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OLD MORTALITY

by Sir Walter Scott


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EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION TO OLD MORTALITY.

The origin of "Old Mortality," perhaps the best of Scott's historical
romances, is well known. In May, 1816, Mr. Joseph Train, the gauger from
Galloway, breakfasted with Scott in Castle Street. He brought gifts in
his hand,--a relic of Rob Roy, and a parcel of traditions. Among these
was a letter from Mr. Broadfoot, schoolmaster in Pennington, who
facetiously signed himself "Clashbottom." To cleish, or clash, is to
"flog," in Scots. From Mr. Broadfoot's joke arose Jedediah Cleishbotham,
the dominie of Gandercleugh; the real place of Broadfoot's revels was the
Shoulder of Mutton Inn, at Newton Stewart. Mr. Train, much pleased with
the antiques in "the den" of Castle Street, was particularly charmed by
that portrait of Claverhouse which now hangs on the staircase of the
study at Abbotsford. Scott expressed the Cavalier opinions about Dundee,
which were new to Mr. Train, who had been bred in the rural tradition of
"Bloody Claver'se."

     [The Editor's first acquaintance with Claverhouse was obtained
     through an old nurse, who had lived on a farm beside a burn where,
     she said, the skulls of Covenanters shot by Bloody Claver'se were
     still occasionally found. The stream was a tributary of the
     Ettrick.]

"Might he not," asked Mr. Train, "be made, in good hands, the hero of a
national romance as interesting as any about either Wallace or Prince
Charlie?" He suggested that the story should be delivered "as if from the
mouth of Old Mortality." This probably recalled to Scott his own meeting
with Old Mortality in Dunnottar Churchyard, as described in the
Introduction to the novel.

The account of the pilgrim, as given by Sir Walter from Mr. Train's
memoranda, needs no addition. About Old Mortality's son, John, who went
to America in 1776 (? 1774), and settled in Baltimore, a curious romantic
myth has gathered. Mr. Train told Scott more, as his manuscript at
Abbotsford shows, than Scott printed. According to Mr. Train, John
Paterson, of Baltimore, had a son Robert and a daughter Elizabeth. Robert
married an American lady, who, after his decease, was married to the
Marquis of Wellesley. Elizabeth married Jerome Bonaparte! Sir Walter
distrusted these legends, though derived from a Scotch descendant of Old
Mortality. Mr. Ramage, in March, 1871, wrote to "Notes and Queries"
dispelling the myth.

According to Jerome Bonaparte's descendant, Madame Bonaparte, her family
were Pattersons, not Patersons. Her Baltimore ancestor's will is extant,
has been examined by Old Mortality's great-grandson, and announces in a
kind of preamble that the testator was a native of Donegal; his Christian
name was William ("Notes and Queries," Fourth Series, vol. vii. p. 219,
and Fifth Series, August, 1874). This, of course, quite settles the
question; but the legend is still current among American descendants of
the old Roxburghshire wanderer.

"Old Mortality," with its companion, "The Black Dwarf," was published on
December 1, 1816, by Mr. Murray in London, and Mr. Blackwood in
Edinburgh.

The name of "The Author of 'Waverley'" was omitted on the title-page. The
reason for a change of publisher may have been chiefly financial
(Lockhart, v. 152). Scott may have also thought it amusing to appear as
his own rival in a new field. He had not yet told his secret to Lady
Abercorn, but he seems to reveal it (for who but he could have known so
much about the subject?) in a letter to her, of November 29, 1816.  "You
must know the Marquis well,--or rather you must be the Marquis himself!"
quoth Dalgetty. Here follow portions of the letter:

     I do not like the first story, "The Black Dwarf," at all; but the
     long one which occupies three volumes is a most remarkable
     production. . . . I should like to know if you are of my opinion as
     to these new volumes coming from the same hand. . . . I wander about
     from nine in the morning till five at night with a plaid about my
     shoulders and an immensely large bloodhound at my heels, and stick
     in sprigs which are to become trees when I shall have no eyes to
     look at them. . . .

     I am truly glad that the Tales have amused you. In my poor opinion
     they are the best of the four sets, though perhaps I only think so
     on account of their opening ground less familiar to me than the
     manners of the Highlanders. . . . If Tom--[His brother, Mr. Thomas
     Scott.]--wrote those volumes, he has not put me in his secret. . . .
     General rumour here attributes them to a very ingenious but most
     unhappy man, a clergyman of the Church of Scotland, who, many years
     since, was obliged to retire from his profession, and from society,
     who hides himself under a borrowed name. This hypothesis seems to
     account satisfactorily for the rigid secrecy observed; but from what
     I can recollect of the unfortunate individual, these are not the
     kind of productions I should expect from him. Burley, if I mistake
     not, was on board the Prince of Orange's own vessel at the time of
     his death. There was also in the Life Guards such a person as
     Francis Stewart, grandson of the last Earl of Bothwell. I have in my
     possession various proceedings at his father's instance for
     recovering some part of the Earl's large estates which had been
     granted to the Earls of Buccleugh and Roxburgh. It would appear that
     Charles I. made some attempts to reinstate him in those lands, but,
     like most of that poor monarch's measures, the attempt only served
     to augment his own enemies, for Buccleugh was one of the first who
     declared against him in Scotland, and raised a regiment of twelve
     hundred men, of whom my grandfather's grandfather (Sir William Scott
     of Harden) was lieutenant-colonel. This regiment was very active at
     the destruction of Montrose's Highland army at Philiphaugh. In
     Charles the Second's time the old knight suffered as much through
     the nonconformity of his wife as Cuddie through that of his mother.
     My father's grandmother, who lived to the uncommon age of
     ninety-eight years, perfectly remembered being carried, when a
     child, to the field-preachings, where the clergyman thundered from
     the top of a rock, and the ladies sat upon their side-saddles, which
     were placed upon the turf for their accommodation, while the men
     stood round, all armed with swords and pistols. . . . Old Mortality
     was a living person; I have myself seen him about twenty years ago
     repairing the Covenanters' tombs as far north as Dunnottar.

If Lady Abercorn was in any doubt after this ingenuous communication, Mr.
Murray, the publisher, was in none. (Lockhart, v. 169.) He wrote to Scott
on December 14, 1816, rejoicing in the success of the Tales, "which must
be written either by Walter Scott or the Devil. . . . I never experienced
such unmixed pleasure as the reading of this exquisite work has afforded
me; and if you could see me, as the author's literary chamberlain,
receiving the unanimous and vehement praises of those who have read it,
and the curses of those whose needs my scanty supply could not satisfy,
you might judge of the sincerity with which I now entreat you to assure
the Author of the most complete success." Lord Holland had said, when Mr.
Murray asked his opinion, "Opinion! We did not one of us go to bed last
night,--nothing slept but my gout."

The very Whigs were conquered. But not the Scottish Whigs, the Auld
Leaven of the Covenant,--they were still dour, and offered many
criticisms. Thereon Scott, by way of disproving his authorship, offered
to review the Tales in the "Quarterly." His true reason for this step was
the wish to reply to Dr. Thomas McCrie, author of the "Life of John
Knox," who had been criticising Scott's historical view of the Covenant,
in the "Edinburgh Christian Instructor." Scott had, perhaps, no better
mode of answering his censor. He was indifferent to reviews, but here his
historical knowledge and his candour had been challenged. Scott always
recognised the national spirit of the Covenanters, which he remarks on in
"The Heart of Mid-Lothian," and now he was treated as a faithless
Scotsman. For these reasons he reviewed himself; but it is probable, as
Lockhart says, that William Erskine wrote the literary or aesthetic part
of the criticism (Lockhart, v.174, note).

Dr. McCrie's review may be read, or at least may be found, in the fourth
volume of his collected works (Blackwood, Edinburgh 1857). The critique
amounts to about eighty-five thousand words. Since the "Princesse de
Cleves" was reviewed in a book as long as the original, never was so
lengthy a criticism. As Dr. McCrie's performance scarcely shares the
popularity of "Old Mortality," a note on his ideas may not be
superfluous, though space does not permit a complete statement of his
many objections. The Doctor begins by remarks on novels in general, then
descends to the earlier Waverley romances. "The Antiquary" he pronounces
to be "tame and fatiguing." Acknowledging the merits of the others, he
finds fault with "the foolish lines" (from Burns), "which must have been
foisted without the author's knowledge into the title page," and he
denounces the "bad taste" of the quotation from "Don Quixote." Burns and
Cervantes had done no harm to Dr. McCrie, but his anger was aroused, and
he, like the McCallum More as described by Andrew Fairservice, "got up
wi' an unto' bang, and garr'd them a' look about them." The view of the
Covenanters is "false and distorted." These worthies are not to be
"abused with profane wit or low buffoonery." "Prayers were not read in
the parish churches of Scotland" at that time. As Episcopacy was restored
when Charles II. returned "upon the unanimous petition of the Scottish
Parliament" (Scott's Collected Works, vol. xix. p. 78) it is not
unnatural for the general reader to suppose that prayers would be read by
the curates. Dr. McCrie maintains that "at the Restoration neither the
one nor the other" (neither the Scotch nor English Prayer Books) "was
imposed," and that the Presbyterians repeatedly "admitted they had no
such grievance." No doubt Dr. McCrie is correct. But Mr. James Guthrie,
who was executed on June 1, 1661, said in his last speech, "Oh that there
were not many who study to build again what they did formerly
unwarrantably destroy: I mean Prelacy and the Service Book, a mystery of
iniquity that works amongst us, whose steps lead unto the house of the
great Whore, Babylon, the mother of fornication," and so forth. Either
this mystery of iniquity, the Book of Common Prayer, "was working amongst
us," or it was not. If it was not, of what did Mr. Guthrie complain? If
it was "working," was read by certain curates, as by Burnet, afterwards
Bishop of Salisbury, at Saltoun, Scott is not incorrect. He makes Morton,
in danger of death, pray in the words of the Prayer Book, "a circumstance
which so enraged his murderers that they determined to precipitate his
fate." Dr. McCrie objects to this incident, which is merely borrowed, one
may conjecture, from the death of Archbishop Sharpe. The assassins told
the Archbishop that they would slay him. "Hereupon he began to think of
death. But (here are just the words of the person who related the story)
behold! God did not give him the grace to pray to Him without the help of
a book. But he pulled out of his pocket a small book, and began to read
over some words to himself, which filled us with amazement and
indignation." So they fired their pistols into the old man, and then
chopped him up with their swords, supposing that he had a charm against
bullets!  Dr. McCrie seems to have forgotten, or may have disbelieved the
narrative telling how Sharpe's use of the Prayer Book, like Morton's,
"enraged" his murderers. The incident does not occur in the story of the
murder by Russell, one of the murderers, a document published in C. K.
Sharpe's edition of Kirkton. It need not be true, but it may have
suggested the prayer of Morton.

If Scott thought that the Prayer Book was ordained to be read in Scotch
churches, he was wrong; if he merely thought that it might have been read
in some churches, was "working amongst us," he was right: at least,
according to Mr. James Guthrie.

Dr. McCrie argues that Burley would never have wrestled with a soldier in
an inn, especially in the circumstances. This, he says, was inconsistent
with Balfour's "character." Wodrow remarks, "I cannot hear that this
gentleman had ever any great character for religion among those that knew
him, and such were the accounts of him, when abroad, that the reverend
ministers of the Scots congregation at Rotterdam would never allow him to
communicate with them." In Scott's reading of Burley's character, there
was a great deal of the old Adam. That such a man should so resent the
insolence of a soldier is far from improbable, and our sympathies are
with Burley on this occasion.

Mause Headrigg is next criticised. Scott never asserted that she was a
representative of sober Presbyterianism. She had long conducted herself
prudently, but, when she gave way to her indignation, she only used such
language as we find on many pages of Wodrow, in the mouths of many
Covenanters. Indeed, though Manse is undeniably comic, she also commands
as much respect as the Spartan mother when she bids her only son bear
himself boldly in the face of torture. If Scott makes her grotesque, he
also makes her heroic. But Dr. McCrie could not endure the ridiculous
element, which surely no fair critic can fail to observe in the speeches
of the gallant and courageous, but not philosophical, members of the
Covenant's Extreme Left. Dr. McCrie talks of "the creeping loyalty of the
Cavaliers." "Staggering" were a more appropriate epithet. Both sides were
loyal to principle, both courageous; but the inappropriate and
promiscuous scriptural language of many Covenanters was, and remains,
ridiculous. Let us admit that the Covenanters were not averse to all
games. In one or two sermons they illustrate religion by phrases derived
from golf!

When Dr. McCrie exclaims, in a rich anger, "Your Fathers!" as if Scott's
must either have been Presbyterians or Cavaliers, the retort is cleverly
put by Sir Walter in the mouth of Jedediah. His ancestors of these days
had been Quakers, and persecuted by both parties.

Throughout the novel Scott keeps insisting that the Presbyterians had
been goaded into rebellion, and even into revenge, by cruelty of
persecution, and that excesses and bloodthirstiness were confined to the
"High Flyers," as the milder Covenanters called them. Morton represents
the ideal of a good Scot in the circumstances. He comes to be ashamed of
his passive attitude in the face of oppression. He stands up for "that
freedom from stripes and bondage" which was claimed, as you may read in
Scripture, by the Apostle Paul, and which every man who is free-born is
called upon to defend, for his own sake and that of his countrymen. The
terms demanded by Morton from Monmouth before the battle of Bothwell
Bridge are such as Scott recognises to be fair. Freedom of worship, and a
free Parliament, are included.

Dr. McCrie's chief charges are that Scott does not insist enough on the
hardships and brutalities of the persecution, and that the ferocity of
the Covenanters is overstated. He does not admit that the picture drawn
of "the more rigid Presbyterians" is just. But it is almost impossible to
overstate the ferocity of the High Flyers' conduct and creed. Thus
Wodrow, a witness not quite unfriendly to the rigid Presbyterians, though
not high-flying enough for Patrick Walker, writes "Mr. Tate informs me
that he had this account front Mr. Antony Shau, and others of the
Indulged; that at some time, under the Indulgence, there was a meeting of
some people, when they resolved in one night . . . to go to every house
of the Indulged Ministers and kill them, and all in one night."
This anecdote was confirmed by Mr. John Millar, to whose father's house
one of these High Flyers came, on this errand. This massacre was not
aimed at the persecutors, but at the Poundtexts. As to their creed,
Wodrow has an anecdote of one of his own elders, who told a poor woman
with many children that "it would be an uncouth mercy" if they were all
saved.

A pleasant evangel was this, and peacefully was it to have been
propagated!

Scott was writing a novel, not history. In "The Minstrelsy of the
Scottish Border" (1802-3) Sir Walter gave this account of the
persecutions. "Had the system of coercion been continued until our day,
Blair and Robertson would have preached in the wilderness, and only
discovered their powers of eloquence and composition by rolling along a
deeper torrent of gloomy fanaticism. . . . The genius of the persecuted
became stubborn, obstinate, and ferocious." He did not, in his romance,
draw a complete picture of the whole persecution, but he did show, by
that insolence of Bothwell at Milnwood, which stirs the most sluggish
blood, how the people were misused. This scene, to Dr. McCrie's mind, is
"a mere farce," because it is enlivened by Manse's declamations. Scott
displays the abominable horrors of the torture as forcibly as literature
may dare to do. But Dr. McCrie is not satisfied, because Macbriar, the
tortured man, had been taken in arms. Some innocent person should have
been put in the Boot, to please Dr. McCrie. He never remarks that
Macbriar conquers our sympathy by his fortitude. He complains of what the
Covenanters themselves called "the language of Canaan," which is put into
their mouths, "a strange, ridiculous, and incoherent jargon compounded of
Scripture phrases, and cant terms peculiar to their own party opinions in
ecclesiastical politics." But what other language did many of them speak?
"Oh, all ye that can pray, tell all the Lord's people to try, by mourning
and prayer, if ye can taigle him, taigle him especially in Scotland, for
we fear, he will depart from it." This is the theology of a savage, in
the style of a clown, but it is quoted by Walker as Mr. Alexander
Peden's.' Mr. John Menzie's "Testimony" (1670) is all about "hardened
men, whom though they walk with you for the present with horns of a lamb,
yet afterward ye may hear them speak with the mouth of a dragon, pricks
in your eyes and thorns in your sides." Manse Headrigg scarcely
caricatures this eloquence, or Peden's "many and long seventy-eight years
left-hand defections, and forty-nine years right-hand extremes;" while
"Professor Simson in Glasgow, and Mr. Glass in Tealing, both with Edom's
children cry Raze, raze the very foundation!" Dr. McCrie is reduced to
supposing that some of the more absurd sermons were incorrectly reported.
Very possibly they were, but the reports were in the style which the
people liked. As if to remove all possible charge of partiality, Scott
made the one faultless Christian of his tale a Covenanting widow, the
admirable Bessie McLure. But she, says the doctor, "repeatedly banns and
minces oaths in her conversation." This outrageous conduct of Bessie's
consists in saying "Gude protect us!" and "In Heaven's name, who are ye?"
Next the Doctor congratulates Scott on his talent for buffoonery. "Oh, le
grand homme, rien ne lui peut plaire." Scott is later accused of not
making his peasants sufficiently intelligent.  Cuddie Headrigg and Jenny
Dennison suffice as answers to this censure.

Probably the best points made by Dr. McCrie are his proof that biblical
names were not common among the Covenanteers and that Episcopal eloquence
and Episcopal superstition were often as tardy and as dark as the
eloquence and superstition of the Presbyterians. He carries the war into
the opposite camp, with considerable success. His best answer to "Old
Mortality" would have been a novel, as good and on the whole as fair,
written from the Covenanting side. Hogg attempted this reply, not to
Scott's pleasure according to the Shepherd, in "The Brownie of Bodsbeck."
The Shepherd says that when Scott remarked that the "Brownie" gave an
untrue description of the age, he replied, "It's a devilish deal truer
than yours!" Scott, in his defence, says that to please the friends of
the Covenanters, "their portraits must be drawn without shadow, and the
objects of their political antipathy be blackened, hooved, and horned ere
they will acknowledge the likeness of either." He gives examples of
clemency, and even considerateness, in Dundee; for example, he did not
bring with him a prisoner, "who laboured under a disease rendering it
painful to him to be on horseback." He examines the story of John Brown,
and disproves the blacker circumstances. Yet he appears to hold that
Dundee should have resigned his commission rather than carry out the
orders of Government? Burley's character for ruthlessness is defended by
the evidence of the "Scottish Worthies." As Dr. McCrie objects to his
"buffoonery," it is odd that he palliates the "strong propensity" of Knox
"to indulge his vein of humour," when describing, with ghoul-like mirth,
the festive circumstances of the murder and burial of Cardinal Beaton.
The odious part of his satire, Scott says, is confined to "the fierce and
unreasonable set of extra-Presbyterians," Wodrow's High Flyers. "We have
no delight to dwell either upon the atrocities or absurdities of a people
whose ignorance and fanaticism were rendered frantic by persecution."
To sum up the controversy, we may say that Scott was unfair, if at all,
in tone rather than in statement. He grants to the Covenanters dauntless
resolution and fortitude; he admits their wrongs; we cannot see, on the
evidence of their literature, that he exaggerates their grotesqueness,
their superstition, their impossible attitude as of Israelites under a
Theocracy, which only existed as an ideal, or their ruthlessness on
certain occasions. The books of Wodrow, Kirkton, and Patrick Walker, the
sermons, the ghost stories, the dying speeches, the direct testimony of
their own historians, prove all that Scott says, a hundred times over.
The facts are correct, the testimony to the presence of another, an
angelic temper, remains immortal in the figure of Bessie McLure. But an
unfairness of tone may be detected in the choice of such names as
Kettledrummle and Poundtext: probably the "jog-trot" friends of the
Indulgence have more right to complain than the "high-flying" friends of
the Covenant. Scott had Cavalier sympathies, as Macaulay had Covenanting
sympathies. That Scott is more unjust to the Covenanters than Macaulay to
Claverhouse historians will scarcely maintain. Neither history or fiction
would be very delightful if they were warless.  This must serve as an
apology more needed by Macaulay--than by Sir Walter. His reply to Dr.
McCrie is marked by excellent temper, humour, and good humor. The
"Quarterly Review" ends with the well known reference to his brother
Tom's suspected authorship: "We intended here to conclude this long
article, when a strong report reached us of certain transatlantic
confessions, which, if genuine (though of this we know nothing), assign a
different author to those volumes than the party suspected by our
Scottish correspondents. Yet a critic may be excused for seizing upon the
nearest suspected person, or the principle happily expressed by
Claverhouse in a letter to the Earl of Linlithgow. He had been, it seems,
in search of a gifted weaver who used to hold forth at conventicles: 'I
sent for the webster, they brought in his brother for him: though he,
maybe, cannot preach like his brother, I doubt not but he is as well
principled as he, wherefore I thought it would be no great fault to give
him the trouble to go to jail with the rest.'"

Nobody who read this could doubt that Scott was, at least, "art and part"
in the review. His efforts to disguise himself as an Englishman, aided by
a Scotch antiquary, are divertingly futile. He seized the chance of
defending his earlier works from some criticisms on Scotch manners
suggested by the ignorance of Gifford. Nor was it difficult to see that
the author of the review was also the author of the novel. In later years
Lady Louisa Stuart reminded Scott that "Old Mortality," like the Iliad,
had been ascribed by clever critics to several hands working together. On
December 5, 1816, she wrote to him, "I found something you wot of upon my
table; and as I dare not take it with me to a friend's house, for fear of
arousing curiosity"--she read it at once. She could not sleep afterwards,
so much had she been excited. "Manse and Cuddie forced me to laugh out
aloud, which one seldom does when alone." Many of the Scotch words "were
absolutely Hebrew" to her. She not unjustly objected to Claverhouse's use
of the word "sentimental" as an anachronism. Sentiment, like nerves, had
not been invented in Claverhouse's day.

The pecuniary success of "Old Mortality" was less, perhaps, than might
have been expected. The first edition was only of two thousand copies.
Two editions of this number were sold in six weeks, and a third was
printed. Constable's gallant enterprise of ten thousand, in "Rob Roy,"
throws these figures into the shade.

"Old Mortality" is the first of Scott's works in which he invades history
beyond the range of what may be called living oral tradition. In
"Waverley," and even in "Rob Roy," he had the memories of Invernahyle, of
Miss Nairne, of many persons of the last generation for his guides. In
"Old Mortality" his fancy had to wander among the relics of another age,
among the inscribed tombs of the Covenanters, which are common in the
West Country, as in the churchyards of Balmaclellan and Dalry. There the
dust of these enduring and courageous men, like that of Bessie Bell and
Marion Gray in the ballad, "beiks forenenst the sun," which shines on
them from beyond the hills of their wanderings, while the brown waters of
the Ken murmur at their feet.

               Here now in peace sweet rest we take,
               Once murdered for religion's sake,

says the epitaph on the flat table-stone, beneath the wind tormented
trees of Iron Gray. Concerning these _Manes Presbyteriani_, "Guthrie's
and Giffan's Passions" and the rest, Scott had a library of rare volumes
full of prophecies, "remarkable Providences," angelic ministrations,
diabolical persecutions by The Accuser of the Brethren,--in fact, all
that Covenanteers had written or that had been written about
Covenanteers. "I'll tickle ye off a Covenanter as readily as old Jack
could do a young Prince; and a rare fellow he is, when brought forth in
his true colours," he says to Terry (November 12, 1816). He certainly was
not an unprejudiced witness, some ten years earlier, when he wrote to
Southey, "You can hardly conceive the perfidy, cruelty, and stupidity of
these people, according to the accounts they have themselves preserved.
But I admit I had many prejudices instilled into me, as my ancestor was a
Killiecrankie man." He used to tease Grahame of "The Sabbath," "but never
out of his good humour, by praising Dundee, and laughing at the
Covenanters." Even as a boy he had been familiar with that godly company
in "the original edition of the lives of Cameron and others, by Patrick
Walker." The more curious parts of those biographies were excised by the
care of later editors, but they may all be found now in the "Biographia
Presbyteriana" (1827), published by True Jock, chief clerk to "Leein'
Johnnie," Mr. John Ballantyne. To this work the inquirer may turn, if he
is anxious to see whether Scott's colouring is correct. The true blue of
the Covenant is not dulled in the "Biographia Presbyteriana."

With all these materials at his command, Scott was able almost to dwell
in the age of the Covenant hence the extraordinary life and brilliance of
this, his first essay in fiction dealing with a remote time and obsolete
manners. His opening, though it may seem long and uninviting to modern
readers, is interesting for the sympathetic sketch of the gentle
consumptive dominie. If there was any class of men whom Sir Walter could
not away with, it was the race of schoolmasters, "black cattle" whom he
neither trusted nor respected. But he could make or invent exceptions, as
in the uncomplaining and kindly usher of the verbose Cleishbotham. Once
launched in his legend, with the shooting of the Popinjay, he never
falters. The gallant, dauntless, overbearing Bothwell, the dour Burley,
the handful of Preachers, representing every current of opinion in the
Covenant, the awful figure of Habakkuk Mucklewrath, the charm of goodness
in Bessie McLure, are all immortal, deathless as Shakspeare's men and
women. Indeed here, even more than elsewhere, we admire the life which
Scott breathes into his minor characters, Halliday and Inglis, the
troopers, the child who leads Morton to Burley's retreat in the cave,
that auld Laird Nippy, old Milnwood (a real "Laird Nippy" was a neighbour
of Scott's at Ashiestiel), Ailie Wilson, the kind, crabbed old
housekeeper, generous in great things, though habitually niggardly in
things small. Most of these are persons whom we might still meet in
Scotland, as we might meet Cuddie Headrigg--the shrewd, the blithe, the
faithful and humorous Cuddie. As to Miss Jenny Dennison, we can hardly
forgive Scott for making that gayest of soubrettes hard and selfish in
married life. He is too severe on the harmless and even beneficent race
of coquettes, who brighten life so much, who so rapidly "draw up with the
new pleugh lad," and who do so very little harm when all is said. Jenny
plays the part of a leal and brave lass in the siege of Tillietudlem,
hunger and terror do not subdue her spirit; she is true, in spite of many
temptations, to her Cuddie, and we decline to believe that she was untrue
to his master and friend. Ikuse, no doubt, is a caricature, though Wodrow
makes us acquainted with at least one Mause, Jean Biggart, who "all the
winter over was exceedingly straitened in wrestling and prayer as to the
Parliament, and said that still that place was brought before her, Our
hedges are broken down!" ("Analecta," ii. 173.) Surely even Dr. McCrie
must have laughed out loud, like Lady Louisa Stuart, when Mause exclaims:
"Neither will I peace for the bidding of no earthly potsherd, though it
be painted as red as a brick from the tower o' Babel, and ca' itsel' a
corporal." Manse, as we have said, is not more comic than heroic, a
mother in that Sparta of the Covenant. The figure of Morton, as usual, is
not very attractive. In his review, Scott explains the weakness of his
heroes as usually strangers in the land (Waverley, Lovel, Mannering,
Osbaldistone), who need to have everything explained to them, and who are
less required to move than to be the pivots of the general movement. But
Morton is no stranger in the land. His political position in the juste
milieu is unexciting. A schoolboy wrote to Scott at this time, "Oh, Sir
Walter, how could you take the lady from the gallant Cavalier, and give
her to the crop-eared Covenanter?" Probably Scott sympathised with his
young critic, who longed "to be a feudal chief, and to see his retainers
happy around him." But Edith Bellenden loved Morton, with that love
which, as she said, and thought, "disturbs the repose of the dead." Scott
had no choice. Besides, Dr. McCrie might have disapproved of so fortunate
an arrangement. The heroine herself does not live in the memory like Di
Vernon; she does not even live like Jenny Dennison. We remember Corporal
Raddlebanes better, the stoutest fighting man of Major Bellenden's
acquaintance; and the lady of Tillietudlem has admirers more numerous and
more constant. The lovers of the tale chiefly engage our interest by the
rare constancy of their affections.

The most disputed character is, of course, that of Claverhouse. There is
no doubt that, if Claverhouse had been a man of the ordinary mould, he
would never have reckoned so many enthusiastic friends in future ages.
But Beauty, which makes Helen immortal, had put its seal on Bonny Dundee.
With that face "which limners might have loved to paint, and ladies to
look upon," he still conquers hearts from his dark corner above the
private staircase in Sir Walter's deserted study. He was brave, he was
loyal when all the world forsook his master; in that reckless age of
revelry he looks on with the austere and noble contempt which he wears in
Hell among the tippling shades of Cavaliers. He died in the arms of
victory, but he lives among

                         The chiefs of ancient names
     Who swore to fight and die beneath the banner of King James,
     And he fell in Killiecrankie Pass, the glory of the Grahames.

Sentiment in romance, not in history, may be excused for pardoning the
rest.

Critics of the time, as Lady Louisa Stuart reminds Sir Walter, did not
believe the book was his, because it lacked his "tedious descriptions."
The descriptions, as of the waterfall where Burley had his den, are
indeed far from "tedious." There is a tendency in Scott to exalt into
mountains "his own grey hills," the _bosses verdatres_ as Prosper Merimee
called them, of the Border. But the horrors of such linns as that down
which Hab Dab and Davie Dinn "dang the deil" are not exaggerated.

"Old Mortality" was the last novel written by Scott before the malady
which tormented his stoicism in 1817-1820. Every reader has his own
favourite, but few will place this glorious tale lower than second in the
list of his incomparable romances.

ANDREW LANG.





INTRODUCTION TO THE TALES OF MY LANDLORD.

As I may, without vanity, presume that the name and official description
prefixed to this Proem will secure it, from the sedate and reflecting
part of mankind, to whom only I would be understood to address myself,
such attention as is due to the sedulous instructor of youth, and the
careful performer of my Sabbath duties, I will forbear to hold up a
candle to the daylight, or to point out to the judicious those
recommendations of my labours which they must necessarily anticipate from
the perusal of the title-page. Nevertheless, I am not unaware, that, as
Envy always dogs Merit at the heels, there may be those who will whisper,
that albeit my learning and good principles cannot (lauded be the
heavens) be denied by any one, yet that my situation at Gandercleugh hath
been more favourable to my acquisitions in learning than to the
enlargement of my views of the ways and works of the present generation.
To the which objection, if, peradventure, any such shall be started, my
answer shall be threefold:

First, Gandercleugh is, as it were, the central part--the navel (_si fas
sit dicere_) of this our native realm of Scotland; so that men, from
every corner thereof, when travelling on their concernments of business,
either towards our metropolis of law, by which I mean Edinburgh, or
towards our metropolis and mart of gain, whereby I insinuate Glasgow, are
frequently led to make Gandercleugh their abiding stage and place of rest
for the night. And it must be acknowledged by the most sceptical, that I,
who have sat in the leathern armchair, on the left-hand side of the fire,
in the common room of the Wallace Inn, winter and summer, for every
evening in my life, during forty years bypast, (the Christian Sabbaths
only excepted,) must have seen more of the manners and customs of various
tribes and people, than if I had sought them out by my own painful travel
and bodily labour. Even so doth the tollman at the well-frequented
turnpike on the Wellbrae-head, sitting at his ease in his own dwelling,
gather more receipt of custom, than if, moving forth upon the road, he
were to require a contribution from each person whom he chanced to meet
in his journey, when, according to the vulgar adage, he might possibly be
greeted with more kicks than halfpence.

But, secondly, supposing it again urged, that Ithacus, the most wise of
the Greeks, acquired his renown, as the Roman poet hath assured us, by
visiting states and men, I reply to the Zoilus who shall adhere to this
objection,  that, _de facto_, I have seen states and men also; for I have
visited the famous cities of Edinburgh and Glasgow, the former twice, and
the latter three times, in the course of my earthly pilgrimage. And,
moreover, I had the honour to sit in the General Assembly (meaning, as an
auditor, in the galleries thereof,) and have heard as much goodly
speaking on the law of patronage, as, with the fructification thereof in
mine own understanding, hath made me be considered as an oracle upon that
doctrine ever since my safe and happy return to Gandercleugh.

Again,--and thirdly, If it be nevertheless pretended that my information
and knowledge of mankind, however extensive, and however painfully
acquired, by constant domestic enquiry, and by foreign travel, is,
natheless, incompetent to the task of recording the pleasant narratives
of my Landlord, I will let these critics know, to their own eternal shame
and confusion, as well as to the abashment and discomfiture of all who
shall rashly take up a song against me, that I am NOT the writer,
redacter, or compiler, of the "Tales of my Landlord;" nor am I, in one
single iota, answerable for their contents, more or less. And now, ye
generation of critics, who raise yourselves up as if it were brazen
serpents, to hiss with your tongues, and to smite with your stings, bow
yourselves down to your native dust, and acknowledge that yours have been
the thoughts of ignorance, and the words of vain foolishness. Lo! ye are
caught in your own snare, and your own pit hath yawned for you. Turn,
then, aside from the task that is too heavy for you; destroy not your
teeth by gnawing a file; waste not your strength by spurning against a
castle wall; nor spend your breath in contending in swiftness with a
fleet steed; and let those weigh the "Tales of my Landlord," who shall
bring with them the scales of candour cleansed from the rust of prejudice
by the hands of intelligent modesty. For these alone they were compiled,
as will appear from a brief narrative which my zeal for truth compelled
me to make supplementary to the present Proem.

It is well known that my Landlord was a pleasing and a facetious man,
acceptable unto all the parish of Gandercleugh, excepting only the Laird,
the Exciseman, and those for whom he refused to draw liquor upon trust.
Their causes of dislike I will touch separately, adding my own refutation
thereof.

His honour, the Laird, accused our Landlord, deceased, of having
encouraged, in various times and places, the destruction of hares,
rabbits, fowls black and grey, partridges, moor-pouts, roe-deer, and
other birds and quadrupeds, at unlawful seasons, and contrary to the laws
of this realm, which have secured, in their wisdom, the slaughter of such
animals for the great of the earth, whom I have remarked to take an
uncommon (though to me, an unintelligible) pleasure therein. Now, in
humble deference to his honour, and in justifiable defence of my friend
deceased, I reply to this charge, that howsoever the form of such animals
might appear to be similar to those so protected by the law, yet it was a
mere _deceptio visus_; for what resembled hares were, in fact, hill-kids,
and those partaking of the appearance of moor-fowl, were truly wood
pigeons, and consumed and eaten _eo nomine_, and not otherwise.
Again, the Exciseman pretended, that my deceased Landlord did encourage
that species of manufacture called distillation, without having an
especial permission from the Great, technically called a license, for
doing so. Now, I stand up to confront this falsehood; and in defiance of
him, his gauging-stick, and pen and inkhorn, I tell him, that I never
saw, or tasted, a glass of unlawful aqua vitae in the house of my
Landlord; nay, that, on the contrary, we needed not such devices, in
respect of a pleasing and somewhat seductive liquor, which was vended and
consumed at the Wallace Inn, under the name of mountain dew. If there is
a penalty against manufacturing such a liquor, let him show me the
statute; and when he does, I'll tell him if I will obey it or no.
Concerning those who came to my Landlord for liquor, and went thirsty
away, for lack of present coin, or future credit, I cannot but say it has
grieved my bowels as if the case had been mine own. Nevertheless, my
Landlord considered the necessities of a thirsty soul, and would permit
them, in extreme need, and when their soul was impoverished for lack of
moisture, to drink to the full value of their watches and wearing
apparel, exclusively of their inferior habiliments, which he was
uniformly inexorable in obliging them to retain, for the credit of the
house. As to mine own part, I may well say, that he never refused me that
modicum of refreshment with which I am wont to recruit nature after the
fatigues of my school. It is true, I taught his five sons English and
Latin, writing, book-keeping, with a tincture of mathematics, and that I
instructed his daughter in psalmody. Nor do I remember me of any fee or
honorarium received from him on account of these my labours, except the
compotations aforesaid. Nevertheless this compensation suited my humour
well, since it is a hard sentence to bid a dry throat wait till
quarter-day.

But, truly, were I to speak my simple conceit and belief, I think my
Landlord was chiefly moved to waive in my behalf the usual requisition of
a symbol, or reckoning, from the pleasure he was wont to take in my
conversation, which, though solid and edifying in the main, was, like a
well-built palace, decorated with facetious narratives and devices,
tending much to the enhancement and ornament thereof. And so pleased was
my Landlord of the Wallace in his replies during such colloquies, that
there was no district in Scotland, yea, and no peculiar, and, as it were,
distinctive custom therein practised, but was discussed betwixt us;
insomuch, that those who stood by were wont to say, it was worth a bottle
of ale to hear us communicate with each other. And not a few travellers,
from distant parts, as well as from the remote districts of our kingdom,
were wont to mingle in the conversation, and to tell news that had been
gathered in foreign lands, or preserved from oblivion in this our own.
Now I chanced to have contracted for teaching the lower classes with a
young person called Peter, or Patrick, Pattieson, who had been educated
for our Holy Kirk, yea, had, by the license of presbytery, his voice
opened therein as a preacher, who delighted in the collection of olden
tales and legends, and in garnishing them with the flowers of poesy,
whereof he was a vain and frivolous professor. For he followed not the
example of those strong poets whom I proposed to him as a pattern, but
formed versification of a flimsy and modern texture, to the compounding
whereof was necessary small pains and less thought. And hence I have chid
him as being one of those who bring forward the fatal revolution
prophesied by Mr. Robert Carey, in his Vaticination on the Death of the
celebrated Dr. John Donne:

          Now thou art gone, and thy strict laws will be
          Too hard for libertines in poetry;
          Till verse (by thee refined) in this last age
          Turn ballad rhyme.

I had also disputations with him touching his indulging rather a flowing
and redundant than a concise and stately diction in his prose
exercitations. But notwithstanding these symptoms of inferior taste, and
a humour of contradicting his betters upon passages of dubious
construction in Latin authors, I did grievously lament when Peter
Pattieson was removed from me by death, even as if he had been the
offspring of my own loins. And in respect his papers had been left in my
care, (to answer funeral and death-bed expenses,) I conceived myself
entitled to dispose of one parcel thereof, entitled, "Tales of my
Landlord," to one cunning in the trade (as it is called) of book
selling. He was a mirthful man, of small stature, cunning in
counterfeiting of voices, and in making facetious tales and responses,
and whom I have to laud for the truth of his dealings towards me.
Now, therefore, the world may see the injustice that charges me with
incapacity to write these narratives, seeing, that though I have proved
that I could have written them if I would, yet, not having done so, the
censure will deservedly fall, if at all due, upon the memory of Mr. Peter
Pattieson; whereas I must be justly entitled to the praise, when any is
due, seeing that, as the Dean of St. Patrick's wittily and logically
expresseth it,

               That without which a thing is not,
               Is Causa sine qua non.

The work, therefore, is unto me as a child is to a parent; in the which
child, if it proveth worthy, the parent hath honour and praise; but, if
otherwise, the disgrace will deservedly attach to itself alone.

I have only further to intimate, that Mr. Peter Pattieson, in arranging
these Tales for the press, hath more consulted his own fancy than the
accuracy of the narrative; nay, that he hath sometimes blended two or
three stories together for the mere grace of his plots. Of which
infidelity, although I disapprove and enter my testimony against it, yet
I have not taken upon me to correct the same, in respect it was the will
of the deceased, that his manuscript should be submitted to the press
without diminution or alteration. A fanciful nicety it was on the part of
my deceased friend, who, if thinking wisely, ought rather to have
conjured me, by all the tender ties of our friendship and common
pursuits, to have carefully revised, altered, and augmented, at my
judgment and discretion. But the will of the dead must be scrupulously
obeyed, even when we weep over their pertinacity and self-delusion. So,
gentle reader, I bid you farewell, recommending you to such fare as the
mountains of your own country produce; and I will only farther premise,
that each Tale is preceded by a short introduction, mentioning the
persons by whom, and the circumstances under which, the materials thereof
were collected.
                                   JEDEDIAH CLEISHBOTHAM.





INTRODUCTION TO OLD MORTALITY.

The remarkable person, called by the title of Old Mortality, was we'll
known in Scotland about the end of the last century. His real name was
Robert Paterson. He was a native, it is said, of the parish of Closeburn,
in Dumfries-shire, and probably a mason by profession--at least educated
to the use of the chisel. Whether family dissensions, or the deep and
enthusiastic feeling of supposed duty, drove him to leave his dwelling,
and adopt the singular mode of life in which he wandered, like a palmer,
through Scotland, is not known. It could not be poverty, however, which
prompted his journeys, for he never accepted anything beyond the
hospitality which was willingly rendered him, and when that was not
proffered, he always had money enough to provide for his own humble
wants. His personal appearance, and favourite, or rather sole occupation,
are accurately described in the preliminary chapter of the following
work.

It is about thirty years since, or more, that the author met this
singular person in the churchyard of Dunnottar, when spending a day or
two with the late learned and excellent clergyman, Mr. Walker, the
minister of that parish, for the purpose of a close examination of the
ruins of the Castle of Dunnottar, and other subjects of antiquarian
research in that neighbourhood. Old Mortality chanced to be at the same
place, on the usual business of his pilgrimage; for the Castle of
Dunnottar, though lying in the anti-covenanting district of the Mearns,
was, with the parish churchyard, celebrated for the oppressions sustained
there by the Cameronians in the time of James II.

It was in 1685, when Argyle was threatening a descent upon Scotland, and
Monmouth was preparing to invade the west of England, that the Privy
Council of Scotland, with cruel precaution, made a general arrest of more
than a hundred persons in the southern and western provinces, supposed,
from their religious principles, to be inimical to Government, together
with many women and children. These captives were driven northward like a
flock of bullocks, but with less precaution to provide for their wants,
and finally penned up in a subterranean dungeon in the Castle of
Dunnottar, having a window opening to the front of a precipice which
overhangs the German Ocean. They had suffered not a little on the
journey, and were much hurt both at the scoffs of the northern
prelatists, and the mocks, gibes, and contemptuous tunes played by the
fiddlers and pipers who had come from every quarter as they passed, to
triumph over the revilers of their calling. The repose which the
melancholy dungeon afforded them, was anything but undisturbed. The
guards made them pay for every indulgence, even that of water; and when
some of the prisoners resisted a demand so unreasonable, and insisted on
their right to have this necessary of life untaxed, their keepers emptied
the water on the prison floor, saying, "If they were obliged to bring
water for the canting whigs, they were not bound to afford them the use
of bowls or pitchers gratis."

In this prison, which is still termed the Whig's Vault, several died of
the diseases incidental to such a situation; and others broke their
limbs, and incurred fatal injury, in desperate attempts to escape from
their stern prison-house. Over the graves of these unhappy persons, their
friends, after the Revolution, erected a monument with a suitable
inscription.

This peculiar shrine of the Whig martyrs is very much honoured by their
descendants, though residing at a great distance from the land of their
captivity and death. My friend, the Rev. Mr. Walker, told me, that being
once upon a tour in the south of Scotland, probably about forty years
since, he had the bad luck to involve himself in the labyrinth of
passages and tracks which cross, in every direction, the extensive waste
called Lochar Moss, near Dumfries, out of which it is scarcely possible
for a stranger to extricate himself; and there was no small difficulty in
procuring a guide, since such people as he saw were engaged in digging
their peats--a work of paramount necessity, which will hardly brook
interruption. Mr. Walker could, therefore, only procure unintelligible
directions in the southern brogue, which differs widely from that of the
Mearns. He was beginning to think himself in a serious dilemma, when he
stated his case to a farmer of rather the better class, who was employed,
as the others, in digging his winter fuel. The old man at first made the
same excuse with those who had already declined acting as the traveller's
guide; but perceiving him in great perplexity, and paying the respect due
to his profession, "You are a clergyman, sir?" he said. Mr. Walker
assented. "And I observe from your speech, that you are from the
north?"--"You are right, my good friend," was the reply. "And may I ask
if you have ever heard of a place called Dunnottar?"--"I ought to know
something about it, my friend," said Mr. Walker, "since I have been
several years the minister of the parish."--"I am glad to hear it," said
the Dumfriesian, "for one of my near relations lies buried there, and
there is, I believe, a monument over his grave. I would give half of what
I am aught, to know if it is still in existence."--"He was one of those
who perished in the Whig's Vault at the castle?" said the minister; "for
there are few southlanders besides lying in our churchyard, and none, I
think, having monuments."--"Even sae--even sae," said the old Cameronian,
for such was the farmer. He then laid down his spade, cast on his coat,
and heartily offered to see the minister out of the moss, if he should
lose the rest of the _day's dargue_. Mr. Walker was able to requite him
amply, in his opinion, by reciting the epitaph, which he remembered by
heart. The old man was enchanted with finding the memory of his
grandfather or great-grandfather faithfully recorded amongst the names of
brother sufferers; and rejecting all other offers of recompense, only
requested, after he had guided Mr. Walker to a safe and dry road, that he
would let him have a written copy of the inscription.