2. The Alexander allusions in Bks. III., X. With reference to these see Appendix E. But why should Mr. Brown speak of “the famous grey palfrey of Lord Douglas” on the strength of one notice in Bk. II. 118? There is nothing to justify the epithet “famous”; and Ferrand was no more an unusual name for a “grey” horse than Blanchard for a white one. Bishop Lamberton might have had “a grey” as well as Eumynedus.[146]
3. The Ferumbras Romance. I have analyzed this passage in my notes to Bk. III., 435-462. Mr. Brown contends that the adoption of the form Ferumbras for the French Fierabras “points to a knowledge on the part of the Scottish poet” of either the Syr Ferumbras or the Sowdone of Babylone, in both of which this form occurs. It is possibly an adaptation of the spelling Fierenbras, which occurs in The Destruction of Rome and also in a fragment of the romance.[147] But there is nothing more remarkable in Barbour’s intrusion of the “m” here than in his calling Lubaut or Lybaut, Lumbard in Bk. X. 324,[148] or Capaneus, Campaneus.[149] More significant is the name Lavyne for Balan, which is the normal form for all the existing texts, French and English, save the Sowdone, where we have Laban, Lavane and Lavyne, and The Destruction of Rome (French), which has Balan and Laban, the latter of which has given the spelling in “v.” Mr. Brown, however, rules out the Destruction for Barbour, as being “merely related to the Charlemagne cycle,”[150] though Dr. Hausknecht accepts it as the original of the first part of the Sowdone.[151] Why, then, should Barbour, too, not have known it? Mr. Brown’s conclusion is that the name, with other material, points to the whole passage being based on the Sowdone, and the Sowdone being post-Chaucerian—in which opinion he follows, and even goes beyond, Hausknecht—of the beginning of the fifteenth century, after Barbour’s death, it obviously follows that the lines cannot have been his work.[152] Against this may be put Hausknecht’s own conclusion, to which Mr. Brown makes no reference: “It is worthy of notice that the account of the Fierabras romance, as given by Barbour, may be considered, on the whole, as identical with the subject of the French Fierabras or the English Syr Ferumbras, but not with the Sowdan, as there is no mention made of the combat before Rome, nor any trace of what makes up the first part of the Sowdan.”[153] A few additional facts will substantiate Hausknecht’s statement.
In the Sowdone the twelve peers are shut up in “Egrymor”; Barbour gives “bot eleven.”[154] Mr. Brown says of the Bruce account that, “Every line is traceable in the Sowdone.”[155] There is no trace of line 452, or of Lavyne’s “flot” in 456; Charlemagne, instead of “being joyful” at the news that his peers were alive, there bursts out in anger against the traitor Ganelon.[156] Conclusive, on Mr. Brown’s own case, is the fact, noted by Hausknecht, that the relics mentioned by Barbour “differ from all other versions.”[157] It is not “off the croice a gret party”[158] in the Sowdone, but simply “the crosse, the crown, the nailes bente”;[159] and there is no mention of “the sper.”[160] Nothing is said of the cross in the Fierabras or the Syr Ferumbras, and the Destruction has the crown of thorns, the cross, the nails, and the “signe”[161] or shroud. Nor did Barbour invent “the sper,” for it is spoken of in this connection, though not in the final distribution, in the Provençal version of the Fierabras: “e del fer d’una lansa,” the spear-head.[162] It would seem, then, that Barbour was using a version of the romance different, in certain particulars, from any we now possess. At any rate, Mr. Brown has to get round these awkward corners before he can transfix Barbour on Lavyne.
4. The Tydeus Episode, Bk. VI. 179-268. It may be granted that Barbour here is not, as Skeat supposed, drawing directly on the Thebaid of Statius, even in memory. But then no more is Lydgate in his Story of Thebes;[163] having used, according to Dr. Koeppel, some French prose epic based on the classical story,[164] now lost, or giving in his poem “a transcript from a French rendering of Statius.”[165] There was ample material, including even, as Gaston Paris has suggested, an abridgment of Statius in Latin prose. Mr. Brown contends that Barbour’s “redactor” borrowed from Lydgate. But here, again, the differences are sufficiently vital to thwart such a conclusion. “Betwix ane hye crag and the se”[166] has no equivalent either in Statius or Lydgate, as is clear from Mr. Brown’s own citations;[167] nor has the detail that the “gret stane ... throu the gret anciente, Wes lowsyt reddy for to fall,”[168] for which Lydgate has:
“Beside he saw with water turned down
An huge stone, large, round, and square.”[169]
In an inductive literary argument differences must be accounted for as well as similarities, and any other possible sources must be satisfactorily eliminated. Opinions as to “the classical parsimony of independent translators”[170] are purely speculative.
5. The Hannibal lines, Bk. III. 207-248.—Here Mr. Brown’s argument needs only to be summarily stated to show its inadequacy. Wyntoun borrowed from Barbour in some instances, but not in this; therefore, since there are similarities in the way the same story is told, the Bruce lines are drawn from the Cronykil.[171] Wyntoun confesses to having translated from Orosius, Mr. Brown says through Martinus Polonus, and he follows his author closely. Barbour’s narrative is brief and, in several details, faulty, in which he diverges from both the Latin author and his Scots translator.[172] The startling error in chronology, especially, “would not be readily made by one using Martinus at first hand,” but with the Cronikyl before him the writer was quite likely to do so![173] The peculiar “touches” in the Bruce passage are noted, but unexplained. It is assumed that “The agreement with Martinus is much too close for it to be considered to be written from memory;”[174] and “there is nothing in Martinus that should lead us to expect independent translators to ascribe such a victory to God and in terms so similar:
“Bot throw Goddis gret powste.”[175]
“Bot throw the mycht of Goddis grace.”[176]
But the terms are not “similar,” and both are a mediæval rendering of divina miseratio in Orosius and Polonus. The whole argument in this connection is involved and haphazard. What is there illegitimate in the simple hypothesis that Barbour wrote from a well-stored but not perfectly accurate memory, and that Wyntoun preferred the first-hand to the second-hand source? So we explain both similarities and differences. Wyntoun’s lines are a plain following of his Latin author; Barbour’s a brief summary, with expansions and comments of his own leading up to the moral he wishes to enforce; and in this case Mr. Brown cannot point to a single line in common.