John Barbour was Scottish poet who is known entirely for his Bruce (1375-78), the supreme national poem of Scotland.

It is a verse chronicle but more true to history than the pervious chronicles. It has been a source- book for all future historians of the events narrated in- poem. The poem narrates the struggle of Robert, the Bruce, and his people, to throw foreign yoke (English) and regains liberty. The only fault of the poem is the prosaic nature of its thirteen thousand octosyllablic lines. Still one of these lines has become famous: “Ah! Freedom is a noble thing.”