Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1985, Page 85

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latter will from now on be referred to for the sake of clarity as the
Brevis Chronica, from the running-title with which it is supplied in the
last-mentioned manuscript.
A fragment of the Brevis Chronica is also said to appear on the last
six leaves of a copy of Wyntoun in St Andrews University Library,68
but the only copies so far printed are those in the Asloan manuscript
and Adv. 19.2.4. All three manuscripts belong to the sixteenth centu-
ry; Adv. 19.2.4 is evidently later than 1527, for its text of the Brevis
Chronica is supplied with cross-references to the Scotorum historia of
Hector Boece, which was first published in that year. Both the Latin
and the Scots versions of the chronicle refer to the ‘Auld Alliance’ as
being currently in effect, but in this case the point is insignificant
because such a reference had been part of the historical tradition in
question since the time of John of Fordun. The Asloan copy has here
left its exemplar unaltered.69 The original redactor of the chronicle
was manifestly working from some abbreviated version of Bower’s
Scotichronicon, as appears from a comparison of the Latin text in the
Dalhousie manuscript with the printed editions of Fordun, Bower and
the so-called Liber Pluscardensis.70 What is remarkable is that a ran-
dom collation of a passage such as that describing the death of King
David II (see below, Appendix II) seems to indicate in the first place
that this abbreviation was a sister text of the Liber Pluscardensis, and
in the second place that it was also employed by the compiler of the
Extracta e variis cronicis Scocie in National Library of Scotland MS
65), I, xlvi; Amours, posthumously published introduction to Wyntoun (I, lxii and
supplementary footnote); and Warner and Gilson (as n. 49), who commit the additional
error of stating that there is a third concordance in MS Adv. 19.2.3.
68 Wyntoun, ed. Laing, III, xxii. The fragment is not dealt with in W. A. Craigie’s
article on “The St. Andrews MS of Wyntoun’s Chronicle,” Anglia 20 (1898), 363-80. For
the date of the manuscript see Laing, III, xxi, and Amours, I, lxv.
69 Dalhousie manuscript f. 27v/28-30: “... amicicia confederac/onis inter reges, popu-
los et regna Francie et Scocie que nastros usque adhuc dies perseuerat, laudes Deo”; cf.
The Asloan Manuscript, I, 253/16-18; Wyntoun, ed. Laing, III, 326/26-28; Fordun, ed.
Skene, p. 133/18-20.
70 Craigie (The Asloan Manuscript, I, viii) States vaguely that the Brevis Chronica was
compiled “from Fordoun or some similar source.” He considers it “significant” that the
Asloan copy ends by recording “the initial successes of James IV. in his invasion of
England, but is silent on the battie of Flodden,” thereby implying that the Asloan
continuation immediately antedates the battie. It is much more likely that the end of the
Asloan text reflects a casual interruption in copying.