Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 9.djvu/130

124 NOTES AND QUERIES. [n s. ix. FEB. u, uu only the ill-composed (i.e., badly printed?) book, but also the MS. by which he was able to bring it to good method, contained Barbour's narrative of Bruce's career. This conclusion is based upon the close dependence of Gordon's whole poem on Barbour's narrative, and especially on the references to "my author" in two foot-notes to caput xvi. Gordon gives Randolph a force of 500 men in his encounter with Clifford, but notes that "my author says one hundred," which is the number given in Hart's printed edition of Barbour's 'Bruce,' as opposed to the "five hundred" of the Edinburgh and Cambridge MSS. Of the knight who was killed by Randolph's men he says, "My author calls him Havecourt," which agrees with "Hawcourt" in Hart's edition. He calls the Captain of Edinburgh Castle "Sir Pierre le Bald" (=Libald in Hart's edition), although in the existing MSS. his name is given wrongly as Lumbard or Lombert. It appears, then, that Fenton's MS., as far as it went, agreed with the MS. printed by Hart in 1616, which is said to be in substantial agreement with the first printed edition of Barbour's 'Bruce,' dated 1571. As Gordon's 'Bruce' appeared in 1613, the "old printed book" that puzzled him must have been the earlier printed edition of 1571.

We thus see that the history of Bruce "set down" by Fenton in 1369 was, in the main, Barbour's poem. It differed, however, both by defect and excess, from the Barbour's 'Bruce' that has come down to us. It was

and it included the 'History of the Kings' and 'Baliol's Vision.' The 'History of the Kings'—omitted in Gordon's epic—was, perhaps, Barbour's 'Stewartis Genealogy,' which Fenton might naturally have prefixed to the 'Bruce.' 'Baliol's Vision,' the substance of which is reproduced in Gordon's epic, may have been the work, not of Barbour, but of another poet. Perhaps, however, it was an integral part of an earlier edition of Barbour's 'Bruce,' and was expunged as being offensive to powerful men connected with the Baliol family. In the Introduction to my translation of Barbour, and in my last note to that translation, I have suggested that an earlier edition, concluding with the battle of Bannockburn, is implied by the passage giving the date of the poem, which comes immediately after the description of the battle (xiii. 699-712). This conjecture is supported by Gordon's information that his MS. "from the field of Bannockburn forth wanted all the rest almost." The date of Fenton's MS. 1369 shows that, if there was such an earlier edition, it must have been given to the world at least six years before 1375, the date at which the poem appeared in its final form. See xiii. 703, 704.