Hary was his name, surname, or simply a nickname;
and the dates of his birth and death all remain conjec-
tural. The Accounts of the Lord High Treasurer of Scotland
report that there were payments made to him for per-
formances at court between 1473 and 1492, but these
sporadic references only attest that he was not a regu-
lar court poet. Textual evidence from his work The
WALLACE suggests that he was well read in VERNACULAR,
French, and classical literature, so it is likely that he
attended a university. Blind Hary’s detailed and vivid
account of battles, military tactics, and scenery indicate
that he might have had a military background; had
traveled through Scotland, England, and France; and
was probably not blind by birth. Ideologically, Hary’s
political sympathies lay with James III’s brother, Alex-
ander, duke of Albany and earl of March, whose poli-
cies of matrimonial alliances with the English did not
please everybody. WILLIAM DUNBAR’s allusion to Hary
in “Timor Mortis Conturbat Me” (1505) and John
Mair’s in Historia Majoris Britanniae (1518) demon-
strate that he had acquired a reputation as a poet not
long after his death.
Sergi Mainer“BLUDY SERK, THE” ROBERT HENRYSON
(1460) One of the minor poems attributed to ROB-
ERT HENRYSON, “The Bludy Serk” is a simple ALLEGORY
of 120 lines, comprising a tale whose meaning is high-
lighted for the reader in a moral. It tells the story of a
king whose daughter is abducted by a giant. Impris-
oned in a “deip dungeon,” she suffers while the king
searches for a champion capable of defeating her cap-
tor. A knight fi ghts and succeeds, but is left mortally
wounded. Dying, he asks the lady to take his bloody
shirt, remembering it and him when other suitors
come to woo her. She refuses all others. The fi nal
STANZA of the tale anticipates the moral in identifying
her fi delity as the duty which humanity owes to Christ,
who died “For sinfull manis saik” (l. 94).
The king is identifi ed with the Holy Trinity, the lady
with the human soul, and the giant with Lucifer. The
knight is Christ, whose death redeemed humanity from
the “pit” of Hell, and pious meditation on this sacrifi ce
emerges as a duty that will preserve the believer from
the temptation of sin, represented by the wooers. The
theme of Christ as lover-knight is common in medieval
literature. However, Henryson’s treatment is distinc-
tive, highlighting the ROMANCE elements present in the
narrative by adopting the simple style and meter of the
BALLAD (see BALLAD STANZA). Moreover, Henryson’s
method here resembles that of his MORALL FABILLIS OF
ESOPE THE PHRYGIAN, since the relationship between tale
and moral is more complex than the formal division
between the two would suggest. Rather than being sep-
arate, the content of the tale foreshadows the moral—
for example, in the emphasis placed on the depth of the
dungeon, and on the resemblance between the giant’s
fi ngernails and “ane hellis cruk.”
FURTHER READING
Schweitzer, Edward C. “The Allegory of Robert Henryson’s
‘The Bludy Serk.’ ” Studies in Scottish Literature 15 (1980):
165–174.
Elizabeth ElliottBOB-AND-WHEEL The bob-and-wheel is a
metrical pattern found predominately in alliterative
poetry, especially that of the GAWAIN-POET and other
14th-century ROMANCEs. The bob-and-wheel pattern is
found at the close of STANZAs. Five lines in total, it
begins with the bob, a short line, generally only two or
three syllables in length, which contains one stressed
syllable preceded by one or two unstressed syllables.
This line is followed by a QUATRAIN called the wheel.
Together, the rhyme scheme is ababa.
The bob both echoes the ALLITERATION of the fi rst
part of the stanza and completes the concluding TAIL
RHYME. As such, it functions as a linguistic link within
each stanza that connects the competing rhyme
schemes into a holistic pattern. Alternatively, the bob-
and-wheel pattern may be used as a BURDEN, though
this is uncommon.
See also ALLITERATIVE REVIVAL, SIR GAWAIN AND THE
GREEN KNIGHT.BOCCACCIO, GIOVANNI (1313–1375)
Giovanni Boccaccio spent his formative years at court
in Naples, where he wrote several courtly ROMANCEs,
one of the most infl uential being Teseida, o delle nozze86 “BLUDY SERK, THE”