The Scottish wars and their iconographic heroes were the focus of several popular political songs in England. The majority of these verses were, like Langtoft’s chronicle, highly critical of the Scots, especially William Wallace. The Latin “Song of the Scottish Wars” survives in several medieval manuscripts, although the earliest would seem to have been composed in 1298, soon after the battle of Falkirk.15 Throughout this poem, there is a strong anti-Scottish sentiment; the anonymous poet seems to delight in the murder of the Scots and sees them as base animals:
The kilted people, numerous and savage, who are accustomed to detract from the Englishmen, fell at Dunbar, and now stink like a dog; thus do
Fools, who are tormented by vain glory.—Vain glory made the deceitful people deny the true lord of Scotland. . . . William Wallace is the leader of these savages; the rejoicings of fools breed increase to griefs.—To increase the wickedness which they had hitherto perpetrated, these wicked men deliver Alnwick to the flames; they run about on every side like madmen.16
Not all English political poems, though, celebrate the death of Scots. “The Battle of Bannockburn” was written soon after the battle; in Latin, it describes the defeat of the English and the death of the earl of Gloucester. The mood in the poem is somber, and the writer “laments the humiliation to which his country had been reduced” and also suggests that the defeat was caused by pride, evil counsels, and traitorous acts on the battlefield.17 Robert the Bruce is not directly named in the poem, and this omission is purposeful and significant. The anonymous poet certainly did not wish to ascribe the reason for the Scottish victory on the Bruce’s superior army on that given day; to do so would have almost been treasonous and heretical. Those English who were killed “deserved to suffer judgment of decapitation, since voluntarily they have betrayed such a soldiery.”18
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