The defendouris, was off sa fell defens,
Kepyt thar toun with strenth and excellens.—B. VIII. 803.
The principal assertion is not, that the defenders were powerful in defence; but that they, being so powerful in defence, guarded their town well. The reader must supply quha, or who, after defendouris.
The mar, kepyt the port of that willage,
Wallace knew weill, and send him his message.—B. IV. 359.
“Wallace was well acquainted with the mayor, who kept the port of that village.”
The only means that occurred to me for rendering the sense of such elliptical passages more obvious, was to throw in a comma; as, after The mar, in the passage quoted.
It cannot be denied that the feelings of the reader are often harrowed up by the coarse description which the Minstrel gives of the warlike deeds of his hero, and by the delight which he seems to take in those merciless scenes in which the English were the immediate sufferers. But great allowance must be made for him, not merely from the barbarism of the time in which he wrote, and from his want of such opportunities of refinement as even Barbour enjoyed, but from the soreness which every thorough Scotchman still felt, in consequence of the unpardonable treachery, violence, and ferocity of Edward the First, and of those employed under him, and the disgraceful stigma they had endeavoured to fix on a nation that had been always independent and always extremely jealous of its liberty. If the manners of the age do not form a sufficient apology for the cruelty ascribed to Wallace himself; it should be recollected that Scotland had no other chance of liberation from the usurpation of Edward than by the diminution of the number of the invaders, and that it was impossible for a few partisans to retain prisoners. Old Wyntown honestly defends Wallace on the grounds of the provocation given to him, and of his owing the English nothing.
In all Ingland thare wes noucht thane
As Willame Walays swa lele a mane.