The Brus

The Brus, also known as The Bruce, is a long narrative poem, in Early Scots, of just under 14,000 octosyllabic lines composed by John Barbour which gives a historic and chivalric account of the actions of Robert the Bruce and Sir James Douglas in the Scottish Wars of Independence during a period from the circumstances leading up to the English invasion of 1296 through to Scotland's restored position in the years between the Treaty of 1328 and the death of Thomas Randolph, Earl of Moray in 1332.

[1] The poem was written about 1375,[2] "...to throw behind the new king, Robert II (who gave Barbour a pension) the weight of his grandfather's (Bruce's) achievements and reputation.

In book nine, in recounting Edward Bruce's victories in Galloway, Barbour does not relate the whole story, but sums up his worthiness by remarking that "he might have rivaled any of his contemporaries excepting only his brother".

Despite a number of errors of fact, the account has a greater degree of historical veracity than is usually associated with the verse-chronicle genre (for instance, Blind Harry's Wallace composed in the following century).

Barbour's influence on later Scottish writers can be seen in Robert Burns' Scots Wha Hae, and Walter Scott's The Lord of the Isles and Castle Dangerous.