And when Edward was given the broken Scottish royal seal, he set it aside, commenting. A man does good business when he rids himself of a turd. One by one, a host of Scots came to do homage to Edward, including the Bruces, but there was one who did not Malcolm Wallace. And this Malcolm had a brother. Here he is, the standard-issue freedom fighter of the imagination - the "give 'em hell" whiskers, the "save me, Jesus" eyes, the hamstrings from hell. We've not a clue, of course, whether William Wallace looked remotely like this any more than we know whether he could have stood in as a stuntman for Mel Gibson, who immortalised him in "Braveheart". But Wallace is one of those larger-than-life figures whose epic romance refuses to go away. It just grows, to match this extraordinary monument to him dominating the Stirling skyline.


当爱德华接过残破的苏格兰皇家印章，他将之放置一旁，评论道，不与无能之人为伍，方能成大事。大批苏格兰人一个接一个地宣誓效忠爱德华，包括布鲁斯家族。但有一个人没来，马尔科姆·华莱士。这个马尔科姆有一个兄弟，他是人们印象中自由斗士的代表。他有着令人生畏的胡须，乞求拯救的双眼，孔武有力的双腿。当然，我们并不知道，历史上的威廉·华莱士是否真是这样，是否比我们所熟知的梅尔·吉布森在电影《勇敢的心》当中，塑造的不朽形象更加伟大。但华莱士确是一位划时代的伟人，他那史诗般的传奇流传至今，日益深入人心，如同这座宏伟的纪念碑，直冲斯特林的天际。