8 LANDSCAPE IN HISTORY 



of England at the beginning of the seventeenth century 

 and that of our own time. 1 



But these comparisons have still to be worked out. 

 As an example of the kind of use that may be made 

 of them, and of the light which our poetry may cast, 

 not only upon physical changes, but upon historical 

 facts, I would refer to the passages in Barbour's poem 

 of The Bruce descriptive of the Battle of Bannockburn. 2 

 I do not contend for the complete historical veracity 

 of the Archdeacon of Aberdeen, though I think he 

 hardly deserves the sweeping and contemptuous con- 

 demnation meted out to him by J. R. Green. As he 

 was born only some two years after the battle, as he 

 had travelled a good deal, and as the field of Bannock- 

 burn lay across the land-route from the north to the 

 south of Scotland, we may believe him to have made 

 himself personally acquainted with the ground. At 

 least, he could easily obtain information from many 

 who had been themselves actors in the fight. He had 

 no object to gain by drawing on his imagination for 

 the local topography, more especially as his little bits 

 of local description were not in any way required for 

 the glorification of his hero. I think, therefore, that 

 when Barbour describes a piece of ground, we may take 

 his description as a fairly accurate representation of 

 the topography, at least in his own day ; and the scene 

 could hardly have changed much in the generation 

 that had passed since the time of Bruce. Now, many 



1 This part of the subject is more fully treated in the two following 

 essays. 



2 A portion of this passage has been inserted in my Scenery of 

 Scotland. 



