How much do you really know William Wallace? Like, do you even know if he was Scottish?
It may not be as simple as you think. If you re interested in the people,
places and events in Scottish history then click the subscribe
button at the bottom right of the screen. In the meantime, let me tell you a story.
For some of you, everything you know about William Wallace comes from the documentary Braveheart.
A few will have a more in-depth knowledge, and of course, there will be those
who think they have an in-depth knowledge but the point is that I want to dig into the roots
of William Wallace and shake the tree at the same time.
How Scottish was he or for that matter the people around about him?
You see, I recently made a video about the motivation,
funding and construction of the National Wallace Monument
above us on the Abbey Craig near Stirling. I called it What They Don t Say About the
Wallace Monument and I think that would hold a few surprises for you as well.
In the comments section of that video one of those people who know everything
pointed out that Wallace was born in Wales and spoke French
I pointed out that I didn t think that either of those two things were quite true
The chap who s name I can t remember seemed
to want to get into a debate that I knew I didn t have time for,
but I did think it was an interesting topic about which to make a video.
Another guy commented on the same video that Wasn t William Wallace a Briton?
Now for our international viewers I should probably point out the subtext to this.
The fact that the Wallace was a Briton guys avatar picture was a Union Flag suggests to me that
he was probably trying to make a current day political point about
everyone on this island being British rather than genuinely asking a question
about whether William Wallace was Scottish or maybe he just supported the Rangers.
It s a football team. To be fair a football team
that s done really well considering how recently they were established
Enthusiasts on BOTH sides of the Scottish independence debate will tend to skew
historical events and figures to justify their own political stance 700 years later
If you live in one of those foreign countries you ve probably got your own political debate
and folk do similar things. Few of us are immune
although I ve been vaccinated. Shit don t upset the anti vaxers .
Now that I think of it the Welsh/French commentor, remember him?
He might have been making the same political point with a bit more subtlety..,
although I suspect his motivation may have been a bit more self-indulgent, than political
I m not 100% sure and either way 700 years
after WE RE dead nobody s going to be talking about our little spat anyway
So let s leave aside the politics, I thought it would be interesting to try to
unravel this all for people like you and me. First things first.
The name Wallace does come from the Norman French waleis
which in turn came from an old English word wylis?
that literally meant foreigner Isn t it kind of ironic that the
Anglo-Saxon immigrants were calling the folk who had been here before foreigners
although I suppose if you were Saxon the Britons were foreign to you.
The point is that, when the Romans left, the Anglo Saxon folk had come
across what we call the North Sea and the language and culture of Britons
diminished in the eastern part of this island, leaving the original Brythonic language and
culture in the west or Wales peopled by the Wylise.
Now these Wylis? didn t necessarily have to live in what WE d call Wales,
it really just meant that they spoke that Brythonic Celtic LANGUAGE that we now call Welsh.
Hundreds of years after the Saxons, came the Normans in 1066,
when the Anglo-Saxon word Wylisc was replaced by the Norman Waleis
So our first correspondent s confident assertion that
William Wallace must have been born in Wales. Of course his dad, being a minor Norman knight,
they must ve spoken French because the Normans were French weren t they?
So the Wallace family were immigrants from Wales that gained a little bit of land in Ayrshire
through service to the Stewarts. Historian, Andrew Fisher, argues
that Ricardus Wallensis (Richard the Welshman) was
the progenitor of the Scottish Wallaces. He came in the service of Walter Fitz Alan,
first high steward of Scotland around 1150. If that s true, Richard the Welshman could have
been an actual Welsh speaking Welshman , or it may be that he and his family were
Anglo-Normans from Fitz Alan s estates in the English/Welsh border marches.
You see this Norman nobleman, Fitz Alan, had been given lands in Shropshire by Henry I,
the son of William the Conquerer. Fits Alan s dad had come over as part of
the invasion with Henry s dad. Here s the thing though.
Fitz Alan s dad wasn t a Norman he was a Breton from Brittany in France
He may have spoken French , but would certainly have spoken the
Brythonic Celtic Breton language. Is that a bit like Welsh? Yes it is.
So it s not entirely surprising that this Breton would be placed along the Welsh border.
He would be better able to understand those Britons surviving from Britannia.
Are you getting that? The Welsh are what s left
of the Britons in Britain and the Bretons are what s left of the Bretons in France,
so if you re going to put a man on the border with the Britons, best make sure he s a Breton.
I m glad we got that cleared up. Of course, when David I of
Scotland brought Walter Fitz Alan north Fitz Alan brought Richard the Welshman
but his descendant William Wallace wouldn t be born for more than a hundred years.
He wasn t born in Wales. He was born in Scotland.
but there s another way to think about this. You see Scotland hadn t always looked like this.
Why, when David I, a bosom buddy of Henry I,
brought William Fitz Allan the Breton, north did he give him lands in
Ayrshire in the West of Scotland? If you watched my video about the People Who
Made Scotland that focused on the Britons, then you ll know that the people
from the Clyde south were the people incorporated
into Scotland from the Britons who had survived from the Kingdom of Alt Clut,
then the Kingdom of Strathclyde . In fact, when the Normans arrived in 1066
the kingdom of Strathclyde, Cumbria for pedants, had only recently been subsumed into Scotland
and these people may still have been known as The Strathclyde Welsh.
So David I had given this Breton, Walter Fitz, Alan the job of
keeping the Scottish Welsh in hand just as Henry I had required him to
do south of the border. So you see William Wallace
may have been a descendant of Richard the Welshman who had come north with Fitz Allan,
but he could equally have been from one of the indigenous
Strathclyde Welsh who had lived there all along. Depending on which of the two stories you believe,
his recent ancestors may have adopted Norman French,
or they may have adopted the other Celtic tongue of Gaelic.
You see in that melting pot that we call Ayrshire,
I m sure there would have been folks who saw their heritage as Welsh Strathclyde Britons, mixed with
those who saw their heritage as Scots Gaels. Others were the new Norman imports..,
and sprinkled in amongst them might have been those who looked back to
Breton France or indeed Angelic Northumbria and remember Wallace was born just after
the Battle of Largs brought the west and Western isles
under the control of Scotland rather than Norway.
I dare say you might even have found a few who saw themselves as Norse
even if the Norse Gall Gael spoke Gaelic by then.
And In a time where medieval feudalism met Celtic kin groups
I m sure huge swathes of people would see feudal or family ties
as far more important than National identity.
Every week I have people comment on these videos saying that I m African, so can t be Scottish,
either because they re too stupid to realise that
the two aren t mutually exclusive, or they ve made a wilful choice.
Being born Scottish doesn t stop me being Ghanaian.
Having Ghanaian ancestry doesn t stop me being Scottish.
Now these people THINK they re insulting me. To THEM being African is an insult but being
Scottish isn t. It never occurs to
them that there are millions of people, like me who are proud of their African heritage
and there are a group of eejits who think calling somebody Scottish IS an insult.
Edward Longshank s mob Personally, I m happy to have
two passports and a single identity, as are huge swathes of the world.
but this isn t about me, it s about William Wallace.
I m just saying that he may not have seen his identity in the simplistic
way our two correspondents, or viewers of Braveheart did.
He was born in Scotland, but even if he had been born in
Wales that wouldn t stop him being Scottish owing allegiance to the Scottish crown.
If he was Welsh by dint of being a Strathclyde Briton that doesn t make
him union jack flying British, there was no such thing.
Now before the radge bams in the politicosphere head for their keyboards,
if you re Welsh, I m happy for you.
If you re Breton enjoy your cheese, if your British then fill your boots...
they ll probably smell the same as the Breton cheese.
None of those things are inherently bad , that s not my point
Did William Wallace speak French? I m sure he did ,
in the same way that my relatives up in Buchan speak English.
Aye fit like quine did ye like yer rowie fine.
That s how they talk There s a reason that the TV programme
Trawlermen comes with subtitles. There s a reason I have to
adapt my speech for these videos and some people still want subtitles.
William Wallace probably did speak a very specific dialect of French
that would be recognisable HERE two hundred years after the Normans
who didn t speak Parisian French had branched out from Normandy.
He probably also spoke some combination of Gaelic, Welsh or English
depending on who he was speaking to.
You can you label William Wallace however you want.
You can put whatever language in his mouth that pleases you but deeds speak louder than words.
When you look at his actions here at Stirling Bridge eight hundred years ago
he seems to have seen himself as pretty Scottish.
If you want to know more about Wallace and the other folks who took up that struggle with him
then there s another video coming up on screen now.
In the meantime