brother survived his father, and succeeded to the heritage. Sir William, who,
as already mentioned, seems to have been born about the middle of the reign
of Alexander III., received the rudiments of his education at Dunipace in Stirlingshire, under the guardianship of his uncle, a wealthy ecclesiastic there. This worthy man is said to have stored his nephew's mind with the choicest maxims from the ancients, and in particular to have imprinted upon
his memory the following Leonine verses, which Wallace often repeated in after years:
Dico tibi verum, Libertas optima rerum,
Nunquam servili sub nexu vivito, fili.
Thus translated by Monipennie:
My sonne (I say) Freedom is best,
Then never yield to thrall's arrest.
From Dunipace Wallace was removed to a public seminary at Dundee, where he contracted a friendship with John Blair, a Benedictine monk, who afterwards became his chaplain. Blair, being an eye-witness to most of his actions, composed a history of them in Latin; but the work has not, unfortunately, come down to us, though a liberal use has evidently been made of it in the vernacular metrical work of Blind Harry.[1]
It would appear that Wallace first displayed his intrepid temper in a quarrel at Dundee with a young English nobleman of the name of Selby, whom, provoked by some wanton indignity, he stabbed with his dagger, and slew en the spot. The consequence of this was, that he was obliged to seek for safety among the wilds and fastnesses of his country,[2] where by degrees he collected a little band, whom he inspired with his own patriotic sentiments.
Although deserted by their nobility, a spirit of determined hostility to the English government was strongly manifested by the great body of the people. Throughout the country, numerous bands of armed peasants collected, and harassed in every possible way the English soldiers. A roaster spirit was only wanting to guide them to the restoration of their country's independence and such they found in Sir William Wallace. He had every personal and mental qualification to constitute him the leader of his countrymen at this period of oppression. In the fragment ascribed to Blair, which is preserved, he is de- scribed as of a tall and gigantic stature, a serene countenance, a pleasant aspect, large and broad-shouldered, but of no unwieldy bulk; liberal in his gifts, just in his judgments, eloquent in discourse, compassionate to those in
- ↑ The following lines occur near the conclusion of Blind Harry's performance:
Of Wallace' Life, who hath a better skeel,
May show forth more with wit and eloquence
For I to this have done my diligence,
After the prose, given from the Latin book,
Which Master Blair in his time undertook,
In fair Latin comjiiled to an end, &c. - ↑ "There is a respectable man in Longforgan, Perthshire, who has in his possession a stone, called Wallace's stone. It was what was formerly called in this country a here stone, hollow like a large mortar, and was made use of to unhusk the here or barley, as a preparative for the pot, with a large wooden mell, long before barley-mills were known. Its station was on one side of the door, and covered with a flat stone for a seat when not otherwise employed. Upon this stone Wallace sat on his way from Dundee, when he fled after killing Selby, the governor's son, and was fed with bread and milk by the goodwife of the house, from whom the man who now lives there, and is the proprietor of the stone, is lineally descended; and here his forbears (ancestors) have lived ever since, in nearly the same station and circumstances for about 00 years."—Statistical Account of Scotland, xix. 661.
