The poem has some basis in historical fact with descriptions of the Battle of Stirling Bridge and the Battle of Falkirk. It forms a biography of William Wallace from his boyhood, through his career as a Scots patriot in the First War of Independence until his execution in London in 1305. The Wallace is a long narrative work composed in decasyllabic rhyming couplets. This version also went through over 20 editions, with the last published in 1859. It was later republished in the late 18th century by the poet William Hamilton, in contemporary English. The first mention of Blind Harry as the work's author was made by John Mair in his 1521 work Historia Majoris Britanniae, tam Angliae quam Scotiae.

The earliest extant text is a copy made by John Ramsay, 1st Lord Bothwell in 1488, but that copy has no title page and last few pages are missing, with no mention of Blind Harry as its author. For several hundred years following its publication, The Wallace was the second most popular book in Scotland after the Bible.

The poem is historically inaccurate, and mentions several events that never happened. As the title suggests, it commemorates and eulogises the life and actions of the Scottish freedom fighter William Wallace who lived a century and a half earlier. The Actes and Deidis of the Illustre and Vallyeant Campioun Schir William Wallace ( Template:Lang-en), also known as The Wallace, is a long 'romantic biographical' poem by the fifteenth-century Scottish makar of the name Blind Harry probably at some time in the decade before 1488.

Wallace by jim gorant