The Wallace (poem)

Our antecessowris that we suld of reide, And hald in mynde thar nobille worthi deid, We lat ourslide throu verray sleuthfulnes, And castis us ever till uther besynes.

Till honour ennymyis is our haile entent, It has beyne seyne in thir tymys bywent.

We reide of ane rycht famous of renowne, Of worthi blude that ryngis in this regioune, And hensfurth I will my proces hald, Of Wilyham Wallas yhe haf hard beyne tald.

[1][2] As the title suggests, it commemorates and eulogises the life and actions of the Scottish freedom fighter William Wallace who lived a century and a half earlier.

[6] It forms a biography of William Wallace from his boyhood, through his career as a Scots patriot in the First War of Independence until his execution in London in 1305.

[8] A man referred to as "Blind Hary" is recorded as having received payments from King James IV on five occasions between 1490 and 1492.

The Scots scholar John Mair identified "Blind Hary" as the author of The Wallace in his work Historia Majoris Britanniae or The History Of Greater Britain of 1521.

The earliest surviving copy, the Ramsay Manuscript, is dated to 1488 but evidence from within the poem itself suggests that it was completed during the 1470s or earlier.

[citation needed] The work's popularity continued into the modern era with editions which often differed substantially from the texts of the sixteenth century.

In 1820 John Jamieson edited a more authentic Scots version of The Life and Acts of Sir William Wallace of Ellerslie[6][16] also published at Glasgow.