PartVI:
Supplement![]()
104 | LIVES OF EMINENT SCOTSMEN. | |
1 Blair, John, [note] the chaplain of the renowned Sir William Wallace, [note]
was a monk of the order of St. Benedict. From a history of Wallace,
written jointly by him and one Thomas Gray, [note] in Latin
verse, Henry the Minstrel professed to have
chiefly derived the materials of his vernacular version; but it is not certain, that any part of
that history is now extant. In 1707, Sir Robert Sibbald [note]
published a fragment, which his friend, Sir James
Balfour, had found in the Cottonian library, entitled “Relationes qædam Arnaldi Blair Monachi de
Dunfermlen et Capellani P. Willielmi Wallas Militis;” and this he
conjectures to have been part of the work referred to by Henry the Minstrel.
Sir Robert accounts for the difference in the Christian name, given
to the writer of these Memoirs, by supposing, that, after the death of
Wallace,
John Blair found it prudent to change his name to Arnald. John must have been a simple monk truly, to expect to escape
detection by so slight a disguise; more especially, if what other writers relate be true, that he
had the courage to shew ![]()
himself on the scaffold with Wallace, and
to assist him in his dying moments.—But both accounts are equally improbable. Either the
addition “et Capellani D. Willielmi Wallas Militis” is spurious, or we must conclude that Arnald, and not John, was, from the first, the real name of
Wallace's chaplain. And if Arnald Blair was the name, his
merit, as an historian of the achievements of the champion of Scottish freedom, vanishes at once;
for, according to Dr. Irving, [note] the “relations
ascribed to Arnald Blair merely consist of indigested transcripts
from the Scotichronicon.”
2 Dempster says, that
John Blair was also the author of a work De Liberata Tyrannide Scotia; but as no such production is extant or mentioned by any second author, it may be safely
ranked with the many other imaginary works with which that biographical romancer was pleased to
enrich the literature of his native country.