[30] Scottish Vernacular Literature, p. 41.
[31] For this reason Buss always gives the name as Barbere.
[32] These have been brought together by Skeat in his first volume, pp. xv-xxv.
[33] Skeat here takes equitibus to be “knights,” but this is not a military business. They were, we may judge, the attendants proper to his rank.
[34] See on Bk. XIII. 702.
[35] The account of 1429 is the first to state expressly that this perpetual pension was “for the composition of the book of the deeds of the erstwhile King Robert the Bruce” (Excheq. Rolls, iv., p. 520).
[36] “His theme was Freedom,” writes Mr. Cosmo Innes. Barbour gives out his “theme” in the first thirty-six lines, and never once mentions it.
[37] The editor of The Exchequer Rolls, vol. ii. p. cv., says: “Bower accuses Barbour of misrepresenting the origin of the Stewarts.” That is not so. According to the summary in Bower, Barbour had it that they came from Wales, and in fact the family was settled in Shropshire on the Welsh March. It had its origin, he said, from one who was called “Le Fleanc de Waran,” who may equate with Alan FitzFlaald, who, however, apparently did not marry a daughter of Warine, the sheriff of that county (Round, Studies in the Peerage, p. 116). He affirms, rightly enough, that the first of them in Scotland was Walter, in the days of King William (twelfth century). Where he goes wrong genealogically, according to Bower, is in saying that Walter’s son, Alan, was in the First Crusade, which was obviously impossible; but Alan FitzAlan, uncle of Alan FitzFlaald, was in that expedition. Barbour was dealing with remote personages through family tradition, and whatever his errors as represented by Bower, he does not appear, as is too lightly assumed, to have been the source of the myths of later historians in this connection. Bower’s language does not admit of a Banquo. See Cupar and Perth MSS., in Scotichronicon, Lib. IX., chap. xlviii.
[38] The Wallace and The Bruce, pp. 88-90.
[39] Preface I., xlix-lii.