Wallace: The glowing star in Scotland’s story
August 2005
by J. Derrick McClure
How Wallace fought for Scotland, left the name
Of Wallace to be found, like a wild flower,
All over his dear country; left the deeds
Of Wallace, like a family of ghosts,
To people the steep rocks and river banks,
Her natural sanctuaries, with a local soul
Of independence and stern liberty.
So wrote William Wordsworth, as he sought inspiration for the great poetic work he planned to write. Wordsworth loved Scotland; and with a poet’s sensitivity, was moved by the pervasive presence, centuries after his time, of Scotland’s greatest patriot.
And even today, Wallace is still very much with us. The magnificent statue in the heart of Aberdeen is a daily reminder of him and his achievement, and other images abound: he appears as an even grander statue on the Wallace Monument in Stirling; he stands guard along with Robert Bruce at the entrance to Edinburgh Castle; my home town of Ayr, the scene of one of his most notorious exploits, has an imposing likeness of him in its fine Wallace Tower.
On a less tangible level, his name appears all over the place: many parts of Scotland have their Wallace’s Hill, Wallace’s Cave, Wallace’s House, Wallace’s Isle, Wallace’s Stone, Wallace’s Cast, Wallace’s Farm or Wallace’s Heel, each with its local story: the last-mentioned is a tiny spring running over a flat stone at the side of the River Ayr, where Wallace’s foot struck the ground as he jumped the river to escape a pursuing band of Englishmen – a story which must be cast in doubt by the fact that the River Ayr at that point is at least 60 feet wide.
So familiar is the figure of William Wallace that it comes as a surprise to be reminded that the actual records of his life are very sparse. Something of his family background is attested: he was the second son of a knight, Sir Malcolm Wallace, whose family estate was in Elderslie, near Paisley. He springs dramatically onto the stage of recorded history by killing Hazelrigg, the arrogant English governor of Lanark, in 1296. The traditional story that the killing was done to avenge Hazelrigg’s murder of Wallace’s wife Marian for helping her husband to escape is, alas, almost certainly fiction: it does not appear until a full century later. What is certain is that Hazelrigg had confiscated the Wallace family estates on the death of William’s elder brother to prevent him from inheriting them: an action which strongly suggests that Wallace had already incurred the suspicion of the English occupying forces.
The killing sparked off a full-scale uprising in Scotland against the hated English; and in the fighting that ensued Wallace took a leading part, capturing several castles and firing the Barns of Ayr in which the English garrison was lodged — the Black Parliament of Ayr.
We know of his great victory at Stirling Bridge, and how after the battle he wrote to the ports of Hamburg and Lübeck inviting them to resume trade with Scotland. In the months after the battle he and his guerrilla army conducted several raids into Northern England, terrifying the countryside and carrying home lots of booty: though even English chroniclers acknowledge that he tried to prevent his followers from looting churches.
His triumph at Stirling Bridge was disastrously undone the following year by his defeat at Falkirk; and from that point we have only glimpses of his activities until his betrayal and appalling execution six years later, in 1305; though it known that he went to France to appeal to Philip IV for assistance.
William Wallace, that is, appears in the clear light of recorded history for less than 10 years. On any showing, he must have been a charismatic leader, a brilliant military commander, and a man of ardent patriotic spirit and dauntless personal courage. Yet we do not know the exact date or even the year of his birth, where he was educated, how he spent his childhood and youth, whether he had a wife called Marian Braidfute or whether he was married at all, nor – perhaps the most intriguing question of all – how he acquired the military genius which marks his known career.
Since he must have grown up during a period when Scotland was at peace, an interesting possibility is that he saw active service in France during Edward Langshanks’ aggressive war against Philip IV: if so, this would have given him first-hand knowledge of English battle tactics and also of English ruthlessness. Yet it remains a conjecture.
The enormous importance and popularity of Wallace as a national icon is due, in fact, not only to his actual achievements, but to their commemoration in one of the finest works of mediaeval Scottish literature. In the later 15th century, a poet known only as Blind Harry, about whom we know even less than we do about Wallace himself, compiled a superb epic poem of the hero’s life, augmenting the known facts with tales and traditions preserved in folk-memory and, in some cases, with outright inventions. It is thanks to Harry that we have such once-familiar stories as that of Wallace, as a young man, killing two and putting to ignominious flight the other three of a group of cocky English troopers intent on stealing his catch of fish, or of his being thrown onto a midden after apparently dying in prison and being nursed back to health by an old woman who had been a family servant.
It is Harry who relates many tales of Wallace’s battles, raids and hairsbreadth escapes, with abounding vigour and realism; who shows us Wallace recalling an as yet uncommitted Bruce to the Scottish cause; and who elevates Wallace from the stature of a patriotic hero to that of a divinely-appointed martyr by incorporating into his story a vision in which Wallace is taken by St Andrew to the throne of the Virgin Mary, who lays it on him as a duty to fight, to the death if necessary, for the freedom of Scotland.
Many of the stories Harry tells are both credible and convincing; some, such as Wallace’s terrifying encounter with the ghost of a traitor whom he had killed, are clearly the stuff of folklore; a few, such as his redeeming his defeat at Falkirk by a stunning victory the following day, are outright invention. Yet no reader of the poem can fail to be convinced that the real Wallace must have been the kind of man that Harry presents so consistently and dramatically: ardently patriotic, indomitably brave, ferocious in combat and merciless to his and his country’s enemies, but personally loyal, courteous and strong in his affections.
Harry’s poem was, for centuries, as familiar in Scotland as the Bible. Burns wrote that it “poured a Scottish prejudice into my veins, which will boil along them till the floodgates of life shut in eternal rest.” And to this day, the rugged, noble figure whom we have seen in countless statues, paintings and book illustrations, and who stirs our imagination so powerfully seven full centuries after his short and spectacular career, is as much the Wallace of Harry’s poem as the Wallace of actual history.
Does this mean, than, that the historical Wallace was less important than we think, and that his lasting appeal is due mainly to the vivid, but much distorted account of his life that his poetic biographer presents? After all, it must be acknowledged that Wallace was ultimately unsuccessful. It was Bruce, not he, who brought the War of Independence to a triumphant conclusion and forced the English to recognise the place of Scotland as a sovereign kingdom. Wallace’s achievement in clearing the English out of Scotland was only temporary: after the Battle of Falkirk, Edward’s iron rule was imposed even more brutally than before. His bearing at his trial and execution may have been – surely was – as heroic as Harry imagines it; but whereas Bruce must have died content, having achieved all that he had fought for, Wallace may well have died in despair.
Yet it would be a grave historical error to underrate the significance of Wallace: indeed, he is a unique figure in not only Scottish, but European history. The Middle Ages saw several great mass movements: the greatest of all was the First Crusade; and later, in the 14th century, England and France suffered wholesale uprisings (bloodily suppressed in both countries) of the peasants against their masters. But only in Scotland was there a great national movement. Wallace, a mere knight, was the leader of a popular, grassroots revolt of a subjugated nation against its foreign conquerors: in the triumphant aftermath of Stirling Bridge he took the title of Guardian of Scotland, acting in the name of the deposed king John Balliol.
His great victory was a revolutionary event in European warfare: until then, war had been the business of professional soldiers, and such an event as the defeat of a regular army of 10,000 foot soldiers and 300 horse by a mob of common peasants led by a bandit (such was the English estimate of Wallace) was unheard-of. Kings and nobles could, and did, call on the military services of their subjects and vassals; but Wallace led an army of Scotland: a people’s army which, by sheer force of personality, he forged into a trained and disciplined fighting force in which promotion was not by rank but by merit. Indeed, it is not until the 19 century and the great national movements within the Habsburg Empire that we find popular patriotic leaders in Wallace’s mould: Garibaldi in Italy and Kossuth in Hungary are regarded in their countries today with something of the respect that Wallace holds with us.
Behind the epic poetry of Blind Harry, and the romantic imaginings of later poets, novelists, artists and film makers, stands one of the great heroes of history: in the words of the historian Agnes Mure Mackenzie, “a name that glows like a star in Scotland’s story”. As Scotland strives to regain its true place in Europe and the world, let us remember him with just pride.
J. Derrick McClure is a Senior Lecturer in English at Aberdeen University, specialising in Scots language and literature. Though resident for 30 years in Aberdeen, he was born in Ayr, a town with strong Wallace connections.
This is an article from the August 2005 edition of Leopard Magazine. To read much more like this every month, see our subscription details.