Barbour’s figure for the Scottish army must be similarly reduced. More than 30,000 would be a huge proportion of the Scottish population of that time, especially as the whole does not seem to have been drawn upon, and of that, as Barbour insists, a good many were still hostile.[98] William the Lion was credited in 1173 with a national host of 1,000 armoured horsemen, and 30,000 unarmoured footmen,[99] and the latter unit is surely over the score. At Halidon Hill, 1333, the Scots are said to have had 1,174 knights and men-at-arms and 13,500 light-armed men or foot;[100] and this chronicler consistently exaggerates. Yet these figures represent a united kingdom. Forty thousand at Bannockburn is the estimate for the Scots of the Vita Edw. writer, but the English writers, on their side, grossly overstate the numbers of the enemy, as witness what is said of Hemingburgh above. Bain’s figure of 15,000 to 16,000 is no doubt nearer the mark; “perhaps twenty-five thousand men in all” is Mr. Oman’s conjecture.[101] Possibly 6,000 to 7,000 is as near as we can go, adopting Barbour’s ratio, which gives a proportion of 1 to 3 of the English army. The non-combatants here, too, would be numerous. Up to this time Bruce’s men in the field could be numbered only in hundreds, so that as many thousands would represent a very special effort. And note that after Murray’s success over Clifford nearly the whole Scots army gathered round him to see him and do him honour—a fact which is suggestive[102] as to its size.
APPENDIX D
THE THROWING OF THE HEART
Book XX. *421-*432
These lines are found only in Hart’s printed edition. Pinkerton thought there was “no reason to view them as an interpolation,” and Jamieson regarded their agreement with the account in the Howlat[103] “a strong presumption of authenticity.” By Skeat they were at first accepted as genuine, but afterwards, influenced by the reasoning on Barbour’s rhymes of P. Buss in Anglia,[104] he surrendered them as an interpolation. In the passage of twelve lines three rhymes occur, which are unusual—more strongly, impossible—for Barbour on the basis of his admitted work. These are battell—tell, to be—de, ho—to. In the first case, Barbour, it is claimed, elsewhere always uses the “liquid” form bataill (battalyhe) to rhyme with another word of the same character as assaile or travaill (travailyhe).[105] In the second, he “never rhymes be with de (correctly dey),” as Skeat puts it, for de (Icel. deyja) was still influenced by the terminal semi-guttural, giving it an “impure” sound, whereas “be,” with no ghostly after-sound, is quite “pure.” The final example brings together two different values of “o,” and, it may be added, in the four cases in which Barbour uses the word, it is in the form hoyne.[106] These rhyme-tests had also been applied to the same result by Mr. W. A. Craigie.[107]
With this conclusion Mr. Brown agrees, “although on slightly different grounds.”[108] Hart’s edition, of course, takes a place in his general scheme of redaction. But he would “hesitate to reject the lines on the rimes alone,” and “The be, de test” seems to him “quite untrustworthy.”[109] Skeat thinks it unanswerable.[110] Mr. Neilson pleads “that this canon begs the whole question of the text of the Bruce ... first you find your canon; then you edit out of your text all that is disconform.”[111] Arguing specially on its application to The Legends of the Saints, he points out that “There are not a few metrical and other solecisms in the Bruce,” and that the “exceptional e-rhyme” is the stamp of transition.[112] It is to be observed also that Chaucer, Barbour’s contemporary, and more careful in such matters than he, rhymes ho, y-do in the Knight’s Tale.[113] In the Alexander occurs the tell—battell rhyme.[114] On the whole, the test is perhaps not so conclusive—out of Germany—as Skeat imagines. Further, from the indubitable reference in the Howlat to the Bruce, Neilson accepts the latter as the sole source of its digression, and the lines as therefore authentic.[115]
If, however, what has already been said of the passages from Hart hold good,[116] then this one must go with the rest. Fortunately, in this specific case that argument can be greatly strengthened, for the lines have never been tried by their relation to the context and their historic implications, and that obvious and indisputable test puts the question beyond doubt. They have but an outside connection with the narrative of Barbour, and otherwise are in flat contradiction thereto. So much is at once evident from the closing couplet:
“And took it up in gret daintie;
And ever in field this used he.”
It is a series of performances of this kind that is contemplated, not a single example, which is all that Barbour’s account gives room for. Douglas is credited with a habit of this sort, “ever in field”; while Barbour, like Froissart, knows of only one battle in which Douglas fought while bearing the heart of Bruce.[117] Nor is Barbour likely to have omitted such a “point of chivalry” on the part of his twin hero, had a valid tradition of it existed in his day.
The problem becomes clearer when we consider alternative and later accounts of the expedition of Douglas, for which see note on Book XX. 191, 192. Evidently the idea of his going to the Holy Land, as Froissart explains the commission,[118] and as it occurs in Bower, gave an opening for embellishment, which expands in the hands of Boece to the extent of thirteen victories achieved by Douglas over the Turks! This, however, is only to give more precision to a composite account contained in the Buke of the Howlat of the middle of the fifteenth century, a poem written in glorification of the Douglases. The author, supposed to be Richard Holland, speaks of the great friendship Bruce had for Douglas: “Reid the writ of thar work to your witness”[119]—a clear reference to the Bruce, especially as in xxxv. and xxxvi. he paraphrases the reply of Douglas to the King in Book XX. 223, 234. Thereafter, however, he strikes off from Barbour. Douglas goes to “the haly graif,” where—
“XXXVII.