The Romantic movement of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries saw a reaction against the formal rules and the predominance of reason that marked
The Neoclassical period. Some of the characteristics that we most often associate with romanticism are a love of nature, an intense interest in the past (particularly things medieval), individualism, a sense of primitivism, and mysticism. The figure of William Wallace was one in which several romantic writers took a keen interest. After all, in the person of Wallace we see an individual spirit from the Middle Ages who, as a fighter for the nationalist cause of Scotland, was still very much alive in writers’ imagination. The wild, untamed nature of Wallace, and that of Scotland itself, were directly and indirectly celebrated by a host of romantic writers.
William Wordsworth (1770-1850) is one of the best-known romantic poets. Along with Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), he published Lyrical Ballads in 1798, thus ushering in the Romantic Age. Wordsworth’s autobiographical poem The Prelude is one of the poet’s great works. Written in blank verse, it is deeply philosophical and just as sophisticated as John Milton’s epic Paradise Lost. In book I, Wordsworth recalls William Wallace’s exploits and speaks of them in the context of the revolutionary ideals of romanticism:
How Wallace fought for Scotland; left the name Of Wallace to be found, like a wild flower,
All over his dear Country; left the deeds Of Wallace, like a family of Ghosts To people the steep rocks and river banks,
Her natural sanctuaries, with a local soul Of independence and stern liberty.50
The Wordsworths visited the various Scottish locales where Wallace and his men fought and hid. The turbulent life and times of Wallace, it seemed, had some impact upon Wordsworth; his sister Dorothy mentions how in 1803 they visited two caves reputed to have been hideouts of Wallace’s.51
Robert Burns (1759-1796) is perhaps the only Scottish figure who could (in his day or today) eclipse either Wallace or Bruce. Burns’s poem Scots wha hae, which is also known as March to Bannockburn (1793-94), is set to the melody of the old Scottish song “Hey, Tuttie Tatti.” As William Everett comments, the song was “quite probably heard at the Bannockburn victory which Burns’s words celebrate. Scottish archers took the tune to France, and it was played when Joan of Arc entered Orleans. The song exemplifies Scottishness on both levels discussed above: the independent Scotland of the Middle Ages, immortalized in a distant time, and the romanticization of the Jacobite ideology, recreated in nostalgic and benign terms.”52 As one can see from Burns’s poem, which is printed below, the author places the reader squarely in the nationalistic past. However, the poem also addresses the future of Scotland and proposes that the heroes of the past (Bruce and Wallace) should serve as symbols of yet-unattained political and social freedom. As Everett observes, Burns’s use of the future-tense “shall” signals a look into the future in which there exists the liberation of the sons of Scotland.53 Burns’s poem was one
That could be sung to a specific tune; however, it works perfectly fine on its own literary and linguistic merits as it captures the author’s own Scottish pronunciation.
Scots, wha hae wi’ Wallace bled,
Scots, wham Bruce has aften led,
Welcome to your gory bed,
Or to Victorie!
Now’s the day, and now’s the hour;
See the front o’ battle lour;
See approach proud Edward’s power—
Chains and Slaverie!
Wha will be a traitor knave?
Wha can fill a coward’s grave?
Wha sae base as be a Slave?
Let him turn and flee!
Wha, for Scotland’s King and Law,
Freedom’s sword will strongly draw,
Free-man stand, or Free-man fa’,
Let him on wi’ me!
By Oppression’s woes and pains!
By your Sons in servile chains!
We will drain our dearest veins,
But they shall be free!
Lay the proud Usurpers low!
Tyrants fall in every foe!
Liberty’s in every blow!—
Let us Do or Die!54
One of Scotland’s most prolific writers was Sir William Scott (1771-1832), and he is primarily known for his lengthy historical novels that depict a highly romanticized notion of Scottish history, its people, and its geography. Wa-verley (1814), Rob Roy (1817), and Ivanhoe (1819) are in many ways the novels of Scott that best represent his romanticized notions of the Scottish and English past. Like a number of writers in the romantic period, Scott was very familiar with medieval literature and history. He was acquainted with a number of important medieval manuscripts (for instance, the Auchinleck Manuscript, which contains many well-known and significant medieval romances) and with the scholars who edited these texts (such as Joseph Ritson, George Ellis, and Henry Weber).55 According to Jerome Mitchell, Barbour’s Bruce was one of the texts that Scott knew quite well and cited often in his own works; indeed, it is referred to in two of Scott’s letters: one to George Ellis in 1805 and another to Jacob Grimm in 1814, and in the latter Scott is critical of John Pinkerton’s 1790 edition.56 As John Sutherland notes, Scott was wholly consumed with his homeland, particularly during the first two decades of the nineteenth century when he was writing the poems The Vision of Don Roderick (1811) and Rokeby (1813), for Scott was “wild about Scottish gallantry at this period. Even his new terrier (who sat on his lap while he wrote The Vision) was called ‘Wallace.’”57 While Scott’s 1814 novel Waverley is set during the 1745 Jacobite Rising, the novel really addresses the unstable national and social relationship between England and Scotland. One of the characters of Waverley, the Baron of Bardwardine, is “the perfect example of a sympathetic portrayal of a sentimental Scottish Jacobite who reluctantly, but perhaps with relief, accepts the Hanoverian reality of Great Britain.”58 In a nuanced reading of the Baron’s middle name, which is Comyne, Julian Meldon D’Arcy points out the dubious nature of this name, for it is associated with duplicitous figures in Scottish history, such as Sir John Comyn (Robert the Bruce’s rival) and the earls of Menteith (originally from the Comyn family), one of whom was the elder brother of the “false Menteith” who betrayed William Wallace to Edward I in 1304.59
Scott’s The Lord of the Isles (1815) is a poem in six cantos whose narrative and characters are right out of medieval romance. In fact, the primary source for the poem is Barbour’s Bruce. In Scott’s romantic verse, the character of Edith is set to marry Ronald, Lord of the Isles, at Artonish Castle, but she is unsure of his love. Three strangers sail to the castle: the brothers Robert and Edward Bruce as well as their sister, Isabel. A fight ensues, for God is on the side of King Edward I of England. The bride meanwhile disappears, and we learn that the groom has feelings for Isabel. Ronald and Robert venture to Skye, rescue a young, mute, male page (who really is Edith in disguise), and are rejoined by Robert’s brother Edward. Robert discusses Ronald’s feelings with his sister, and she agrees to consider his hand if he ends his relationship with Edith. Isabel, meanwhile, realizes that the young mute is really Edith in disguise. However, Edith is captured by Clifford, an English leader. She refuses to reveal her identity to her captors and is to be executed, whereupon Bruce and his army rescue her and defeat the enemy. The final canto describes the battle of Bannockburn, wherein Edith (who is still disguised as the mute male page) commands the Scottish onlookers to join in the fight. The bystanders are convinced that, since a mute has spoken, a miracle has occurred. They join in the fight, the English are defeated, Ronald and Edith marry, and Isabel (in an unusual twist) takes her holy vows so as to enter into a convent. Appended to the poem are a substantial number of Scott’s own textual and historical notes, the majority of which are drawn from Pinkerton’s three-volume edition (1790) of Barbour’s Bruce. Jerome Mitchell states that the poem “owes a lot to medieval literature, not only to Barbour’s Bruce for its historical content but to Chaucer and medieval romance for other content, general atmosphere, and matters of style and structure.”60
Scott’s own History of Scotland (1830) is a curious mixture of history, myth, and legend. In this work, as in his novels, there exists, as Murray G. H. Pittock has observed, a “strange dual loyalty” to “Scotland’s past and Britain’s present (Bruce and Wallace on the one hand, England and Empire on the other).”61 Scott’s historical prose writings are highly descriptive and detailed, and he seems to have prided himself on the sheer amount of specific, factual information that he included in his histories. In the preface to his History of Scotland, Scott writes:
Our limits oblige us to treat this interesting subject more concisely than we could wish; and we are of course under the necessity of rejecting many details which engage the attention and fascinate the imagination. We will endeavour, notwithstanding, to leave nothing untold which may be necessary to trace a clear idea of the general course of events.62
In his descriptions of Wallace, the Bruce, Edward I, and the Scottish wars, Scott displays an even temper, one that the humanist John Major would have admired. The divisiveness of the early medieval historians is wholly absent; rather, Scott attempts to highlight the positive qualities of the principal figures:
Edward, on his return from the Low Countries, found himself at the head of a gallant muster of all the English chivalry, forming by far the most superb army that had ever entered Scotland. Wallace acted with great sagacity, and, according to a plan which often before and after proved successful in Scottish warfare, laid waste the intermediate country between Stirling and the frontiers, and withdrew towards the centre of the kingdom to receive the English attack, when their army should be exhausted by privation.
Edward pressed on with characteristic hardihood and resolution. Tower and town fell before him: but his advance was not without such inconvenience and danger as a less determined monarch would have esteemed a good apology for retreat.63
Scott does not divulge the gory details of Wallace’s death, but he does conclude with some moving words on the place of the Scottish outlaw in the country’s history:
Thus died this courageous patriot, leaving a remembrance which will be immortal in the hearts of his countrymen. This steady champion of independence having been removed, and a bloody example held out to all who should venture to tread in his footsteps, Edward proceeded to form a species of constitution for the country, which, at the cost of so much labor, policy, and bloodshed, he had at length, as he conceived, united for ever with the English crown.64
This populist reading of historical events was almost certainly written for the general reading public. Scott himself was a rather self-assured individual and, like Mark Twain, a great spokesman for his literary output. He was also rather honest about the limitations of his History of Scotland: “I have not the least doubt that I will make a popular book, for I trust it will be both interesting and useful; but I never intended to engage in any proper historical labor, for which I have neither time, talent, nor inclination.”65 Scott also saw the importance of his history books for adolescent readers, and so a series called Tales of a Grandfather was soon created that would make Scott’s historical novels more appropriate for a younger reading audience. As the editor of Tales of a Grandfather: Being the History of Scotland (1831), Edwin Ginn states that the “present work has been slightly abridged by the omission of detailed descriptions of some of the more barbarous cruelties of those times and other important matter.”66 What Scott does add to his children’s book to make it livelier than his adult version is a heavy dose of dialogue, which, at times, reads right out of a modern comic book or an action movie:
“Go back to Warenne,” said Wallace, “and tell him we value not the pardon of the King Of England. We are not here for the purpose of treating of peace, but for abiding battle, and of restoring freedom to our country. Let the English come on;—we defy them to their very beards!”67
Schoolchildren who read this account of Wallace and Scott’s later chapter on Robert the Bruce would have been impressed (and understandably so) by the exploits and characters of both figures. Scott’s narrative of the Bruce’s (possibly legendary) encounter with a spider became a central moment in the hero’s biographical narrative. The story is as follows: In 1306 the Bruce was a discouraged fugitive, apparently unable to gain the throne. He happened to observe a spider that was trying to attach its web to a beam; after several attempts, the spider succeeded.68 This determination on the spider’s part encouraged Bruce to try harder for the throne and for the freedom of his country. The moralizing and didactic nature of this episode must have been prime fodder for schoolteachers and children alike.
The early nineteenth century also saw a handful of literary reinterpretations of the Wallace figure and legend. In 1802, John Finlay’s Wallace; or the Vale of Ellerslie was first published in Glasgow, and the text went through three revised and expanded editions; in 1809, Margaret Holford published Wallace, or the Battle of Falkirk; in 1810, Jane Porter’s commercially successful romance novel The Scottish Chiefs appeared;69 and, in 1813, R. P. Gillies had his Wallace; a fragment published.70
In 1819, the literary journal Blackwood’s announced a contest for the best work in verse or prose on William Wallace. The top three submissions came from Felicia Hemans (who won first prize and ?25), James Hogg, and Joanna Baillie. As Nancy Moore Goslee has noted, these three poems, and the aim of the competition, “show how subtle and complex such reinterpretations” of a pan-British narrative of a heroic nature can be, and that in these three poems “the medieval struggle for Scottish independence against England comes to stand for the modern struggle for British liberty against Napoleonic tyranny,” and in a post-Waterloo environment they can also represent a struggle for “individual civil liberties.”71
Wallace and Bruce continued to be the focus of other forms of art, both high and popular. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the icons became the centerpieces of musical compositions, paintings, and films.
World History
