SIR WILLIAM WALLACE 10J chief celebrator is the metrical writer Blind Harry, or Harry the Minstrel, whose work confesses itself by its very form to be quite as much of a fiction as a history, and whose era, at any rate, is supposed to be nearly two centuries sub- sequent to that of his hero. Some few facts, however, may be got out of the English annalists Trivet and Hemingford, who were the contemporaries of Wallace. There are contradictory statements of the year of his birth, rJftt it is probable he was born about 1270. His family was one of some distinction, and he is said to have been the younger of the two sons of Sir Malcolm Wallace, of Elderslie and Auchinbothie, in the neighborhood of Paisley. His mother, who according to one account was Sir Malcolm's second wife, is stated by the genealogists to have been Mar- garet, daughter of Sir Raynald or Reginald (other authorities say Sir Hugh) Crawford, who held the office of Sheriff of Ayr. ^WHfflP 1 ?: The history of Wallace down to the year 1297 is entirely legendary, and only to be found in the rhymes of Harry the Minstrel ; though many of the facts which Harry relates still live as popular traditions in the localities where the scenes of them are laid, whether handed down in that way from the time when they happened, or only derived from his poem, which long continued to be the literary favorite of the Scottish peasantry. Harry, who, it may be observed, pro fesses to translate from a Latin account written by Wallace's intimate friend and chaplain, John Blair, makes him to have been carefully educated by his uncle, a wealthy churchman who resided at Dunipace, in Stirlingshire, and to have been afterward sent to the grammar-school of Dundee. Here his first memorable act is said to have been performed ; his slaughter of the son of Selby, the English governor of the castle of Dundee, in chastisement of an insult offered him by the unwary young man ; Wallace with his dagger struck him dead on the spot. This must have happened, if at all, in the year 1291, after Edward I. of England had obtained possession of all the places of strength throughout Scotland on his rec- ognition as Lord Paramount by the various competitors for the crown, which had become vacant by the death of the infant Margaret, the Maiden of Norway, in September, 1290. This bold deed committed by Wallace, who in making his escape is asserted to have laid several of young Selby's attendants as low as their master, was im- mediately followed by his outlawry. He now took to the woods, and gifted as he was with eloquence, sagacity, and other high mental powers and accomplish- ments (to this the testimony of Fordun is as express and explicit as that of his poetical biographer), not less than with strength and height of frame and all other personal advantages, he soon found himself at the head of a band of at- tached as well as determined followers, who under his guidance often harassed the English soldiery, both on their marches and at their stations, plundering and
