Book XII. 210-327
It is the privilege of early historians to equip their leading personages with speeches, and in its pertinent, practical character the speech here provided for King Robert is a good example of such—so good, indeed, as to suggest the probability that Barbour is working up some transmitted material. There is on record another speech attributed to Bruce, which formed part of a Latin poem on Bannockburn by Abbot Bernard of Arbroath, Bruce’s Chancellor, portions of which are quoted in the Scotichronicon.[58] This speech consists of twenty-five hexameter lines, and is a rhetorical flourish on Scottish liberty, the miseries inflicted by the English on the country, and the hapless condition of “mother Church,” closing in strains of ecclesiastical exhortation. Moreover, it immediately precedes the opening of the battle, while Barbour’s version is of the evening before. In the latter a special interest attaches to lines 263-268 and 303-317, which may be compared with the following extracts from a speech by Alexander the Great in The Vowes, one of the three romances which make up the Scottish Buik of Alexander, the translation of which from the French was probably the work of Barbour himself.[59] Alexander says:
“Be thay assailyeit hardely,
And encountered egerly,
The formest cumis ye sall se,
The hindmest sall abased be.
Forthy I pray ilk man that he
Nocht covetous na yarnand be,
To tak na ryches that thay wald,
Bot wyn of deidly fais the fald;
Fra thay be winnin all wit ye weill
The gudis are ouris ever ilk deill;
And I quyteclame yow utrely
Baith gold and silver halely,
And all the riches that thaires is,
The honour will I have I wis.”[60]
To the same purport as these latter lines is a portion of a subsequent address;[61] and lines 325, 334 find a similar parallel in:
“Thus armit all the nicht thay lay,
Quhile on the morne that it was day.”[62]
Of the cardinal sentiment in the speech, the origin is probably to be found in the familiar story of the Maccabees, referred to more than once in The Bruce. Judas Maccabeus was one of the typical heroes of French romance, and had one metrical romance, at least, devoted to his career. And in 1 Maccabees, chap. iv., we have:
“17. (Judas) said to the people, Be not greedy of the spoils, inasmuch as there is a battle before us.