Allan Burnett - William Wallace and All That

Sheriff William Heselrig awoke with a jump as his bedroom door was suddenly kicked open. There, towering over him, stood giant Scotsman William Wallace.

Before Heselrig could move a muscle, Wallace brought down his sword on the sheriffs brow and sliced his brain in half like a grapefruit. Talk about a splitting headache!

In a single stroke, by killing Sheriff Heselrig, Wallace became Scotlands wildest outlaw. An outlaw was someone who lived outside the law, hunted and feared by those in power and celebrated by poor people everywhere. Before long, Wallace was the greatest outlaw in history...

But hang on a minute. Was Wallace really the greatest outlaw ever? Greater than the famous highway robber, Robin Hood, who stole from the rich to give to the poor?

Much greater. Robin Hood was probably not a real person, he was just a made-up character. Wallace also stole from the rich to help the poor, yet he was definitely REAL as real as you and me.

Surely Wallace couldnt have been as fearsome an outlaw as the great Wild West cowboy Jesse James?

Actually, Wallace was much more fearsome. Wallace killed his enemies without using pistols just a sword, or even his bare hands.

What about gunslinging Australian bushranger Ned Kelly? He was an outlaw who stole from the rich and powerful to feed his poor family. Was Wallace really greater than him?

You bet. Wallace wasnt just a robber or a bandit, and he didnt just look after his own he was a freedom fighter who became the leader of a whole nation.

You see, the sheriff that Wallace killed, Heselrig, was an Englishman. Theres nothing wrong with that, of course except that in Wallaces day, the Scots and the English were not the good friends they are now. In fact, they hated each others guts!

The English had just invaded Wallaces home country of Scotland and stolen the Scots land. The Scots had had their freedom taken away and were being treated like slaves. And the job of English sheriffs like Heselrig was to make sure the Scots couldnt do anything about it.

By killing Heselrig, Wallace showed he was determined to stop at nothing until he got his land back. After that, he would never rest until all Scots were free again. And he was willing to wage war against the mightiest army in Europe, the English army, to win his struggle.

As if all that were not reason enough for Wallace to get his hands dirty, theres also something else. According to reports, Heselrig had just murdered Wallaces beloved wife.

Heartbroken, Wallace wanted revenge a dish thats best served cold. So after Wallace killed the sheriff, he chopped up the body up into meaty chunks. Ugh!

Make no mistake, Wallace lived in very bloodthirsty and savage times. And when people like Wallace wanted to settle their differences with somebody, they didnt tell their teacher or call the police. They splattered them!

Besides the fact that he splattered the sheriff, a lot of Wallaces early life is very murky and difficult to trace. In fact, nobody really knows for sure exactly how or when his adventures began.

The trouble is, there are many different stories about Wallaces rise to fame. Some of them are true, but some of them might not be. So first we have to learn how to tell the difference between Wallace facts and Wallace nonsense...

Have you ever heard about things being lost in the mists of time? Well, Wallaces life is a bit like that. Since Scotland is a very misty place, and Wallace lived a very long time ago, lots of facts about his life have gone missing.

After Wallace died, storytellers tried to look after the facts about Wallaces life in the same way that a museum looks after precious artefacts, such as swords or helmets. But museum artefacts can sometimes roll under a cupboard or get lost down the back of shelves. Likewise, bits of Wallaces story were sometimes lost by storytellers.

This happened often, because many bits of Wallaces story werent actually written down at first. Instead, as the years passed, young storytellers had to learn about Wallace by listening to older storytellers. Remembering all the bits of the story wasnt easy, so many parts were soon forgotten or got muddled up.

To make up for the bits they forgot, storytellers added up new things to add to Wallaces story. This process of bits getting lost and new stuff being added turned Wallaces life story into a legend. A legend is half true and half fantasy.

Around the year 1470, many years after Wallace died, a harp-playing storyteller called Blind Harry the Minstrel finally had all of Wallaces adventures written down in a book. By then, Wallaces legend had grown very large indeed. So Blind Harrys book is a mixture of truth and nonsense, or facts and fantasy.

Its usually not too hard to tell which bits of Blind Harrys book are nonsense. We know that some bits are false because other, more reliable, books about Scotland in Wallaces day contain a different version of events. Other bits of Blind Harrys book seem just too outrageous to be true.

For example, Blind Harry tells us that Wallace once had a fight with a hungry lion in a foreign land and survived. It might be true that Wallace really did fight a lion, but then again it might not. If it was true, the chances are Wallace would have ended up as cat food!

Another suspicious side to Blind Harrys story is that its very repetitive. It goes a bit like this:

In Blind Harrys story, Wallace never had time to stop for a chat about the weather or to do the washing-up, because he was always fighting somebody! Blind Harry just loved to harp on about Wallaces endless victories in battle.