Weeping in my tent, I lament the battles joined, not knowing (God be my witness!) which king is to blame for them. . This is a twofold realm, where either half seeks to be master; neither wishes to be a supplicant subjected to the other. England and Scotland are two Pharisaic kingdoms. This one is at the top and so is the other, lest one or the other fall. Hence spring gaping flanks, spattered with rose-red gore, embattled ranks, mown down with bitter anguish; hence wasted strength, overwhelmed by Mars, hosts engulfed while hammering out mutual conflict; hence pallid faces, one drowned, another buried; hence manifold mourning, a noise that mounts to the stars; hence wars that arise and waste the resources of the land. I cannot recount the particulars of a massacre that transcends all reckoning.
I wasn’t going to talk Bannockburn details until Saturday but I really thought these lines worth sharing. They’re attributed to Robert Baston, the Carmelite friar brought with the English army and subsequently charged by the Scots with commemorating the Battle of Bannockburn in verse in return for his release. Within this poem the full scale of the battle and the significance of the deaths of so many in Edward II’s army is pretty obvious but no less saddening (and he really lays into the idea of both sides being ultimately hypocritical which is pretty interesting). The fifteenth century Walter Bower later quoted much of this poem in his Scotichronicon, though at least one other manuscript survives containing the poem with some extra material not found in Bower’s version. This translation was done by Ronald E. Latham and was published in D.E.R. Watt’s version of the Scotichronicon. Here’s the Latin: Bella parata fleo, lamentans sub canopeo, sub quo rege reo nescio, teste Deo.
Est regnum duplex et utrumque cupit dominari; sed neutrum suplex vult a reliquo superari. Anglia, Scocia, que sunt regna duo Pharisea. Ista preest eaque, ne cadat hec vel ea. Inde rubent latera, roseo perfusa cruore, agmina belligera, misero mactata dolore; hinc sint disperse vires, in Marte reverse, gentes submerse fabricantes prelia per se hinc pallent vultus, his mersus et ille sepultus; hinc meror multus, quod scandit ad astra tumultus; hinc surgunt guerre populantes predia terre. Singula proferre nequeo de strage super re.