Barbour's 'Brus'

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0:39BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. This is In Our Time from BBC Radio 4 and this is one of more than a thousand episodes you can find on BBC Sounds and on our website. If you scroll down the page for this edition, you'll find a reading list to go with it. I hope you enjoy the programme. Hello, around 1375, John Barber wrote The Bruce, the oldest surviving poem in older Scots, and the only source of many of the stories of Robert the Bruce and his victory over the English at Bannockburn 60 years before. In almost 14 ,000 lines of rhyming couplets, Barber distilled the aspects of the Bruce's history most relevant for his own time, when the mood was for a new war against England after decades of disasters.

1:25Barber's battle scenes are meant to stir in the name of freedom, and the effect of the whole is to assert Scotland as a rightful equal of any power in Europe. With me to discuss Barber's the Bruce are Michael Brown, Professor of Scottish History at the University of St Andrews, Steve Boardman, Professor of Medieval Scottish History at the University of Edinburgh, and Rhiannon Purdy, Professor of English and Older Scots at the University of St Andrews. Rhiannon, what, if anything, do we know about John Barber himself? Well, we know he was active at the court of Robert II. The first record we have of him is he's the presenter at Dunkeld Cathedral and he then becomes Archdeacon of Aberdeen in 1356.

2:10So that's the first point in his career. We don't know when he was born. We often guess, people often say maybe 1320, 1325. Absolutely no evidence for it. The first record we have of him is 1355 and then 1356. Thereafter, there are records of him going out to England and France on kind of study leave in the 1360s. By the 1370s, he is occasionally appearing at Roberts Court as an auditor of the Exchequer in the 1370s, and he does that again in the 1380s. In 1378 he gets a pension from Robert of a pound a year, so we assume this is perhaps for composing the Bruce. He dies in Aberdeen in 1395. Well, that sums it up, doesn't it?

2:57There we go. The language of the poem is Older Scots. What's that language and who was using it at the time? Well, we now call it Older Scots because it is the ancestor of what we now call Scots. but what Barber called it was English and as far as he was concerned it was just another dialect of English there's English spoken in Yorkshire very different from English spoken in London very different from English spoken in Herefordshire so it was the English that was spoken in Scotland and that's what he's speaking and that's what he's writing and that's what he calls it when he mentions the language And was this widely written in this way?

3:34The only records we have of written Scots start, the only thing that has survived for us, dates from the 1370s. So this is not just the earliest literary work in older Scots. It's one of the earliest bits of writings in Scots. The poem itself, it's a poem, it's in octosyllabic couplets, so eight-syllable rhyming couplets. So it's actually a very basic and common form for medieval narrative work. So plenty of other chronicles are written in it, all kinds of other works as well, romances, many of the romances that Barbara's read but it's not tied to any particular form it's kind of the minimal poetic form you can use which is easy to read, easy to recite it's got a regular rhythm, it's relatively easy to write because you only have to rhyme a couplet then move on to the next couplet there's nothing to stop it, it's a bit like a train so it gives it this sort of impetus and it's also easier to read on a page because you get a relatively narrow column that you can let your eye trail down.

4:36So it's much easier to read than prose, for example. So this is why it was quite attractive to write in. Steve, can I ask you, the central character is Robert the Bruce. Can you tell us a bit about Robert the Bruce and why he's writing about him? Well, Robert Bruce is better known perhaps as Robert I, King of Scotland from 1306 to his death in 1329. The way Bruce comes to the throne is unusual, to say the least His family has a claim to the crown which becomes active after the death of the Scottish King Alexander III in 1286 and after Alexander III's death there's a competition develops between two families Bruce's family and the Balio family In the end, the Balio claim wins out So King John Balliol is made king in 1292, but crucially at that point who's been involved in arbitrating that contest is Edward I of England.

5:42And Edward I has established his rights to superiority over the Scottish Kingdom in the course of that contest. when Edward asks for those rights to be recognised by Balio. Balio refuses and in 1296 Edward I invades Scotland, deposes Balio and we're into a long period where Scotland is governed directly by the English king. Let's get back to Robert de Brousse. What's he doing here? At that point, Robert is actually quite supportive of Edward because Edward represents a potential way back into the kingship. So for about 10 years, Robert Bruce, Earl of Carrick, Lord of Annandale, oscillates between resisting the English administration in Scotland and cooperating with them against the Ballioles and their allies.

6:32OK, let's talk about the state of Scotland of Raddammit in the 1370s when Barbo was writing. Who was king then? The king in the 1370s is Robert the Steward, Robert Bruce's grandson, who's come to the throne in 1371. So in terms of the long context of the 14th century, it's a period of peace. But there are still areas of the Scottish Kingdom held by English lords that has been allowed by the terms of the truce established in 1357. and that truce is renewed in 1369. So it looks as if important places for the Scottish realm, places like Berwick, Jedburgh, Roxburgh, are going to remain in English hands for the foreseeable future.

7:21And there's a constituency within Scotland, particularly younger lords with interest in the borders, who want to reclaim those lands, reclaim their own estates that are at the moment denied them. Thank you. Michael Brown, we don't need the full plot, But what does Barber's The Bruce cover? What period in people? Barber makes a big deal of telling the truth, but he's also very careful in the way he frames his story, and he starts it in 1306 with Robert becoming king and takes it through to the death of Robert and his two principal captains, James Douglas and Thomas Randolph, between 1329 and 1332.

7:59It's a long stretch. It is a long stretch. It's 14 ,000 lines, as we've heard. So he's trying to distill those elements of the story which he wants his audience to grab onto, I think. What does it know? The seizure of the throne and how it's a legitimate thing. So this controversial... So he's trying to make Robert legitimate? Yeah, well, I think Scots regard Robert as legitimate by this time, but what Barbara is doing is trying to elevate that legitimacy and link it to a story about heroism and prowess as well. So he's glamorising the narrative to a certain extent. And he does that by telling stories about Bruce's initial defeats, his flight into exile, and then his return.

8:39And the way, almost individually, he's holding off English forces or assassins who are trying to kill him. And then on to the kind of narrative of grander warfare leading up to Bannockburn, which in some ways is the climax of the whole poem. And then from that, you have episodes of war in northern England and in Ireland, culminating in the triumphant peace treaty that Bruce secures in 1328 and the succession of his son. Well, we skipped over Banachburn. For the few people listening who don't know about Banachburn, could you tell us what happened then and why it's so important? It's important for the Scots, and this is a Scottish poem, as we've heard written in the 1370s, because at that point it's their one great victory over the English.

9:21It's the battle that proves that God is backing them. It's a judgment and it shows Robert must therefore be the legitimate ruler of Scotland and that Edward II of England has no legitimate right over Scotland. So it's a vindication of the Scottish claim. I think it allows Robert from that point on in the reign to rule what has been a very divided kingdom as if those divisions had gone. They haven't necessarily gone, but he's able to do that. So in his own lifetime, he's able to do that. And looking back from the 1370s, time always smooths out these things. People are able to accept Bannockburn as this great national victory.

9:58And that's what Barber is writing up. Well, why did Barber write this at this time? It's a massive project. I mean, I think it relates to what Steve was talking about, about the 1370s. You've got a new dynasty on the throne, the Stuart dynasty, whose claim is through Robert Bruce. Robert II is a grandson, as well as having the same name as Robert I, Robert Bruce. so it's about drawing that connection with the new family it's also I think because Scotland is in a place where it has been relatively secure as Steve was saying because of the truce but war is not that far away so it's about reminding Scots what they've been through in the past as well I mean the question of whether he's writing it for someone so Robert Stewart the new king of scots robert the first grandson i think has a relationship with john barber and may be the patron or certainly john barber has him in mind when he's writing so it might be that there are other people in scotland in the 1370s whose family have achieved great things and base their power on what's happened under robert the first reign so reminding scots of their ancestors i think is part of the purpose too the case to be made for some sort of patronage is that his other known work which is lost, is a history of the Stuart family, which seems to indicate that he's quite closely in the service of either Robert the Stuart himself or one of Robert the Stuart's many sons.

11:24Rhiannon, can you give us a taste of how the poem might have sounded in performance? I can give you the opening lines, if you'd like. I'll take them with ribbons round. Thank you very much. So the poem begins, Stories to read are deletable. Suppose that they be noch but fabel. than should stories that soothfast were, and they were said on good manner, have double pleasance in hearing. The first pleasance is the carping, the telling of them, and the tother, the soothfastness, that shows the thing richt as it was. Do you want to translate any of that? Sure. This is Barbara setting out his stall, really.

12:05He's explaining why he's writing this and what the value of it is. So stories in themselves are pleasant, even if they're not true. But if you can tell a story that has truth, there's a double pleasure in that. First of all, in the telling, just the fun of hearing a story. And secondly, in hearing things right as they were, actually hearing history unfold. And that's what he is offering to his readers and listeners. What are the star turns in the poem? Is he particularly good at battles? He particularly likes battles, and he's clearly writing for an audience who likes battles. There are so many incidents of Robert finding himself in straightened circumstances.

12:48He's either alone or he's only got two men, and he's fighting against so many, but he fights so brilliantly, and everybody's striking on everybody else. The battle scenes are very similar, but he's obviously writing for an audience who loves this kind of thing. It's a bit like going to see an adventure film. They might be full of clichés, but it's clearly what the audience was looking for, this kind of knightly battling and axes being struck onto heads and cleaving them down to the brains endlessly. He's trying to infuse history with excitement. There's a kind of contest between chivalry and brutality, isn't there, really?

13:25Where do you stand on that, Steve? Well, the Bruce is one text of many that are produced in the 14th century that deal with the warfare of the age in the 14th century, the era of the Hundred Years' War, is notable for the levels of violence in and around Europe. And so the Bruce is part of this wider literary exploration of the delivery of violence, the chivalric virtue, the prowess, the bravery, but also reflecting on what it means to be a chivalric lord. What other qualities are you supposed to show? Can you give us some examples? Well, in terms of the Bruce itself, there's obviously an emphasis on Robert's prowess, his ability to hit people very hard.

14:15And chop their heads off. And chop their heads off. And sit on a horse. Yeah, yeah. But also an exploration of other qualities like measure, prudence, acting with cunning and slicht. there's an attempt to suggest that there are different ways to fight and although we tend to have an idea of chivalry as a type of honourable open field warfare in a couple of passages, Bruce, particularly talking about the ethics of killing an English garrison in their sleep So killing people while they're asleep is not very chivalric, is it? You wouldn't think so, but in the poem you get this little aside to say, in effect, well, any warrior who is effective would not mind and we will receive no reproach or no reproof for behaving in this way.

15:07So there's a rough and readier idea of chivalry, chivalry that wins. Can we just pause here? People are asleep, they go and kill them while they're asleep. Now, what's chivalrous about that? I mean, how do they square it with chivalry? I'm just interested. I mean, it seems mad to me, but there you go. You can explain all this. chivalry is a very wide portfolio in the 14th century and in fact one of the interesting things about Bruce is that you get this played out in conversations between in particular two of Bruce's lieutenants James Douglas and Thomas Randolph Earl of Moray and Thomas Randolph Earl of Moray is constantly making observations on the behaviour of his fellows saying this really isn't good we really shouldn't be behaving in this way.

15:54But yes, one of the things about the Bruce as a work is that it's very much on the more rough and ready end of chivalric texts in the 14th century. It's laying out how to fight and win a war effectively. And that's different. That's brutality, isn't it? Michael, do you want to come in? I think Steve's absolutely right. I think one of the elements that does come through is that, aside from Edward I who's presented as a tyrant and you know a homicidal maniac in many ways at the opening of the book and then he disappears the English aren't presented in terms of being if you like morally wrong they are worthy opponents and they're giving Bruce a good reputation and they're in turn being praised for their nobility and and their own qualities because you want a competition between equals and in a sense that's what shivaric values in the 14th century around war are about it's about understanding the rules.

16:52Steve's absolutely right that the Scots, or Barber, also knows his audience are going to cheer if he shows certain individuals transgressing. And James Douglas, Bruce's lieutenant, and almost the second figure in the narrative... Can you say a little more about Douglas, because he's an important figure? Yeah. So James Douglas historically emerges from a baronial family in southwestern Scotland in the valley of the River Clyde to become Bruce's principal military lieutenant and to build a kind of family name and reputation and landholding that sweeps across southern Scotland. So he's the founder of a dynasty and in the 1370s his family are in the audience, powerful individuals and they want to see him presented in a way which is not simply as a noble chivalric warrior but as someone who is transgressing those rules.

17:44So he massacres the English garrison of his own castle on Palm Sunday when they're in church. He takes the prisoners back and slaughters them in the cellars of his own castle. And again, there's a double edge here because that's completely against the rules of chivalry. And yet the Scots see that as legitimate because why are these people here? Why are they denying Douglas his birthright? The illegitimacy of their presence removes them, in that case from the protections of chivalry. Yeah, I think that reflects back on the Turnberry case because Turnberry is Bruce's castle and that preamble to say, well, nobody will reproach us if we take this action against a garrison that is totally unsuspecting.

18:25For a noble audience, landed inheritance is everything and those who deny you your inheritance, in a certain sense, the rules are off. That's what the audience in the 1370s think and respond to.

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19:44What do you think of the use of this word? Is it being misused, Rihanna? Chivalry. Yeah. It's not being misused because Barbara is so interested in it and he talks about people performing such great chivalry. He's interested in the display of knightly virtue, so prowess, loyalty. I mean this business of reclaiming your heritage I mean that's the Barbra's Bruce writ large really it's the Scots reclaiming their heritage so they will fight to demonstrate their great chivalry but if occasionally a small band of Scots has to trick and perhaps slaughter in their sleep a larger band of English that's okay because they are recovering their heritage that's the kind of moral justification for it they shouldn't be here anyway so we'll just kill them Let's go back to the poem we touched on it But can you give us an idea of what he did at Bannockburn in terms of writing about it?

20:35He gives us details of military planning manoeuvres. The fact that Bruce has his men dig holes in the ground where he expects the English are going to come past. So they'll break the legs of the horses. Yeah, that's right. So we get the military strategist. But we also, for the audience, we've got this sense of individual combat. So we have the Scots watching the English and the English trying to guess what the Scots are going to do. But the opening sally is, again, this kind of individual combat between an English knight called Henry de Boone and Bruce. This is the first kind of blow struck. And Barbara really sets this scene up beautifully.

21:16Remember, all before Bannockburn, we've had all these stories of Bruce hiding, being hunted. The outlaw. Bruce the outlaw. With the spider in the cave. No, no, that's an 18th century edition. Oh, I see. No spiders in here. Oh, dear, I like the spider. Not so much later. I'm sorry. There's lots of other exciting things. Hunting dogs. But, I mean, he has endless stories which all kind of blend together, really. But then the essence of them is always that Bruce is outnumbered and people underestimate him. They think, right, we've got him on his own. This is great. We can kill him. But no, they can't kill him.

21:51Bruce turns around. His men come and find Bruce afterwards and they find him casually sitting on the bank of the river with 14 corpses littered about him because somebody underestimated Bruce again. So by the time we get to Bannockburn, we know as an audience nobody can surprise Bruce. Nobody does well if they underestimate Bruce. So with this opening scene, we have Henry de Boones looking at the Scots ranks and he spots Bruce and we're told that he sees Bruce riding around not on a war horse but just on a palfrey, basically he's just cantering about on a pony. and he's got an axe. So he's not looking very grand.

22:27And Henry de Boone, we're told, is armoured fiend and he's got fantastic armour on and he's on a staid, he's on a massive war horse and he thinks, brilliant, I'm going to have the king. And he rides towards the king and Bruce sees him riding towards him. And we break into verse. We can break into verse, yeah. So we've got Henry looking at Bruce and he thought that he should well lately win him, Bruce, and have him at his will. Sin he saw him, horseid sa 'el. He's only on a pathetic little horse. Sprint the salmon into the ling. They sprinted toward each other in the line. Sir Henry missed the noble king.

23:04And he that in his stirrup stood with the axe that was heard and good. With swa great main roched him a dint that nother hat in a helm licht stint the heavy douche that he him gav. That near the heed to the harness clav. Runs towards him, stands up, Bruce stands up in his stirrup, swipes down with the axe, straight into Henry's brains. That's what happens when people underestimate Bruce. I see, right. That's how Bannockburn is set up. So your author there, your barber, really adores Bruce, doesn't he? He does. Absolute hero worship. Does he go just a little over the top? Well, I mean, he's patterning him after the great heroes of romance, sort of fictional romance.

23:52So he's casting him in that light. And of course, he has this historical figure who did win the Battle of Bannockburn and who did hang on to the crown against pretty fearsome odds at the beginning. So he's imagining what kind of person must he have been. So that's what he reaches for. Can we stick with Bannockburn for a moment because it's a wonderful centrepiece for all of you. Steve, what would it have meant to his listeners? Scots, through the 15th and 16th century, return to Barber's Bruce as a type of model for their own society, saying here's a great king, loyally supported by the lords and offering them good lordship.

24:31So it becomes almost a type of golden age that Scots, through the 14th, 15th century, look back to and invoke as a type of totem of the coherence of their kingdom. Michael, can we be a little more specific about his brilliance as a leader of men and in combat, if everything that Barber says is true, is brilliant in combat but how good he is at what he does. Yes I mean there's a problem there which you've already kind of hinted at which is how much do we believe Barber? Barber loves Bruce and Barber is writing for an audience that loves Bruce and historians love the detail and information it gives us about Bruce and have tended to rely on him a little too much maybe.

25:14Well you've got to define a little before we go on. Well, he's a Count of Manetburn. So his account of Manetburn has been identified as, in a sense, a narrative which is praising particular families and individuals who are there in 1370s and inventing roles for people on the battlefield nobody else mentions. So maybe he's just got better information or maybe he's writing an account which, whilst fundamentally based on events that are recognised, is also adding in details which isn't going to get tick boxes with the audience. Well, let's particularise this to the Douglas family. How they figured and why they're important and how they come into this business of the account.

25:53Yeah, I mean, the poem from the beginning is set up as not simply a biography of Robert, but as a biography of Robert and James Douglas, his lieutenant. Barber introduces James Douglas as a youth, deprived of his lands by Edward I, and then deciding to join Robert. and he signposts at their meeting that these two men are going to work together to free Scotland. So there's a double narrative. And there's a whole series of episodes with Douglas, who, like Bruce, is undertaking exploits leadership. He clearly is someone whose reputation is for transgressing the rules of normal behaviour. In Barb, he's called the Good Sir James.

26:32The English contemporary label for him is Black Douglas. and the family chooses the black label and supposedly in North Country mothers will frighten their children to sleep by saying, hushy, hushy, the black Douglas will get ye. So that reputation as almost terrorising the English is something which the Douglas family latches on to and James Douglas becomes their kind of focal point and their key figures in Scotland in the 1370s. So they're lapping this stuff up and the information may be from their family stories too. And this is all in the cause of getting Scotland recognised as a country in its own right, the equal of any other country in what we might call Europe without any other countries.

27:14I think there's two things going on. I mean, this is a story by a Scot for Scots, but it's also about, for the audience, seeing themselves as something which is participating in a wider frame of reference, you know, going back to the ideas of chivalry. and Robert himself is generally presented as someone who is honourable towards his captives, who recognises the fallen and respects them for the most part, certainly post-Bannockburn. And, you know, if you're Scotland and you're on the kind of northern edge of Europe, your route to the continent, which used to be via England, is now shut off. You're conscious of a need to recognise and be seen as part of this wider European, if you like, elite society.

27:56French seems to enter this. This is the period, the 14th century, when the Franco-Scottish alliance becomes increasingly important, and Scotland's main continental ally is the Kingdom of France, also at war with England in the Hundred Years' War. the French don't appear very much in this narrative but when you're in the 1370s and further into the 1380s the Franco-Scottish alliance is very real and the Douglases as a family are particularly associated with it so that awareness of how this plays out is important at the end of the poem James Douglas carries Robert Bruce's heart on crusade to Spain I kind of wonder how it lasts what does he put in a special sealed casket in a lead casket and they've discovered that casket at Melrose Abbey Really?

28:42Well, they think they have. They have something that looks very like it would be that casket, but it's a sealed lead box. Did they open it? I think they did, but there's not much. Rhiannon, we're talking about a man who's very conscious of writing this, but very consciously literary, alluding to other heroic poems. Can you mention one or two of them and tell us the effect this might have? He does. I mean, one of the interesting things about his literary allusions is that every one of them that we can trace is to a romance that was only available in French. So there are romances, there's plenty of romances in Middle English by this point that he could conceivably, the audience could have got hold of, been reading.