Henry the Minstrel (Blind Harry) (ca. 1440–ca. 1492). Encyclopedia of Medieval Literature

Henry the Minstrel was a 15th-century Scottish
poet who, sometime between 1460 and 1480,
wrote the famous historical poem
Wallace. An epic
in 12 books and nearly 12,000 lines of rhymed
couplets,
Wallace relates the story of William Wallace, Scottish hero of the wars against the English,
who was executed by Edward I in 1305.
Little is known about Henry himself, and the
information we do have may be largely myth. He
may have been born in Lothian; he certainly shows
a good deal of knowledge of the geographic details of central Scotland. There are records of payments to Henry for services as a minstrel in the
court of King James IV of Scotland between 1473
and 1492. He claims to have based his story of Wallace on a lost work by John Blair, a chaplain who
served Wallace. Henry is often known as “Blind
Harry,” and was reputedly blind from birth. Vivid
visual images in his descriptions in the poem, however, make that unlikely. If Henry was indeed
blind, he must have been sighted at one time. It is
also certainly possible that the myth of his blindness was simply a means of establishing his credentials as Scotland’s epic poet, as the Greek
Homer was purportedly blind.
The poem is strongly anti-English in its sentiments. The first two books introduce Wallace as

the patriotic Scottish hero. Books 3 to 6 recount his
several battles with the English and his becoming
guardian of Scotland. Ultimately this epic hero of
the Scots is betrayed to the English and executed in
the final book.
The only extant manuscript of Blind Harry’s
Wallace was produced in 1488 by the scribe John
Ramsay, who had also copied the text of that other
Scottish national epic, John B
ARBOUR’s The Bruce.
The Wallace manuscript is currently held by the
Scottish national library. Henry’s poem clearly glorifies Wallace with sometimes exaggerated and
sometimes completely fabricated incidents, but remains, essentially, an important source for the
story of Wallace’s life. Blind Harry’s story remained
popular for centuries, particularly when it was
rewritten and modernized by William Hamilton of
Gilbertfield in the 18th century. Robert Burns,
William Wordsworth, and others found inspiration in the story of Wallace—as, of course, did the
20th-century filmmaker Mel Gibson, who used
Wallace’s story for his acclaimed film
Braveheart
(1995).
Bibliography
Goldstein, R. James. The Matter of Scotland: Historical
Narrative in Medieval Scotland.
Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1993.
Henry the Minstrel.
The actis and deidis of the illustere
and vailzeand campionn Schir William Wallace,
knicht of Ellerslie.
Edited by James Moir. 1889.
New York: AMS Press, 1976.
———.
The Wallace: Selections. Edited by Anne
McKim. Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute
Publications, Western Michigan University, 2003.

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