living about a century and a half after the era of Wallace, and at a time when tradition was the chief literature, was not likely to be able to test the evidence of many of the circumstances which he narrated; but he seems to speak in good faith: and, after all, what Paley says is unquestionably true as a general principle-' Men tell lies about minute circumstantials, but they rarely invent.'

BATTLE OF BLACK-EARNSIDE

Kerlie beheld unto the bold Heroun,
Upon Fawdoun as he was looking down,
A subtil stroke upward him took that tide,
Under the cheeks the grounden sword gart1 glide,
By the mail good, both halse2 and his craig-bane3
In sunder strake; thus ended that chieftain,
To ground he fell, feil folk about him throng,
'Treason,' they cried, 'traitors are us among.'
Kerlie, with that, fled out soon at a side,
His fellow Steven then thought no time to bide.
The fray was great, and fast away they yeed,5

'Gart: caused.- 'Halse:' throat.- Craig-bane:' neck-bone- Feil' many. Yeed:' went.