HARRY THE MINSTREL or BLIND HARRY (fl. author of the Scots historical poem The Actis and Deidis of the Illustere and Vailzeand Campioun Schir William Wallace, Knicht of Ellerslie, flourished in the latter half of the 15th century. He appears to have been a blind Lothian man, in humble circumstances, who had some reputation as a story teller ; he received, on five occasions, in 1490 and 1491, gifts from James IV. He is alluded to by Dunbar (q.v.) in the fragmentary Interlude of the Droichis Part of the Play, where a "droich," or dwarf, personates "the nakit blynd Harry That lang has bene in the fary Farleis to find"; and again in Dunbar's Lament for the Makaris. John Major (q.v.) in his Latin History says that Henry used to recite his tales before nobles, and thus received food and clothing as his reward (Bk. iv., ch. xv.).
The poem (preserved in a unique ms., dated 1488, in the Advocates' library, Edinburgh) is divided into 11 books and runs to 11,853 lines. It is one of the earliest, certainly one of the most extensive, verse-documents in Scots written in five-accent, or heroic, couplets. It is also the earliest outstanding work which discloses that habit of Scotticism which took such strong hold of the popular Northern literature during the coming years of con flict with England. But there are elements in the poem which show that it is not entirely the work of a poor Crowder; and these (notably references to historical and literary authorities, and occasional reminiscences of the literary tricks of the Scots Chau cerian school) have inclined some to the view that the text, as we have it, is an edited version of the minstrel's rough song-story. It has been argued, though by no means conclusively, that the "editor" was John Ramsay, the scribe of the Edinburgh ms. and of the companion Edinburgh ms. of the Brus by John Barbour (q.v.).
The poem appears, on the authority of Laing, to have been printed at the press of Chepman and Myllar about 1508, but the fragments which Laing saw are not extant. The first complete edition, now available, was printed by Lekprevik for Henry Char teris in 1 S 7o (Brit. Museum). There are many reprints, includ ing some of William Hamilton of Gilbertfield's modern Scots version of 1722. The first critical edition was prepared by Dr. Jamieson and published in 182o. In 1889 the Scottish Text Society completed their edition of the text, with prolegomena and notes by James Moir.