SOURCE: "Barbour's Bruce and Harry's Wallace: The Question of Influence," Tennessee Studies in Literature, Vol. XVII, 1972, pp. 190-24.

In the following essay, Scheps argues that Blind Harry's indebtedness to Barbour has been exaggerated and that one purpose of the Wallace is to discredit Bruce.

John Barbour's Bruce (1375) has often been cited as the most important source of Blind Harry's Wallace (ante 1488). George Neilson, for example, calls the Wallace "a rib out of Bruce's side,"¹ and J. T. T. Brown suggests that the scribe of the fifteenth-century manuscript containing both poems has taken elements from the Bruce and added them to the Wallace.² That such views should come to be accepted is not surprising. Both Harry and Barbour deal with the same period in Scottish history. Also, Harry directly cites Barbour's poem (e.g., VII.757-58).³ That Harry knew the Bruce cannot be questioned, but the extent to which...