Blind Harry

Blind Harry or Henry the Minstrel, fl. late 15th cent., supposed Scottish poet. He is considered the author of the patriotic epic, The Wallace, which celebrates the life of Sir William Wallace. Violently anti-English, the poem was popular in Scotland down to the 18th cent. Since the skillful literary technique of The Wallace makes its composition by the traditionally blind and humble Harry unlikely, it is felt that the poem owes much to another hand.

Bibliography: See edition by W. A. Craigie (1940).

Henry the Minstrel, (or Blind Harry or Hary (?1440–?92), a half-legendary Scottish poet, who wrote The Wallace, one of the most famous of all Scots poems, of about 12,000 lines in heroic couplets, which concerns the martial feats of Wallace, who was executed by the English in 1305. The earliest text is a manuscript written in 1488 by John Ramsay, the scribe of Barbour's The Bruce. A popular version of the poem was a rewriting in 1722 by William Hamilton of Gilbertfield.