SOURCE: "John Barbour's Bruce: Poetry, History, and Propaganda," Studies in Scottish Literature, Vol. IX, No. 4, April, 1972, pp. 218-42.

In the following essay, Ebin asserts that Barbour's purpose in writing his poem was to emphasize the importance of freedom and loyalty for Scotland

Five years after the accession of Robert Stewart to the throne of Scotland in 1371, John Barbour, Archdeacon of Aberdeen, wrote the Bruce, a narrative poem of 13,864 lines which celebrates the deeds of Stewart's grandfather, Robert Bruce. The poem not only won the immediate acclaim of Barbour's contemporaries, but was considered by many chroniclers to be the most elegant and authoritative account of Bruce's reign.¹ Although recent scholars have recognized the poem's merit and repeatedly have edited, anthologized, and praised the Bruce, they have been puzzled by many of its features. In the first place, while the Bruce ostensibly deals with the deeds, wars, and virtues of...