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Gude Wallace

[ Roud 75 ; Child 157 ; Ballad Index C157 ; DT GUDWALL ; Mudcat 49776 ; trad.]

Emily B. Lyle: Andrew Crawfurd’s Collection of Ballads and Songs

Max Dunbar sang Gude Wallace in 1959 on his Folkways album Songs and Ballads of the Scottish Wars 1290-1745. He noted:

English influence in Scotland began to make itself felt even before the Norman conquest of England in 1066. Malcolm III, successor to Macbeth, had spent part of his youth in England and had married an English (Saxon) wife, who encouraged the use of the English language and the spread of the Roman church in Scotland. The Norman conquest of England caused a movement northward of many of the Saxon Britons, and this movement was followed by a specifically Norman influence in the southeast of Scotland. By the time of William Wallace the lowlands of Scotland were in the same sort of feudal organization as England was, and many of the foremost nobles of the country were of Norman stock, including the lines of Bruce and BallioL The English leopards were already hard on the heels of the Scottish lion. When Margaret, the “Maid of Norway”, a grand-daughter of Alexander III of Scotland, was drowned on her way from Norway to Scotland where she was to become Queen, it was all within the Norman family that the claimants to the Scottish throne should put their cases to the arbitration of the King of England, Edward I. This was at Berwick, in 1292.

These competitors for the Scottish throne, twelve in all, made full submission to Edward. Only two of them were taken seriously—Bruce and John Balliol—although a third, Comyn, who withdrew his claim before the judgement, was in fact a valid contender. Both Bruce and Balliol were partly of Norman stock. Edward chose Balliol, who in fact appears to have had the better hereditary claim, and Balliol was crowned at Scone in the same year (1292). Bruce was the grandfather of the Robert Bruce who later became King.

Trouble started immediately. Edward made claims on Balliol which finally became intolerable and humiliating. Balliol denounced his feudal subservience to Edward, and allied himself with France (to which Edward had denounced his homage a short time before!). (The Bruces, led by tEe son of the competitor, remained loyal to Edward). Edward took a terrible vengeance in 1296, when he marched the length of Scotland killing and persecuting all who stood in his way, beginning with a general massacre at Berwick on i30 March. Many of the Scottish-lords swore fealty to England, in keeping with the manner of the time.

Edward had made bad friends of the Scots. The population at large, with the support of the Church, showed signs of agitation in 1297, immediately after the revenging march of the English, and it was in the rising of that year that the name of William Wallace first appears. He was chosen, says one chronicler, to lead the resistance to the English garrisons and to make war on them. In this choice the Scottish commune was moved primarily, apparently, by Wishart, Bishop of Glasgow, and the Steward, or first hereditary Seneschal of Scotland. The Steward was the son of Alan, son of Flabald, a nobleman of Norman stock. It was from the Steward that the stewart line of kings descended.

Andrew Lang writes that “though the Scottish noblesse were bound to Edward, their hearts, and their retaIners, were with Wallace”. At the Battle of Stirling Bridge the English, under Warenne, were severely defeated in 1297; but Edward, returning from France, reversed the situation in the next year at the Battle of Falkirk, where the troops of Wallace were routed, mainly by the English archers, who broke the Scottish “schiltrons”, or forme.tions of speannen. Wallace himself escaped, and went the next year, or possibly the same year (l298) to France. The war went on. By 1304 Edward had finally taken Stirling castle, which had resisted over the years, and “peace” was made. Wallace, who by this time had returned to Scotland, was not included in the number who were received into Edward’s peace. He was betrayed, taken, and executed with all the horrors attending the normal execution of traitors at that time. There is in fact no whit of evidence to show that Wallace was a traitor. Of Bruce, Comyn, Wishart, and hosts of other Scottish contemporaries, there is no doubt; they changed loyalties nany times. But Wallace never swore fealty to Edward. No doubt the English view was that he should have, and that not doing so he was an outlaw and a rogue. The execution of Wallace was the act of the conqueror, impatient and scornful of the enemy. Trevelyan writes of Wallace: “This unknown knight, with little but his great name to identify him in history, had lit a fire which nothing since has ever put out”; Edward himself also played a part in lighting that fire, just as Cromwell, the Hanoverians and the infamous Duke of Cumberland played their parts in keeping it alight.

It is impossible to give a precise date to the episode in the song; it may have been immediately after Falkirk, or in the years following Wallace’s brief return to Scotland. “The rightful king of fair Scotland” was of course King John Balliol, who had in fact resigned his throne in 1296, and retired to his estates in France.

The melody is from the Scots Musical Museum of James Johnson.

Lyrics

Max Dunbar sings Gude Wallace

“O for my ain king”, quo gude Wallace,
“The rightfu’ king of fair Scotland!
Between me and my sovereign blude,
I think I see some ill seed sown.

“Low down in yon wee ostler house
O there is fyfteen Englishmen,
And they are seeking for gude Wollace,
It’s him to take and him to hang.”

And when he cam to yon wee ostler house
He bad benedicite be there;
The captain being wee buke-learned
Did answer him in domineer.

“I wad gie fyfteen shillings to onie crookit carl,
To onie crookit carl just sic as ye,
If ye will get me gude Wallace,
For he is the man I fain was see.”

He hit the proud captain alang the chafft-blade,
That never a bit o’ meal he ate mair,
And he stickit the rest at the board where they sat,
And he left them a’ lying sprawling there.

‘Get up, get up, gude wife”, he says,
“And get to me some dinner in haste;
For it will soon be three lang days,
Sin I a bit o’ meat did taste.”

The dinner was na weel readie,
Nor was it on the table laid,
Till other fyfteen Engishmen
Were a’ lighted about the yett.

“Come out, come out now, gude Wallace!
This is the day that thou maun die!”
“I lippen nae sae little to God,” he says,
“Altho I be but ill wordie.”

The gude wife had an auld gudeman;
By Gude Wallace he stiffly stood,
Till ten of the fyfteen Englishmen
Before the door lay in their blude.

The other five to the greenwood ran,
And he hanged these five upon a grain,
And on the morn, wi’ his merry men a’,
He sat, at dine in Lochmaben town.