Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: The making of Britain / Arch. Geikie. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.
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![They have one great advantage over their modern representatives in that they are often commendably brief, and in their occasional quaint local colouring, they afford mateiial for interesting comparison with existing topography. Among historical documents I in- clude poems of all kinds and ages. Our earliest English literature is poeti- cal ; and from the days of Caedmon down to our own time, the typical characters of landscape have found faithful reflection in our national poetry. It is not merely from what are called descriptive poems that in- formation of the kind required is to be gathered. The wild border-ballad, full of the rough warfare of the time, has a background of bare moorland, treacherous moss-hags, and desolate hills, which can be compared with the aspect of the same region to-day. The gentler lyrics of a later time take their local colouring from the glades and dells, the burns and pastures where their scenes ai’e laid. In the stately cadence of the Faery Queen among the visionary splendours of another world the rivers of England and Ii’eland are pictured, each with its characters touched off as they appeared in the days of Elizabeth. And in Drayton’s quaint, but somewhat tiresome Poly- olhion, abundant material is supplied for a comparison between the topo- graphy of England at the beginning of the seventeenth century and that of our own time. But these comparisons have still to be worked out. As an example of the kind of use that may be made of them, and of the light which our poetry may cast, not only upon physical changes, but upon historical facts, I would refer to the passages in Barbour’s poem of The Bruce descriptive of the Battle of Bannockburn. I do not mean to con- tend for the historical veracity of the Archdeacon of Aberdeen, though I think he hardly deserves the sweeping and contemptuous condemnation meted out to him by Mr. Green. As he was born only some two years after the battle, as he had travelled a good deal, and as the fleld of Bannockburn lay across the land-route from the north to the south of Scotland, we may be- lieve him to have made himself person- ally acquainted with the ground. At least, he could easily obtain informa- tion from many who had been them- selves actors in the flght. He had no object to gain by drawing on his imagination for the local topography, more especially as his little bits of local description were not in any way required for the gloriflcation of his hero. I think, therefore, that when Barbour describes a piece of ground, we may take his description as accu- rately representing the topography at least in his own day ] and it could hardly have changed much in the generation that had passed since the time of Bruce. How, many persons who have visited the site of the Battle of Bannockburn have felt some diffi- culty in understanding why the English army did not easily outflank the left wing of the Scots. At present, a wide fertile plain stretches for miles to the north and south of the low plateau on which Bruce’s forces were drawn up. A small body of the English cavalry did, indeed, make its way across this plain until overtaken and cut to pieces by Randolph. But why was this force so easily dispersed, and why was no more formidable and persistent effort made to turn that left flank 1 It is very clear that, had the topography been then what it is now, the Battle of Bannockburn must have had a far other ending. The true explanation of the difficulty seems to me to be supplied by some almost casual references in Barbour’s account of the operatious. He makes Bruce, in addressing his followers, allude to the advantage they would gain should the enemy attempt to pass by the morass beneath them. The poet further narrates how the Carse, that is, the low flat land on the left, was dotted with pools of water : how the English, in order to effect a pas- sage, broke down houses, and tried to](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22473117_0006.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
