The lordis deit apon this wis.
He, that hye Lord of all thing is,
Up till his mekill blis thame bryng,
And grant his grace, that thar ofspryng
Leid weill the land, and ententif 615
Be to folow, in all thair liff,
Thair nobill elderis gret bounte!
The afald God in Trinite
Bring us hye up till hevynnis blis,
Quhar all-wayis lestand liking is!—Amen. 620
NOTES
For fuller details of the more important works referred to see Bibliographical List.
BOOK I.
4 on gud maner. The best expansion of this phrase as an expression of Barbour’s ideal of style is in the Alexander:
“To mak it on sa gud manere,
Sa oppin sentence and sa clere
As is the Frenche” (p. 441).
15 tyme of lenth. In modern phrase, “length of time,” and Skeat accordingly follows Hart’s edition in so reading it. But “of lenth” is a common attributive phrase and may quite well stand here, though awkward to modern ears. In line 531 we have this warld of lenth for “the length of this world,” which is a close enough parallel, and will not admit of alteration. In Wyntoun, too, occur such phrases as, “a merke schot large of lenth” (Bk. ix. 27, 419).
37 Quhen Alexander the King was deid. As in the first line of the well-known double verse given by Wyntoun as a fragment of the time; “Quhen Alexander our Kinge was dede.” Wyntoun, in his extract from The Bruce, here reads oure. Alexander III. was killed by falling, with his horse, over the cliff at Kinghorn in Fife, on March 19, 1286.
39 six yher. Rather less. Alexander “was dead” on March 19, 1286, which Barbour would reckon as 1285. The dispute over the succession began on the death of Queen Margaret on September 26, 1290.