(2) Wyntoun speaks (Chronicle III. iii.) of a "Treteis" which Barbour made by way of "a genealogy" of "Brutus lynagis"; and elsewhere in that poem there are references to the archdeacon's "Stewartis Oryginale." This "Brut" is unknown; but the reference has been held by some to be to (3) a Troy-book, based on Guido da Colonna's Historia Destructionis Troiae. Two fragments of such a work have been preserved in texts of Lydgate's Troy-book, the first in MS. Camb. Univ. Lib. Kk. v. 30, the second in the same and in MS. Douce 148 in the Bodleian library, Oxford. This ascription was first made by Henry Bradshaw, the librarian of Cambridge University; but the consensus of critical opinion is now against it. Though it were proved that these Troy fragments are Barbour's, there remains the question whether their identification with the book on the Stewart line is justified. The scale of the story in these fragments forces us to doubt this identification. They contain 595 + 3118 = 3713 lines and are concerned entirely with "Trojan" matters. This would be an undue allowance in a Scottish "genealogy."
(4) Yet another work was added to the list of Barbour's works by the discovery in the university library of Cambridge, by Henry Bradshaw, of a long Scots poem of over 33,000 lines, dealing with Legends of the Saints, as told in the Legenda Aurea and other legendaries. The general likeness of this poem to Barbour's accepted work in verse-length, dialect and style, and the facts that the lives of English saints are excluded and those of St Machar (the patron saint of Aberdeen) and St Ninian are inserted, made the ascription plausible. Later criticism, though divided, has tended in the contrary direction, and has based its strongest negative judgment on the consideration of rhymes, assonance and vocabulary (see bibliography). That the "district" of the author is the north-east of Scotland cannot be doubted in the face of a passage such as this, in the fortieth legend (St Ninian), 11, 1359 et seq.
"A lytil tale ȝet herd I tel,
þat in to my tyme befel,
of a gudman, in murrefe [Moray] borne
in elgyne [Elgin], and his kine beforne,
and callit was a faithful man
vith al þame þat hyme knew than;
& þis mare trastely I say,
for I kend hyme weile mony day.