Barbour's 'Brus'

Barbour's 'Brus'

From In Our Time: Culture by BBC Radio 4

July 17, 2025 · 49 min

About this episode

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss John Barbour's epic poem The Brus and its historical significance.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss John Barbour's epic poem The Brus, or Bruce, which he wrote c1375. The Brus is the earliest surviving poem in Older Scots and the only source of many of the stories of King Robert I of Scotland (1274-1329), popularly known as Robert the Bruce, and his victory over the English at Bannockburn in 1314. In almost 14,000 lines of rhyming couplets, Barbour distilled the aspects of the Bruce’s history most relevant for his own time under Robert II (1316-1390), the Bruce's grandson and the first of the Stewart kings, when the mood was for a new war against England after decades of military disasters. Barbour’s battle scenes are meant to stir in the name of freedom, and the effect of the whole is to assert Scotland as the rightful equal of any power in Europe. With Rhiannon Purdie Professor of English and Older Scots at the University of St Andrews Steve Boardman Professor of Medieval Scottish History at the University of Edinburgh And Michael Brown Professor of Scottish History at the University of St Andrews Producer: Simon Tillotson Reading list: John Barbour (ed. A.A.M. Duncan), The Bruce (Canongate Classics, 2007) G.W.S. Barrow, Robert Bruce and the…

People in this episode

Host: Melvyn Bragg

Guests: Rhiannon Purdie, Steve Boardman, Michael Brown

Topics covered

  • Scottish history
  • epic poetry
  • Robert the Bruce
  • medieval literature
  • Older Scots
  • national identity

Keywords

  • John Barbour
  • The Brus
  • Robert the Bruce
  • Scottish history
  • medieval poetry
  • Bannockburn
  • Older Scots

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: The Brus

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