Separating fact from Gibson in the search for Wallace

It has so coloured contemporary views of Wallace that it is almost impossible to convince people that the victor of the Battle of Stirling Bridge in 1297 was not a mad warrior with his face painted in blue woad.

He was a warrior, yes, and a considerable one, but Braveheart is riddled with inaccuracies simply because it is a movie, and writer Randall Wallace and director/star Mel Gibson were trying to tell a cogent story on film. Most people think they did a pretty good job, but 22 years on, we should acknowledge the problems that the film has with Wallace’s real story.

Where to begin? For a start, all those fine Scottish actors like James Cosmo and Peter Mullan are shown speaking comprehensible English. In fact they would have spoken Early Scots or Inglis as it was sometimes known, while others would have spoken Gaelic. The aristocracy would have spoken English, French and perhaps Flemish, but Early Scots was the common tongue of all. Robert the Bruce, for example, spoke four languages – his mother’s Gaelic, French, English and Early Scots, as well as knowing Latin.

The Scots soldiers wear kilts in the film – a good device for baring bottoms in the face of the enemy but in fact they wore trews. The English army is shown in uniform, a practice that did not start until the 17th century.

The start of the film is shown as 1280 with nobility meeting the English in a barn to choose a king – which would have come as a big surprise to King Alexander III who was very much alive and well at that time, and even to Edward Longshanks as England was at peace with Scotland.

The line “none of us have ever had before, a country of our own” is obviously tosh. Scotland had been an independent kingdom for centuries.

The whole Prima Nocte thing? Utter nonsense. Never happened, even in England. Isabella, Princess of Wales? She was two when Wallace won at Stirling, which in the film has no bridge despite Stirling Bridge being somewhat central to the Scottish success. Oh, and Sir Andrew de Moray doesn’t get a mention, because we couldn’t have Wallace being shown as a co-leader, could we?

Isabella tells the dying Longshanks she is carrying Wallace’s child. Interesting, given that she was ten when Wallace was executed, she didn’t marry Edward II until after Longshanks was dead and Edward III wasn’t born until seven years after Wallace’s death.

The Philip character who is made out to be the homosexual lover of Longshanks’ son, the future Edward II, is based on Piers Gaveston. Not only was he a favourite of Longshanks for a long time, but when they fell out, Edward I merely sent him into exile and did not throw him out of the window. Longshanks, it should be said, died on the way north to batter Scotland again, and definitely not in his own bed.

The brilliant portrayal of Longshanks by Patrick McGoohan shows the king to be utterly ruthless and charmless – yes to the former but no to the latter as he was a lover of music and poetry. His son may or may not have been homosexual – the reported manner of his death with a hot poker inserted into his anus was supposed to signify that – but Edward II was also a warrior and not a wimp.

Robert the Bruce never betrayed Wallace, though he did at times swear loyalty to Longshanks. He was the real “brave heart”, his heart cut from him after death and taken on a Crusade by James, Lord of Douglas.

The biggest inaccuracy is the portrayal of Wallace. He really was a giant of a man, but was a son of lowland gentry and not highland farmers.

The “MacGregors from the next glen” were not actually extant at that time, the first clan chief Gregor of the Golden Bridles, as he was known, living in the 14th century.

Wallace had no uncle Argyle in historical record; he never painted his face; if she existed, his wife’s name was Marion, not Murron; there were no Irish soldiers at the Battle of Falkirk; Longshanks did not order his archers, who were mainly Welsh, to fire on his own troops as they were perfectly capable of destroying the Scottish army at long distance – which they did.

IN the film, there are “nobles” who betray Wallace and he kills them in revenge. Not true, though some say John Comyn and his cavalry deserted Wallace at Falkirk. Braveheart shows Wallace and his army attacking York. They never got that far south.

So once you know all that, you can only wonder that Braveheart got anything right about Wallace. There were many accurate things in the film. Mediaeval warfare really was as brutal and bloody as depicted, and that was down to Seoras Wallace and his fight arrangers. Wallace knew Latin and French, and he was very religious – everyone was back then. Longshanks detested the Scots because they would not submit to his rule, and thus he illegally ordered the execution of Wallace as a traitor. Robert the Bruce really was inspired by Wallace’s death to lead the Scots to eventual victory at Bannockburn.

The problem for anyone criticising the Braveheart version of Wallace’s story is that we know very little for certain about the man.

Like so many historical figures in that time at the end of the 13th century, we have very little direct evidence of his existence, and the source for much of our information on Wallace is a poem written almost 170 years after the events it depicts, Blind Harry’s The Wallace.

There are English treasury and court records which mention Wallace, and English chronicles of the time make him out to be a psychopathic raider, while Walter Bower’s Scotichronicon of the 15th century also contains descriptions of the man himself and of his deeds.

The Wallace, however, is the nearest thing we have to a formal Scottish record of his life, as compared to the folklore and legend that has built up around him – it would be impossible to visit every place associated with him in a week.

It was not even original, as Harry based his work on the sadly lost writings of one John Blair, a friend of Wallace’s who became a monk and Wallace’s chaplain and allegedly wrote a “Life of Sir William Wallace.” But we have to take Blind Harry’s word for that, as no copies of the Life exist.

THE estimable Elspeth King of the Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum says these folk memory-based tales should not be lightly dismissed and does not agree with the modern trend of rubbishing Blind Harry as source material.

For Blind Harry did do a great amount of research, travelling round Scotland to get folk memories of Wallace, and what we get in The Wallace is Harry’s romanticised version of Wallace’s story, with the man himself made out to be chivalrous hero.

As King wrote in The Herald 20 years ago: “Harry brought his own remarkable talents as a makar or poet, his knowledge of contemporary literature, military matters and warfare, and Scottish and French culture. His poetic reputation is attested to by his great contemporary William Dunbar who mourned his passing in his ‘Lament for the Makars’.

“Harry earned his living by singing or giving recitation of his epic poem. He made it clear that he took on the task of collecting and writing the Wallace stories, only because others had failed to do so.

“It seems a peculiarly cruel twist of fate that Harry, who by his literary endeavours had defeated the various political vested interests who sought the erasure of Wallace from the records, should now be rubbished as untrustworthy and taboo.”

After its publication in the 1480s, The Wallace became the second most popular book in Scotland after the Holy Bible, and the cult of Wallace grew exponentially.

Unfortunately, The Wallace, too, is riddled with inaccuracies – the Scots win the Battle of Falkirk, for example – but there’s no denying the passion that Harry brings to his account.

The opening lines of the poem are accurate enough:

Our antecessowris that we suld of reide, And hald in mynde thar nobille worthi deid,

We lat ourslide throu verray sleuthfulnes, And castis us ever till uther besynes.

Till honour ennymyis is our haile entent, It has beyne seyne in thir tymys bywent.

Our ald ennemys cummyn of Saxonys blud, That nevyr yeit to Scotland wald do gud,

But ever on fors and contrar haile thar will, Quhow gret kyndnes thar has beyne kyth thaim till.

It’s anti-English, right from the start and the scene is set for the arrival of a Scottish hero – ‘Wilyham Wallas’ was that man, according to Blind Harry.

We know for certain that Wallace was the son of an Alan Wallace, because that is how he describes himself in letters to the Hanseatic League after the Battle of Stirling Bridge.

We do not know exactly where or when he was born, but the best guess is 1270 to 1272 in Elderslie in Renfrewshire or Ellerslie in Ayrshire. There is some evidence that he may have spent part of his childhood in and around Dunipace, and as his father was minor nobility so we can conjecture that he would have received some form of education.

The Wallace name links back to Wales, and there was no doubt the family was well-connected and prosperous as they are recorded as having lands as far apart as Tarbolton in Ayrshire and Stenton in East Lothian.

In the mid 1290s, when Edward I began his campaign to effectively subjugate Scotland to his rule after he installed the weak John Balliol on the Scottish throne, more than a few Scots resisted.

We do not know for certain how Wallace became a warrior, but according to Blind Harry he got into a fight with some English soldiers and killed them all, and thus became an outlaw, going here and there and picking fights with English soldiers in a Scotland increasingly occupied by the English. By 1297, the scene was set for rebellion and William Wallace would become its leader.