HARRY. BLIND, a Scottish minstrel of the 15th century. Scarcely anything is known of his life beyond what is told by Dr. John Major (or Blair) in his History of Scotland, published in 1521. " When I was a child," lie says, " Henry, a man blind from his birth, who lived by telling tales before princes and peers, wrote a whole book of William Wallace. weaving the common stories (which I, for one, only partly believe) into vernacular poetry, in which he was skilled." In 1490-92, Blind Harry is found at the court of king James IV., receiving occasional gratuities of five, nine, and eighteen shillimrs. The poem attributed to bun, The Life of that Noble Champion of Scotland, Sir William Wallace, Knight, was completed before the end of the year 1488, when it was copied by John Ramsay. This copy, the oldest MS. of the work now known to exist, does not ascribe it to Blind Harry, nor is his name given to it in the earlier printed editions. The poem, which contains 11,861 lines, of ten syllables each, is written in rhyming couplets. The language is frequently obscure, and sometimes unintelligible, but the work as a whole is written with vigor: in some passages, it kindles into poetry; and it is altorrether a surprising performance, if we receive it as the composition of one who was born blind. The author seems to have been familiar with the metrical romances which were the popular literature of the time, and he makes repeated appeals to two Latin lives of Wallace, one by his schoolfellow, master John Blair, another by sir Thomas Gray, parson of Liberton. But the poem has no claim to
be regarded as history; it is full of gross mistakes or misrepresentations of facts known to every one, and it can only be looked upon as an embodiment of the wild and sangui nary legends which two centuries had gathered round the name of the martyred hero of a fierce struggle for national life. The work is believed to have been printed in the Scottish capital as early as 1520, but no perfect copy is known to be preserved of any earlier edition tharfthat•of Ediliburghin 1570: bearing the title of The „Adis and Deidis of the Moist Illust; n and mnioan Schir Wallace, Eizieht of Ellerslie.
The work was reprinted at Edinburgh in 1594, 1601, 1620, 1648, 1673, and 175S; at Glasgow, in 1665 and 1699; at Aberdeen, in 1630; and at Perth in 1790. The best edition is that of Dr. Jamieson (from the MS. of 14S8), published at Edinburgh in 1820, in 1 vol. -Ito. The work was for about 200 years one of the most popular in Scotland, hut gradually fell into neglect as its language, never very easy ceased to be understood gradually by scholars. Its place was supplied by a modernized version by William Hamil ton of Gilbcrtficld, published at Glasgow in 1722, with the title of A _Yew Edition of the Life and Heroic Actions of the J?enoun'd Sir William Wallace. This is it poor perform ance, but it continued to be widely circulated among the Scottish people almost to our own clay.