Scottish Text Society publications > Third series > Actis and Deidis of Schir William Wallace, 1570

THE FRAGMENTS OF THE EARLY EDITION.
The existence of these was first made known by Dr David
Laing in the Introduction to his reprint (1827) °f the Chep-
man and Myllar pieces of 1508, in these words : “A few muti¬
lated leaves of an ancient and unknown edition of the Acts
and Deeds of Sir William Wallace having been accidentally
discovered, a brief notice and specimen of these fragments
seems requisite in this place. From a comparison with the
original tracts contained in this volume it is evident that the
work, if not actually printed by Walter Chepman, was at
least executed with his types, which have no resemblance
with those of any of his successors in this country. That
many little treatises issued from his press, of which no trace
can be discovered, was long suspected, but that an edition
of a work as large as the blind Minstrel’s poem of our ‘ valiant
Campioun ’ (extending to upwards of 280 pages in folio)
should have so completely disappeared as to leave no vestige
of its ever having passed through the press earlier than 1570,
serves to show how extensive the loss must have been which
our national literature sustained in the course of the sixteenth
century.
“ We here subjoin two full pages, as a specimen of the text;
being part of the episode of John of Lynn, the English reaver,
and his discomfiture off the mouth of the Humber.
“ These pages contain lines 827 to 911 of book X in the
edition published by Dr Jamieson from the MS. dated 1488.
They may enable the reader to form some estimate of the
value of an edition, of which unfortunately only twenty leaves
are preserved, more or less mutilated, from having been cut
down by a binder at an early period, and pasted together
for the purpose of stiffening the boards of an old quarto
volume of no great value.”