Scottish Text Society publications > Old series > Actis and deidis of the illustere and vailzeand campioun, Schir William Wallace, Knicht of Ellerslie

INTRODUCTION.
Xlll
EDITIONS OF “BLIND HARRY.”
“Blind Harry” has passed through more editions than
any other Scots book before the times of Burns and Scott.
If we accept David Laing’s statement, as given in the pref¬
ace to his edition of “ Gologras and Gawain,” “ Harry” must
have been one of the first books printed in Scotland. Only
fragments of this edition were seen by him, but he assigns
the edition to which they belonged to somewhere about
1508. The first complete edition, of which only one copy
exists, is in the British Museum, and is of date 1570.
Even this is an early edition of a Scottish book. Since
that date editions have appeared in 1594, 1601, 1611,
1620, 1630, 1648, 1661, 1665, 1673, 1699, 1711, 1713, 1758,
besides more modern editions.
I owe the following bibliographical notes on the early
editions of “ Blind Harry ” to my friend Mr J. P. Edmond,
author of the ‘ Aberdeen Printers.’
“ Dr Laing, in his learned introduction to the reprint of ‘ Golo¬
gras and Gawain,’ mentions the accidental discovery of twenty
mutilated leaves of an ancient and unknown edition of the ‘ Acts
and Deeds of Sir William Wallace,’ which had been pasted
together to stiffen the boards of an old quarto. He says, ‘ From
a comparison of 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 dis¬
covered, 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 com¬
pletely disappeared as to leave no vestige of its ever having passed