Page:Essays and studies; by members of the English Association, volume 1.djvu/100

 Crawfurd of Manuel, Harry's captain of Edinburgh Castle Sir William Crawford, actually castellan in or about 1401 The real figures belong to generations later than Wallace. One or two other examples may be shown. ' Schyr Garrard Heronne,' whom Harry makes an officer in Perthshire fighting against Wallace, is the Sir Gerard Heron who played a very authentic part on the borders from 1380 until 1403. 'Schyr Rawff Gray,' whom Harry makes keeper of Roxburgh, was really constable in 1459. The general concepts of the poem are often entirely at variance with the historical atmosphere of Wallace's time. Harry supposes that in Wallace's day men shot with guns and made use of explosives to blow up fortresses. He mentions the employment of ' horsyt ' archers, although we know that mounted archery was a fifteenth-century development, like the 'bastailyie', so constant a feature of the age not of Wallace but of Joan of Arc. He has the three estates, 'clerk, burgess, and barronne,' though that was a political generalization not popularly attained in the thirteenth century. Some allusions may be roughly, and some almost exactly, dated. Sleuth hounds of Esk and Liddell referred to were a special feature of the debatable border land, more developed in the fifteenth century than before. To the same general period belongs the glove stretched out as a sign of truce. More definite hint of date is given by the ceremonial of 'bauchilling' of King Edward's seal. When Edward failed to keep his word and give battle, Wallace