WHILE Chaucer was making for us pictures of English life, in the
sister kingdom across the rugged Cheviots another poet was
singing to a ruder people. This poet was John Barbour,
Archdeacon of Aberdeen. An older man than Chaucer, born perhaps
twenty years before the English poet, he died only five years
earlier. So that for many years these two lived and wrote at the
same time.

But the book by which Barbour is remembered best is very
different from that by which we remember Chaucer. Barbour's
best-known book is called The Bruce, and in it, instead of the
quiet tales of middle-class people, we hear throughout the clash
and clang of battle. Here once again we have the hero of
romance. Here once again history and story are mingled, and
Robert the Bruce swings his battle-ax and wings his faultless
arrow, saving his people from the English yoke.

The music of The Bruce cannot compare with the music of the
Tales, but the spirit throughout is one of manliness, of delight
in noble deeds and noble thoughts. Barbour's way of telling his
stories is simple and straightforward. It is full of stern
battle, yet there are lines of tender beauty, but nowhere do we
find anything like the quiet laughter and humor of Chaucer. And
that is not wonderful, for those were stern times in Scotland,
and The Bruce is as much an outcome of those times as were the
Tales or Piers Ploughman an outcome of the times in England.

But if to Chaucer belongs the title of "Father of English
Poetry," to Barbour belongs that of "Father of Scottish Poetry