The opening of Preface
1. MSS. AND EDITIONS.
The poem The Bruce, by John Barbour, is preserved in only two manuscripts, one in the library of St. John’s College, Cambridge, and the other in the Advocates’ Library, Edinburgh. The former is hereafter denoted by the letter C, the latter by E. Of these E alone is complete in the sense of having both beginning and end; the first three Books and Book IV. 1-56 are missing in C. On the other hand, C bears to have been completed in 1487, E in 1489. Other things being equal, the earlier MS. must, of course, be preferred. Here, however, intervenes a series of extracts, numbering 280 lines from Books I. and II., embedded in Wyntoun’s Orygynale Cronykil of Scotland, and the two MSS. of the Cronykil are actually older than those of The Bruce. This raises a difficulty, as Wyntoun’s extracts show a goodly proportion of variations in language from the corresponding passages in E, the only other MS. which covers the same ground.