The brain is a wonderful thing which can understand language even when it’s a little different. I know this title will look horribly misspelt but that’s because this is Scots, a different language from English, and this is quite Old. “Fredome is a noble thing” is basically the Scots for “Freedom is a noble thing”, which I’d think should be obvious but people have two reactions to seeing another language: 1) overthinking and assuming your first intuition is wrong and, 2) underthinking and assuming the writer doesn’t know how to write in English. I’m going to talk a bit about the Scots language today in the context of the quotation in the title. This is from John Barbour’s poem “Freedom” which I’ll put in full below. The question it asks is what is freedom worth? Some of you may be aware of it from the Writers Museum floor in Edinburgh, to which I say greetings! Book a tour.
Let’s explore together.
The poem “Freedom” by John Barbour
A! Fredome is a noble thing!
Fredome mays man to haiff liking;
Fredome all solace to man giffis,
He levys at ese that frely levys!
A noble hart may haiff nane ese,
Na ellys nocht that may him plese,
Gyff fredome fail; for fre liking
Is yarnyt our all othir thing.
Na he that ay has levyt fre
May nocht knaw weill the propyrte,
The angyr, na the wretchyt dome
That is couplyt to foule thyrldome.
Bot gyff he had assayit it,
Than all perquer he suld it wyt;
And suld think fredome mar to prise
Than all the gold in warld that is.
Thus contrar thingis evirmar
Discoweryngis off the tothir ar.
The difficulty of the text
It looks like English which is horribly spelt, kind of like if you ever tried to read Geoffrey Chaucer in original. Barbour and Chaucer were contemporaries, writing at the end of the 14th-century. They were both writing in different languages. Chaucer is writing in English and Barbour in Scots
Isn’t Scots just English slang?
Good question, fairly asked, the answer is nope. Both languages began to diverge around about the 5th-century. They are part of the same broad language family, both Anglic languages, both part of the Germanic European family of languages which typifies Northern Europe.
Scotland basically has a lot of languages. Modern Scots has 3, English, Scots, and Scots Gaelic. English and Scots are part of the same family by Gaelic is a celtic language and has much more in common with Irish and Welsh, though that might be stretching it a bit. Intelligibility between Scots and English speakers is much higher than between the celtic languages, though a large part of that is because Scots speakers all know English due to English being the main language of films, TV, books, schools, etc. This is part of why the Scots language has faded into irrelevance is because we had another language with much more use, more speakers, right next door. But language is not just important because of its usefulness, it is important because of the beauty which is possible in different languages. It is also important because the more languages you have the more brains you have and even if a language is not especially useful in terms of number of speakers, it teaches you something truly valuable about a culture to know it.
A great example of the difference between Scots and English is the word “kirk”, which is Scots for “church”. The German word is “kirche”. Dutch is “kerk”. Norwegian is even closer with “kirke”. It’s a fascinating topic and kind of helps to show the interconnections between countries and the Scots. Wouldn’t it be good if someone did a series on that?
Basically, Scots has a bit of a modern problem in that it’s similar enough to English to often be forgotten about and kind of get slowly eaten away by a larger culture group. If it weren’t for figures like our national poet, Rabbie Burns, Scots would potentially have faded away completely by now. The source for the poem above was a website called “English Verse”, which is somewhat disappointing. Scots is however a beautiful language and it got some unexpected help at keeping it relevant.
See, US English was designed by Webster, of dictionary fame, and he wanted it to be as unEnglish as possible. One way he did this was by simplifying a lot of spelling and removing u from words like “honour”. One exception in US English is the word “glamour” which retains its u, with the main reason being it was not a direct lift of French into English, it was French into Scots into English. A fact which I always found charming and it’s part of why I don’t get very British about language differences. The Americans are broadly on our side which is why they are still welcome here.
That all being said, Scots faces additional problems partly because of Americans. A single American in particular who ended up editing lots of Scots language Wikipedia articles badly and completely ruining it as a potential source of language transmission.
Anyway, we’re getting sidetracked from today’s topic, freedom is a noble thing.
“Fredome is a noble thing” meaning
The basic meaning of the poem is that to be free is something good. “He levys at ese that frely levys!” is a good example of how freedom affects a person. Translated to English (though I think it’s very obvious) “he lives at ease that freely lives”. As in, the less you have some tyrant telling you want to do the happier you are with life.
For a clue of how to understand Scots, try speaking it out loud and try variations until you get it. It can be a thrilling mental exercise, much more stimulating that crosswords or sudoku or duolingo because you are actually learning a foreign language.
Sometimes when reading Scots you need to use your imagination a bit with the words. For example.
And suld think fredome mar to prise
Than all the gold in warld that is
What does this mean, then? “And should think freedom more to prize that all the gold in world there is”. But in Scots it rhymes so this tells you that “prise” and “is” rhyme, so play about with that until you can make that the case.
Here’s also an English translation of the poem but I believe you’ll get more benefit by trying to puzzle it out yourself.
What does it mean? Well, it means freedom is worth protecting against all tyrants and tyrannies that they do against you.
Context behind “fredome is a noble thing”
John Barbour as a poet is best known for writing a long epic poem called The Brus. It was written in Scots. Interestingly, remember earlier how I said he was a contemporary of Chaucer? Chaucer wrote The Canterbury Tales in 1400. The Brus meanwhile dates from 1375. Scots had epic poetry before the English did!
The Brus was written about the Scottish Wars of Independence. This was a quite chaotic period of history. It basically started in 1286 with the death of King Alexander III. There was a period of Scottish nobles jostling for position while the English tried to install a regime which was sympathetic and servile to their interests. There was then a stage of outright rebellion which was essentially a civil war. There was William Wallace and Robert the Bruce in the first War who became folk heroes. The First War of Independence ended in 1328 with Robert the Bruce the undisputed king, but then he promptly died in 1329. The English had a second go at installing a servile royal line in 1332 and that war lasted till 1357!
The Scottish education system when I was younger mostly only talked about the First War of Independence because that was the one that Braveheart was about and that’s the one where the Scots come out looking quite good. I think it goes some way to describing one reason that Scots really hate being called English. Our ancestors fought a lot to not be English. This was a long time ago but other fights happened more recent than this which I’ll write about some other time.
It was perceived that an English king would have been more tyrannical.
Would an English king be more tyrannical?
This one is hard to say. The English nobles certainly had to bow and scrape to their king more than the Scottish ones did because the English king tended to be more powerful with more central authority. How this would have translated to regular people would be pure speculation on my part and I hate to gossip.
For the sake of argument let’s say yes.
So much context!
Here’s the heart of it: The Brus was written during King Robert II of Scotland’s reign. The Scots had just emerged from a period of great difficulty and a new royal line was being established under the Stewarts (later changed to Stuarts). They had to establish themselves and did so in a classic way by legitimising their reign with an artwork. The Brus was this artwork.
It was written in the language of the people so it could be understood by the people. It was written by John Barbour because he was part of the royal court and wrote The Brus to talk about Scotland’s First War of Independence and especially to lionise Robert the Bruce, the main character, as well as James Douglas, one of the highest ranking military leaders, and Thomas Randolph, the other great military leader. This is an important part of being a leader, coalition building between the powerful noble families. It makes it clear that freedom and the right to rule Scotland is what was at stake in the war.
This takes you to the crux of “fredome is a noble thing”. It legitimised the new royal line as being protectors of the essential freedoms for which we had fought so dearly.
What does freedom mean to us?
Freedom means everything to the Scots. Braveheart gets a lot of slagging for being quite rubbish historically and Mel Gibson as not being the stature for Wallace, who was said to be an actual giant for the time period. A lot of the source for Braveheart is a poetry written hundreds of years after by a minstrel called Blind Harry in his answer to The Brus, which is titled The Wallace. But something Braveheart captures quite well is the propagandistic elements of the First Scottish War of Independence. It then Americanizes it because this is the way to sell films.
Its focus on the theme of freedom, including the iconic death scream is kind of perfect and sort of satirising how claims of freedom are often used to justify some pretty interesting turns in history. But emotionally, we all felt it. Fredome is a noble thing which I don’t think any of us should give up for any cost. The ability to exist how you want should be paramount. That’s our whole vibe here at the Street Historians and that’s how we mean to continue.
What does freedom mean to you?
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The writer of this piece is far freer than most.
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