John Barbour

Aberdeen, Scotland, 1316 - 1395

Keywords

About MeJohn Barbour, as the author of The Bruce, the first surviving written Scots prose, ican be considered the peer of Chaucer. No one has doubted Barbour's authorship of the Brus, but there is an argument that the text as we have it is an edited copy, perhaps by John Ramsay, a Perth scribe, who wrote out the two extant texts, one preserved in the Advocates Library, Edinburgh, and the other in the library of St John's College, Cambridge.

John Barbour's birth is usually placed about 1325, although a slightly later date seems likelier. The trade name he inherited suggests that his father was a barber, and John's first appearance, in 1356 resigning the precentorship of Dunkeld which he held for just a year, links his family to that area. The Bruce records activity of William Sinclair, bishop of Dunkeld (d. 1337) so John may have grown up on the fringes of the bishop's household.

In 1356 Barbour was appointed to the archdeaconry of Aberdeen, presumably from the same Stewart patronage that accounts for his earlier position. But David II came home in November 1357 for an even larger ransom, at which prospect Barbour had sought leave to study at Oxford; he was the first Scot to be granted a safe conduct for that purpose in August 1357 and in September was his bishop's proctor at the council which discussed the king's release. He had further English safe conducts to leave Scotland during the years 1357–71, when David II was an active king, for study in England (1364), to visit St Denis (1365), and to study in France (1368), which he probably did in the following three years. That he had been to a university is almost certain because he is called on occasion master, but given the rarity of this description it is likely that he had not graduated and was not entitled to it.

Everything suggests that he was a known client of Robert Stewart, who in 1371 at last ascended the throne as Robert II. Barbour, it seems, wrote The Bruce for this royal patron, whose father, Walter, appears in a generous measure and light in its pages. When Barbour began to write is a matter of judgement, probably about 1372. The date 1375 marks the conclusion of the poem he planned and was followed by a change in his career, for he now appears in a north-eastern context: in 1378 the king granted him a pension of £1 annually from Aberdeen burgh's annual payment to the crown.

The poem of 1375, written in rhyming octosyllabic couplets, sketches the Bruce claim to the throne in 1292, but moves rapidly to the Edwardian occupation, of 1304. After the killing of Sir John Comyn, it gives a vivid depiction of the battle of Methven on 19 June 1306 and an extended treatment of the early tribulations of Robert I and of Sir James Douglas. The narrative resumes with the taking of Perth, Roxburgh, and Edinburgh, going on to a full account of the battle of Bannockburn the return of the king's daughter, her marriage to Walter Stewart, and the birth of their child Robert, in the fifth year of whose reign, 1375, this poem is being written. It is the only year date in the whole poem, and surely marks the end of the original composition, over 8000 lines long.

It is a ‘romance’ (Barbour's word) of chivalry, with emphasis on loyalty, bravery, and wisdom. It claims to be truthful, but Barbour has often been misled by his sources, as over the chronology of events leading to Bannockburn, and sometimes tailors the facts to create a better literary effect. There are those, however, who would credit Barbour with piecing much of the story together himself, from reminiscences collected by himself, on the grounds that he virtually never mentions written sources, but frequently says, ‘I heard tell’.

What else did Barbour write? Before 1449 the chroniclers Wyntoun and Bower had ascribed to him The Bruce (sections and lines from which were silently borrowed by Wyntoun), The Brut, The Stewartis Oryginalle, and The Stewartis Genealogy. The last two are certainly identical, and if a mythical Trojan origin were suggested for the Stewarts, The Brut could be another title for the same. They surely confirm that Barbour devoted his literary talents pretty single-mindedly to one family, the Stewarts. And whether one or two works, they are lost. Although The Bruce survives in only two manuscripts, it was clearly influential upon all later Scottish historiography and pseudo-history.

His patron, Robert II, having died in 1390, Barbour was at Aberdeen in 1391–2, and probably until his death. Aberdeen Cathedral lists give the anniversary of his death on 13 and 14 March, and the transfer of his £1 pension shows that the year was 1395; it is likely that he was buried in the cathedral.

Additional InfoImage Attribution: By Stephencdickson - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, via WikiMedia Commons

Wikipedia Biography

Loading ...