HARRY, BLIND

HARRY, BLIND, a Scottish minstrel of the 15th century. Scarcely anything is known of his life beyond what is told by John Major (or Mair) in his History of Scotland, published in 1521. 'When I was a child,' he says, 'Henry, a man blind from his birth, who lived by telling tales before princes and peers, wrote a whole book of William Wallace, weaving the common stories (which I, for one, only partly believe) into vernacular poetry, in which he was skilled.' In 1490-92 Blind Harry is found at the court of King James IV., receiving occasional gratuities of five, nine, and eighteen shillings. The poem attributed to him, The Life of that Noble Champion of Scotland, Sir William Wallace, Knight, was completed before the end of the year 1488, when it was copied by John Ramsay. This copy, the oldest MS. of the work now known to exist, does not ascribe it to Blind Harry, nor is his name given to it in the earlier printed editions. The poem, which contains 11,861 lines, of ten syllables each, is written in rhyming couplets. The language is frequently obscure, and sometimes unintelligible, but the work as a whole is written with vigour; in some passages it kindles into poetry; and it is altogether a surprising performance, if we regard it as the composition of one who was born blind. The author seems to have been familiar with the metrical romances which were the popular literature of the time, and, though his poem has no claim to be regarded as history, he makes frequent references to original authorities which form the main groundwork of the narrative. He represents himself as deeply indebted to the life of the great Scottish patriot, written in Latin by his schoolfellow Master John Blair, the chaplain of Wallace, and to another by Sir Thomas Gray, the parson of Liberton. The poem was at one time regarded as wholly a work of fiction, but authentic documents recently brought to light have shown that though it contains a great number of mistakes or misrepresentations of well-known facts, it is on the whole a valuable and in not a few incidents a trustworthy narrative. The work is believed to have been printed in the Scottish capital as early as 1520, but no perfect copy is known to be preserved of any earlier edition than that of Edinburgh in 1570, bearing the title of The Actis and Deidis of the Maist Illuster and Vailyand Campioun Schir William Wallace, Knight of Ellerslie. The work was reprinted at Edinburgh in 1594, 1601, 1620, 1648, 1673, and 1758; at Glasgow, in 1665 and 1699; also at Aberdeen and at Perth. Good editions are that by Jamieson (Edinburgh, 1820, 4to) and that by Moir for the Scottish Text Society (1885-89). The work was for about 200 years one of the most popular in Scotland, but gradually fell into neglect as its language, never very plain, ceased to be understood except by scholars. Its place was supplied by a modernised version by William Hamilton of Gilbertfield, published at Glasgow in 1722, with the title of A New Edition of the Life and Heroic Actions of the Renoun'd Sir William Wallace. This is a poor performance, but it continued to be widely circulated among the Scottish people almost to our own day.