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117-471: Bonnie Dundee is the title of a poem and a song written by Walter Scott in 1825 in honour of John Graham, 7th Laird of Claverhouse , who was created 1st Viscount Dundee in November 1688, then in 1689 led a Jacobite rising in which he died, becoming a Jacobite hero. The older tune Bonny Dundee adapted by Scott had already been used for several songs appearing under variations of that title and referring to

234-567: A PR event, with the King dressed in tartan and greeted by his people, many of them also in similar tartan ceremonial dress. This form of dress, proscribed after the Jacobite rising of 1745 , became one of the seminal, potent and ubiquitous symbols of Scottish identity. In 1825, a UK-wide banking crisis resulted in the collapse of the Ballantyne printing business, of which Scott was the only partner with

351-399: A minor key , and their melancholy and their subtle rhythms will surprise anyone familiar only with the setting now best known. This later setting, with its cheerful major key and cantering rhythm, suits both the spirit of Scott's lines and their metre, and makes an excellent cavalry march. Scott might well have approved: he intended the verses "to be sung a la militaire" and not as the song

468-544: A Distance , and that it was Dolby who first combined this tune with Scott's words. A score for piano or harp called The Band at a Distance , by Nicolas-Charles Bochsa , was published by Walker & Son c. 1830, but has no resemblance to Bonnie Dundee . In the Scottish Orpheus (1897), Adam Hamilton gives the song as "Composed by Dr E. F. Rimbault. Arranged by Edward Rimbault Dibdin" (p. 52). This attribution has not been confirmed. Edward Francis Rimbault (1816-1876)

585-442: A Gothic anomaly, and the work is complete long before I have attained the point I proposed." Yet the manuscripts rarely show major deletions or changes of direction, and Scott could clearly keep control of his narrative. That was important, for as soon as he had made fair progress with a novel he would start sending batches of manuscript to be copied (to preserve his anonymity), and the copies were sent to be set up in type. (As usual at

702-569: A declined aristocratic family, with Edgar Ravenswood and his fiancée as victims of the wife of an upstart lawyer in a time of political power-struggle before the Act of Union in 1707. In 1820, in a bold move, Scott shifted period and location for Ivanhoe (1820) to 12th-century England. This meant he was dependent on a limited range of sources, all of them printed: he had to bring together material from different centuries and invent an artificial form of speech based on Elizabethan and Jacobean drama. The result

819-583: A determined walker, he experienced greater freedom of movement on horseback. Scott began studying classics at the University of Edinburgh in November 1783, at the age of 12, a year or so younger than most fellow students. In March 1786, aged 14, he began an apprenticeship in his father's office to become a Writer to the Signet . At school and university Scott had become a friend of Adam Ferguson , whose father Professor Adam Ferguson hosted literary salons. Scott met

936-620: A financial interest. Its debts of £130,000 (equivalent to £13,500,000 in 2023) caused his very public ruin. Rather than declare himself bankrupt or accept any financial support from his many supporters and admirers (including the King himself), he placed his house and income in a trust belonging to his creditors and set out to write his way out of debt. To add to his burdens, his wife Charlotte died in 1826. Despite these events or because of them, Scott kept up his prodigious output. Between 1826 and 1832 he produced six novels, two short stories and two plays, eleven works or volumes of non-fiction, and

1053-498: A journal, along with several unfinished works. The non-fiction included the Life of Napoleon Buonaparte in 1827, two volumes of the History of Scotland in 1829 and 1830, and four instalments of the series entitled Tales of a Grandfather – Being Stories Taken From Scottish History , written one per year over the period 1828–1831, among several others. Finally, Scott had recently been inspired by

1170-605: A local inn during the circuit. In 1804, he ended his use of the Lasswade cottage and leased the substantial house of Ashestiel , 6 miles (9.7 km) from Selkirk, sited on the south bank of the River Tweed and incorporating an ancient tower house . At Scott's insistence the first edition of Minstrelsy was printed by his friend James Ballantyne at Kelso. In 1798 James had published Scott's version of Goethe 's Erlkönig in his newspaper The Kelso Mail , and in 1799 included it and

1287-411: A manuscript copy of Byron 's 1821 journal and was impressed by Byron's plan of writing a desultory, unsystematic record of his actions, thoughts and memories, which combined the maximum of interest for the reader with the minimum of effort for the writer. Inspired by these two models, he opened his own new diary on November 20, 1825 and wrote the first entry. Only two days later he noted doubts as to

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1404-738: A member of a cadet branch of the Clan Scott and a Writer to the Signet , and his wife Anne Rutherford, a sister of Daniel Rutherford and a descendant both of the Clan Swinton and of the Haliburton family (descent from which granted Walter's family the hereditary right of burial in Dryburgh Abbey ). Walter was, through the Haliburtons, a cousin of the London property developer James Burton (d. 1837), who

1521-492: A modest price of five shillings (60p) these were an innovative and profitable venture aimed at a wide readership: the print run was an astonishing 30,000. In a "General Preface" to the "Magnum Edition", Scott wrote that one factor prompting him to resume work on the Waverley manuscript in 1813 had been a desire to do for Scotland what had been done in the fiction of Maria Edgeworth , "whose Irish characters have gone so far to make

1638-617: A narrative poem in which I felt the sense of Progress so languid." But the metrical uniformity is relieved by frequent songs and the Perthshire Highland setting is presented as an enchanted landscape, which caused a phenomenal increase in the local tourist trade. Moreover, the poem touches on a theme that was to be central to the Waverley Novels: the clash between neighbouring societies in different stages of development. The remaining two long narrative poems, Rokeby (1813), set in

1755-562: A neighbouring ford used by the monks of Melrose Abbey . Following a modest enlargement of the original farmhouse in 1811–12, massive expansions took place in 1816–19 and 1822–24. Scott described the resulting building as 'a sort of romance in Architecture' and 'a kind of Conundrum Castle to be sure'. With his architects William Atkinson and Edward Blore Scott was a pioneer of the Scottish Baronial style of architecture, and Abbotsford

1872-504: A niece of Lady Margaret Ferguson. In 1799 Scott was appointed Sheriff-Depute of the County of Selkirk , based at the courthouse in the Royal Burgh of Selkirk . In his early married days Scott earned a decent living from his work as a lawyer, his salary as Sheriff-Depute, his wife's income, some revenue from his writing, and his share of his father's modest estate. After the younger Walter

1989-498: A novelist in 1814 did not mean he abandoned poetry. The Waverley Novels contain much original verse, including familiar songs such as "Proud Maisie" from The Heart of Mid-Lothian (Ch. 41) and "Look not thou on Beauty's charming" from The Bride of Lammermoor (Ch. 3). In most of the novels Scott preceded each chapter with an epigram or "motto"; most of these are in verse, and many are of his own composition, often imitating other writers such as Beaumont and Fletcher . Prompted by Scott,

2106-488: A poet and the tentative nature of Waverley ' s emergence, it is not surprising that he followed a common practice in the period and published it anonymously. He continued this until his financial ruin in 1826, the novels mostly appearing as "By the Author of Waverley " (or variants thereof) or as Tales of My Landlord . It is not clear why he chose to do this (no fewer than eleven reasons have been suggested), especially as it

2223-556: A raid on his Lowland host's cattle, it "seemed like a dream ... that these deeds of violence should be familiar to men's minds, and currently talked of, as falling with the common order of things, and happening daily in the immediate neighbourhood, without his having crossed the seas, and while he was yet in the otherwise well-ordered island of Great Britain." A more complex version of this comes in Scott's second novel, Guy Mannering (1815), which "set in 1781‒2, offers no simple opposition:

2340-501: A song in Scott's unperformed play The Doom of Devorgoil (1830). Later adaptations for singing include only stanzas 1, 2, 8 and 10, with the refrain. After Scott's death, many changes were made in the text in different republications. Some add extra Scotticisms , e.g. "To the lords" becomes "Tae the lairds". The authentic long text below comes from The Poetical Works of Sir Walter Scott , Bart. (12 vols., 1833-4), ed. J. G. Lockhart (vol. 12, pp. 903–4). There are several versions of

2457-408: A succession of poetasters had churned out conventional and obsequious odes on royal occasions." He sought advice from the 4th Duke of Buccleuch , who counselled him to retain his literary independence. The position went to Scott's friend, Robert Southey . Scott was influenced by Gothic romance , and had collaborated in 1801 with 'Monk' Lewis on Tales of Wonder . Scott's career as a novelist

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2574-408: A thousand copies were printed, but the work was an immediate success and 3,000 more were added in two further editions the same year. Waverley turned out to be the first of 27 novels (eight published in pairs), and by the time the sixth of them, Rob Roy , was published, the print run for the first edition had been increased to 10,000 copies, which became the norm. Given Scott's established status as

2691-458: Is a comic exaggeration, but Scott's ballad is certainly written from the point of view of Claverhouse, whom he had already celebrated in his novel Old Mortality (1816). It consists of eleven stanzas, which Scott admitted was "greatly too long" (Letters, vol. 9, p. 350), with a refrain copied from the traditional song Jockey's Escape from Dundee . The poem was first published in a miscellany , The Christmas Box (1828-9), and then included as

2808-433: Is a gift altogether beyond price." The biographer Hesketh Pearson thought it "Perhaps the most valuable, certainly the most moving, of all his productions; and, since it displays a man whose goodness of heart balanced his greatness of mind, incomparably the most interesting work of its kind ever written." The novelist Hugh Walpole called it "that masterpiece of human nature". For Virginia Woolf , "Scott's Journals are

2925-482: Is as much myth as history, but the novel remains his best-known work, the most likely to be found by the general reader. Eight of the subsequent 17 novels also have medieval settings, though most are set towards the end of the era, for which Scott had a better supply of contemporaneous sources. His familiarity with Elizabethan and 17th-century English literature, partly resulting from editorial work on pamphlets and other minor publications, meant that four of his works set in

3042-618: Is based in Dundee Scott's song was parodied by Lewis Carroll in Through the Looking-Glass and by Rudyard Kipling in The Jungle Book . William McGonagall praised the town of Dundee in 1878. A 1904 broadside ballad titled The Bailies of Bonnie Dundee parodied Scott's song to raise accusations of corruption by members of Dundee 's burgh council . From Chapter IX of Through

3159-527: Is far more than a work of art. Scott was not making himself out to be someone that he was not; rather, the Journal is his record of how he made himself conform to the heroic standards of his own fictions…Scott was intent on facing [his difficulties and sorrows] with the bravado of Burley and the stubbornness of Jeanie Deans . John Sutherland offered a dissenting view of the Journal ' s sincerity. He thought that Scott, foreseeing eventual publication, took

3276-487: Is festooned with turrets and stepped gabling. Through windows enriched with the insignia of heraldry the sun shone on suits of armour, trophies of the chase, a library of more than 9,000 volumes, fine furniture, and still finer pictures. Panelling of oak and cedar and carved ceilings relieved by coats of arms in their correct colours added to the beauty of the house. It is estimated that the building cost Scott more than £25,000 (equivalent to £2,600,000 in 2023). More land

3393-538: Is in The Beggars Opera . In this tune, too, variations occur in different publications. The origin of this immensely popular tune is uncertain. It makes use of the Lombard rhythm or "Scotch snap", and may owe something to Scottish folk-song . It seems first to have been used about 1850 and was associated with the contralto and composer Charlotte Dolby, later Sainton-Dolby (1821–85). The sheet music of Bonnie Dundee

3510-438: Is in the Journal , and it is the man Walter Scott." W. E. K. Anderson added the other side of the coin: "It is candid about Scott himself. It is neither informative nor candid about other people." The novelist and critic A. N. Wilson judged it to be a truthful record of an unusual kind: There is nothing in it which can be contradicted by other biographical evidence…Yet there is something extremely conscious about it. It

3627-509: Is my own, my native land! Whose heart hath ne'er within him burned, As home his footsteps he hath turned,   From wandering on a foreign strand!— If such there breathe, go, mark him well; For him no minstrel raptures swell. Three years after The Lay Scott published Marmion (1808) telling a story of corrupt passions leading up as a disastrous climax to the Battle of Flodden in 1513. The main innovation involves prefacing each of

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3744-465: Is prepar'd ). The transcriptions of the tune for different sets of words vary both in notes and in rhythmic phrasing. The version in The Beggar's Opera differs most widely, with most of the dotted rhythms smoothed out into a regular succession of crotchets . We cannot say whether Scott had any particular variation in mind; he professed to have a good ear for time but little or none for tune. All are in

3861-515: Is seated with his family represented as a group of country folk. Ferguson is standing to the right with the feather in his cap and Thomas Scott, Scott's Uncle, is behind. The painting was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1818. Abbotsford later gave its name to the Abbotsford Club , founded in 1834 in memory of Sir Walter Scott. The Journal of Sir Walter Scott The manuscript of

3978-458: The Battle of Dunkeld . Over a century later he was immortalised in a poem by Walter Scott which was later adapted into a song. Walter Scott 's novel Old Mortality , published in 1816, gives a sympathetic portrait of Claverhouse. The story mentions one of Claverhouse's troopers "humming the lively Scottish air, 'Between Saint Johnstone and Bonny Dundee, I'll gar ye be fain to follow me'." In this, "Saint Johnstone" refers to Perth , and "Bonny"

4095-501: The Battle of Melrose (1526). During the summers from 1804, Scott made his home at the large house of Ashestiel, on the south bank of the River Tweed, 6 miles (9.7 km) north of Selkirk. When his lease on this property expired in 1811, he bought Cartley Hole Farm, downstream on the Tweed nearer Melrose. The farm had the nickname of " Clarty Hole", and Scott renamed it "Abbotsford" after

4212-501: The County of Roxburgh , Scotland, on 22 April 1820; the title became extinct upon his son's death in 1847. Walter Scott was born on 15 August 1771, in a third-floor apartment on College Wynd in the Old Town , Edinburgh, a narrow alleyway leading from the Cowgate to the gates of the old University of Edinburgh . He was the ninth child (six having died in infancy) of Walter Scott (1729–1799),

4329-445: The Journal ' s candour has been taken up by many later critics. C. S. Lewis considered that it was "One of the sincerest books in the world, and (what is not exactly the same thing) full of self-knowledge." The novelist John Buchan wrote that "It is one of the most complete expressions of a human soul that we possess… There is no reticence and no posturing, because he is speaking to his own soul…The greatest figure he ever drew

4446-549: The Journal as the tragedy of his last years was about to begin. The literary historian Oliver Elton believed that the Journal ' s high place in English literature was secure: "Whatever else of Scott's may lose its colour with time, the Journal cannot do so, with its accurate, unexaggerated language of pain." Lockhart believed that Scott knew his Journal would eventually be published, but he nevertheless called it "The most candid Diary that ever man penned". The theme of

4563-511: The Journal , "a handsome lockd volume" as Scott called it, is of quarto size and bound in vellum. The handwriting displayed in it, especially after his final series of strokes, is so atrociously difficult that, according to the Journal ' s most recent editor , a perfectly accurate transcription is quite impossible. The title-page bears this inscription: A hard word so spelld on the Authority of Miss Scott now Mrs. Lockhart The manuscript

4680-651: The Journal , such as the death of his wife in 1826, and a series of strokes which increasingly undermined his physical and mental powers. In July 1828 he allowed the habit of keeping his journal to lapse for several months, but returned to the task from January 1829 to July 1829 and from May 1830 to May 1831. In October 1831 he again resumed the Journal , having been offered £1000 or £1500 by his publisher Robert Cadell for some record of his forthcoming voyage to Malta and Italy. He finally abandoned work on it in Naples in April 1832,

4797-679: The Union Army after Northern general George B. McClellan had gained information on Lee's location and plans. The Campaign would culminate in the battle of Antietam, or Sharpsburg as the Confederates called it. This would be the bloodiest day in American history and while the battle was indecisive, Lee was forced to abandon any hope of continuing the campaign. During the final phase of the Second Boer War , Afrikaner residents of Winburg taunted

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4914-731: The Yorkshire estate of that name belonging to Scott's friend J. B. S. Morritt during the Civil War period, and The Lord of the Isles (1815), set in early 14th-century Scotland and culminating in the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314. Both works had generally favourable receptions and sold well, but without rivalling the huge success of The Lady of the Lake . Scott also produced four minor narrative or semi-narrative poems between 1811 and 1817: The Vision of Don Roderick (1811, celebrating Wellington's successes in

5031-427: The 1679 Covenanters as fanatical and often ridiculous (prompting John Galt to produce a contrasting picture in his novel Ringan Gilhaize in 1823); The Heart of Mid-Lothian (1818) with its low-born heroine Jeanie Deans making a perilous journey to Richmond in 1737 to secure a promised royal pardon for her sister, falsely accused of infanticide; and the tragic The Bride of Lammermoor (1819), with its stern account of

5148-607: The 1790s for modern German literature. Recalling the period in 1827, Scott said that he "was German-mad." In 1796, he produced English versions of two poems by Gottfried August Bürger , Der wilde Jäger and Lenore , published as The Chase, and William and Helen . Scott responded to the German interest at the time in national identity, folk culture and medieval literature, which linked with his own developing passion for traditional balladry. A favourite book since childhood had been Thomas Percy 's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry . During

5265-457: The 1790s he would search in manuscript collections and on Border "raids" for ballads from oral performance. With help from John Leyden , he produced a two-volume Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border in 1802, containing 48 traditional ballads and two imitations apiece by Leyden and himself. Of the 48 traditionals, 26 were published for the first time. An enlarged edition appeared in three volumes

5382-495: The 1822 visit of King George IV to Scotland . In spite of having only three weeks to work with, Scott created a spectacular, comprehensive pageant, designed not only to impress the King, but in some way to heal the rifts that had destabilised Scots society. Probably fortified by his vivid depiction of the pageant staged for the reception of Queen Elizabeth in Kenilworth he and his "production team" mounted what in modern days would be

5499-465: The Canongate (1827). Crucial to Scott's historical thinking is the concept that very different societies can move through the same stages as they develop, and that humanity is basically unchanging, or as he puts it in the first chapter of Waverley that there are "passions common to men in all stages of society, and which have alike agitated the human heart, whether it throbbed under the steel corslet of

5616-485: The Canongate to Castle Dangerous ). In his last years Scott marked up interleaved copies of these collected editions to produce a final version of what were now officially the Waverley Novels , often called his 'Magnum Opus' or 'Magnum Edition'. Scott provided each novel with an introduction and notes and made mostly piecemeal adjustments to the text. Issued in 48 smart monthly volumes between June 1829 and May 1833 at

5733-672: The England of that period – Kenilworth (1821), The Fortunes of Nigel and Peveril of the Peak (1821), and Woodstock (1826) – present rich pictures of their societies. The most generally esteemed of Scott's later fictions, though, are three short stories: a supernatural narrative in Scots, "Wandering Willie's Tale" in Redgauntlet (1824), and "The Highland Widow" and "The Two Drovers" in Chronicles of

5850-513: The English familiar with the character of their gay and kind-hearted neighbours of Ireland, that she may be truly said to have done more towards completing the Union, than perhaps all the legislative enactments by which it has been followed up [the Act of Union of 1801]." Most of Scott's readers were English: with Quentin Durward (1823) and Woodstock (1826), for example, some 8000 of the 10,000 copies of

5967-532: The Last Minstrel (1805), in medieval romance form, grew out of Scott's plan to include a long original poem of his own in the second edition of the Minstrelsy : it was to be "a sort of Romance of Border Chivalry & inchantment". He owed the distinctive irregular accent in four-beat metre to Coleridge 's Christabel , which he had heard recited by John Stoddart . (It was not to be published until 1816.) Scott

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6084-803: The Literary Society in 1789 and was elected to the Speculative Society the following year, becoming librarian and secretary-treasurer a year after. After completing his law studies, Scott took up law in Edinburgh. He made his first visit as a lawyer's clerk to the Scottish Highlands, directing an eviction. He was admitted to the Faculty of Advocates in 1792. He had an unsuccessful love suit with Williamina Belsches of Fettercairn, who married Scott's friend Sir William Forbes, 7th Baronet . In February 1797,

6201-647: The Looking-Glass , 1871: William McGonagall returned to the idea of praising the town in Bonnie Dundee in 1878 . The opening lines quoted below exemplify McGonagall's inimitable style: In 1892 there was a protest in the Highlands of Scotland against the Free Church of Scotland 's Declaratory Act, which modified the denomination's adherence to the orthodoxy of the Westminster Confession of Faith and "abandoned

6318-753: The Past and the Ancient, the Desire & the admiration of Permanence, on the one hand; and the Passion for increase of Knowledge, for Truth as the offspring of Reason, in short, the mighty Instincts of Progression and Free-agency , on the other." This is clear, for example, in Waverley , as the hero is captivated by the romantic allure of the Jacobite cause embodied in Bonnie Prince Charlie and his followers before accepting that

6435-614: The Peninsular Campaign, with profits donated to Portuguese war sufferers); The Bridal of Triermain (published anonymously in 1813); The Field of Waterloo (1815); and Harold the Dauntless (published anonymously in 1817). Throughout his creative life Scott was an active reviewer. Although himself a Tory he reviewed for The Edinburgh Review between 1803 and 1806, but that journal's advocacy of peace with Napoleon led him to cancel his subscription in 1808. The following year, at

6552-597: The Prince Regent (the future George IV ) gave Scott and other officials permission in a Royal Warrant dated 28 October 1817 to conduct a search for the Crown Jewels (" Honours of Scotland "). During the Protectorate under Cromwell these had been hidden away, but had subsequently been used to crown Charles II . They were not used to crown subsequent monarchs, but were regularly taken to sittings of Parliament, to represent

6669-501: The Scotland represented in the novel is at once backward and advanced, traditional and modern – it is a country in varied stages of progression in which there are many social subsets, each with its own laws and customs." Scott's process of composition can be traced through the manuscripts (mostly preserved), the more fragmentary sets of proofs, his correspondence, and publisher's records. He did not create detailed plans for his stories, and

6786-618: The Scottish Borders: there he attended Kelso Grammar School , where he met James Ballantyne and his brother John , who later became his business partners and printers. As a result of his early polio infection, Scott had a pronounced limp. He was described in 1820 as "tall, well formed (except for one ankle and foot which made him walk lamely), neither fat nor thin, with forehead very high, nose short, upper lip long and face rather fleshy, complexion fresh and clear, eyes very blue, shrewd and penetrating, with hair now silvery white". Although

6903-545: The absent monarch, until the Act of Union 1707 . So the honours were stored in Edinburgh Castle, but their large locked box was not opened for more than 100 years, and stories circulated that they had been "lost" or removed. On 4 February 1818, Scott and a small military team opened the box and "unearthed" the honours from the Crown Room of Edinburgh Castle . On 19 August 1818 through Scott's effort, his friend Adam Ferguson

7020-458: The best life of Scott in existence...they contain Scott in his glory and Scott in his gloom...in a few passages Scott throws more light upon his genius and its limitations than all his critics in their innumerable volumes". The Scott scholar David Hewitt agreed, writing that "There is no greater or more moving diary in English"; however he also made the point that its fine artistic shape cannot be credited to Scott, since he quite fortuitously took up

7137-511: The blind poet Thomas Blacklock , who lent him books and introduced him to the Ossian cycle of poems by James Macpherson . During the winter of 1786–1787, a 15-year-old Scott met the Scots poet Robert Burns at one of these salons, their only meeting. When Burns noticed a print illustrating the poem "The Justice of the Peace" and asked who had written it, Scott alone named the author as John Langhorne and

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7254-609: The bonnie town of Dundee rather than to Claverhouse. Scott's song has been used as a regimental march by several Scottish regiments in the British Army , as well as the official Canter for the Royal Horse Artillery . Bonny Dundee is a very old Scottish folk-tune used for at least fifteen songs. A simpler version of the tune appears in the Skene manuscript around 1630 under the title Adew, Dundee . The title Bonny Dundee for

7371-517: The city and the surrounding countryside. His reading included chivalric romances, poems, history and travel books. He was given private tuition by James Mitchell in arithmetic and writing, and learned from him the history of the Church of Scotland with emphasis on the Covenanters . In 1783, his parents, believing he had outgrown his strength, sent him to stay for six months with his aunt Jenny at Kelso in

7488-402: The context of the last judgment with the introduction of a version of the " Dies irae " at the end. The work was an immediate success with almost all the reviewers and with readers in general, going through five editions in one year. The most celebrated lines are the ones that open the final stanza: Breathes there the man, with soul so dead, Who never to himself hath said,   This

7605-445: The debts by his own labours as a novelist rather than accept bankruptcy, and the Journal records his unceasing efforts to do this as he writes a series of novels and histories, including Woodstock , The Surgeon's Daughter , The Fair Maid of Perth , Anne of Geierstein , Count Robert of Paris , The Siege of Malta , Bizarro , The Life of Napoleon Buonaparte and Tales of a Grandfather . Other disasters are recorded in

7722-746: The debts encumbering his estate were discharged shortly after his death. Scott was raised as a Presbyterian in the Church of Scotland. He was ordained as an elder in Duddingston Kirk in 1806, and sat in the General Assembly for a time as representative elder of the burgh of Selkirk. In adult life he also adhered to the Scottish Episcopal Church : he seldom attended church but read the Book of Common Prayer services in family worship. Scott's father

7839-438: The defects noted in Marmion largely absent. In some ways it is more conventional than its predecessors: the narrative is entirely in iambic tetrameters and the story of the transparently disguised James V (King of Scots 1513‒42) predictable: Coleridge wrote to Wordsworth : 'The movement of the Poem... is between a sleeping Canter and a Marketwoman's trot – but it is endless – I seem never to have made any way – I never remember

7956-409: The depiction of an unfamiliar society, while having no difficulty in relating to the characters. Scott is fascinated by striking moments of transition between stages in societies. Samuel Taylor Coleridge , in a discussion of Scott's early novels, found that they derive their "long-sustained interest " from "the contest between the two great moving Principles of social Humanity – religious adherence to

8073-401: The diaries of Samuel Pepys and Lord Byron , and he began keeping a journal over the period, which, however, would not be published until 1890, as The Journal of Sir Walter Scott . By then Scott's health was failing, and on 29 October 1831, in a vain search for improvement, he set off on a voyage to Malta and Naples on board HMS Barham , a frigate put at his disposal by the Admiralty. He

8190-456: The epistles did not link up with the narrative, there was too much antiquarian pedantry, and Marmion's character was immoral. The most familiar lines in the poem sum up one of its main themes: "O what a tangled web we weave,/ When first we practice to deceive" Scott's meteoric poetic career peaked with his third long narrative, The Lady of the Lake (1810), which sold 20,000 copies in the first year. The reviewers were fairly favourable, finding

8307-421: The fifteenth century, the brocaded coat of the eighteenth, or the blue frock and white dimity waistcoat of the present day." It was one of Scott's main achievements to give lively, detailed pictures of different stages of Scottish, British, and European society while making it clear that for all the differences in form, they took the same human passions as those of his own age. His readers could therefore appreciate

8424-403: The financial stability of the publisher Archibald Constable & Co., which concerned him greatly since he had a large stake in the firm. His worst fears were realized the following year when Constable failed, bringing James Ballantyne & Co., in which Scott was a partner, down with him. Scott found himself personally liable for debts totalling more than £125,000. He resolved to pay off

8541-515: The first edition went to London. In the Scottish novels the lower-class characters normally speak Scots, but Scott is careful not to make the Scots too dense, so that those unfamiliar with it can follow the gist without understanding every word. Some have also argued that although Scott was formally a supporter of the Union with England (and Ireland) his novels have a strong nationalist subtext for readers attuned to that wavelength. Scott's new career as

8658-414: The first had been completed. Constable's faith was justified by the sales: the three editions published in 1808 sold 8,000 copies. The verse of Marmion is less striking than that of The Lay , with the epistles in iambic tetrameters and the narrative in tetrameters with frequent trimeters. The reception by the reviewers was less favourable than that accorded The Lay : style and plot were both found faulty,

8775-448: The following year. With many of the ballads, Scott fused different versions into more coherent texts, a practice he later repudiated. The Minstrelsy was the first and most important of a series of editorial projects over the next two decades, including the medieval romance Sir Tristrem (which Scott attributed to Thomas the Rhymer ) in 1804, the works of John Dryden (18 vols, 1808), and

8892-510: The great men who have loved dogs no one ever loved them better or understood them more thoroughly". The best known of Scott's dogs were Maida , a large stag hound reported to be his favourite dog, and Spice, a Dandie Dinmont terrier described as having asthma , to which Scott gave particular care. In a diary entry written at the height of his financial woes, Scott described dismay at the prospect of having to sell them: "The thoughts of parting from these dumb creatures have moved me more than any of

9009-484: The height of his poetic career, he was instrumental in establishing a Tory rival, The Quarterly Review to which he contributed reviews for the rest of his life. In 1813 Scott was offered the position of Poet Laureate . He declined, feeling that "such an appointment would be a poisoned chalice," as the Laureateship had fallen into disrepute due to the decline in quality of work suffered by previous title holders, "as

9126-404: The last entry ending in the middle of a sentence. From the time of the Journal ' s first publication extraordinary claims have been made for it. In 1891 Algernon Swinburne wrote that "The too long delayed publication of his Journal is in every way an almost priceless benefit; but as a final illustration and attestation of a character almost incomparably lovable, admirable, and noble, it

9243-428: The local British garrison with a parody of Bonnie Dundee , which was typically sung in English. The parody celebrated the guerrilla warfare of Boer commando Christiaan De Wet . Walter Scott Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet FRSE FSAScot (15 August 1771 – 21 September 1832), was a Scottish novelist, poet and historian. Many of his works remain classics of European and Scottish literature , notably

9360-543: The nave of Carlisle Cathedral ). After renting a house in Edinburgh's George Street , they moved to nearby South Castle Street. Their eldest child, Sophia, was born in 1799, and later married John Gibson Lockhart . Four of their five children survived Scott himself. His eldest son Sir Walter Scott, 2nd Baronet (1801–1847), inherited his father's estates and possessions: on 3 February 1825 he married Jane Jobson, only daughter of William Jobson of Lochore (died 1822) by his wife Rachel Stuart (died 1863), heiress of Lochore and

9477-495: The novels Ivanhoe (1819), Rob Roy (1817), Waverley (1814), Old Mortality (1816), The Heart of Mid-Lothian (1818), and The Bride of Lammermoor (1819), along with the narrative poems Marmion (1808) and The Lady of the Lake (1810). He had a major impact on European and American literature. As an advocate and legal administrator by profession, he combined writing and editing with his daily work as Clerk of Session and Sheriff-Depute of Selkirkshire . He

9594-517: The parody Jockey's Escape from Dundee; and the Parsons Daughter whom he had Mowd , and its chorus featured variations on "Come open the Gates, and let me go free, And shew me the way to bonny Dundee". Robert Burns rewrote the second verse of the original, so that the latter lines were "May Heaven protect my Bonnie Scots laddie, and send him safe hame to his baby and me." He added a concluding verse with

9711-486: The promise to the baby to "bigg a bower on yon bonnie banks, where Tay rins dimpling by sae clear", alluding to the River Tay . Another version of the original, titled Scots Callan O' Bonnie Dundee , refers to a callant (lad) rather than a soldier, and a "bonnie blue bonnet" instead of a bannock . The tune is used for unrelated words in a broadside ballad published in 1701 under the title Bonny Dundee , suggesting that it

9828-409: The reflections I have put down". Between 1805 and 1817 Scott produced five long, six-canto narrative poems, four shorter independently published poems, and many small metrical pieces. Scott was by far the most popular poet of the time until Lord Byron published the first two cantos of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage in 1812 and followed them up with his exotic oriental verse narratives. The Lay of

9945-464: The remarks by the figure of "the Author" in the Introductory Epistle to The Fortunes of Nigel probably reflect his own experience: "I think there is a dæmon who seats himself on the feather of my pen when I begin to write, and leads it astray from the purpose. Characters expand under my hand; incidents are multiplied; the story lingers, while the materials increase – my regular mansion turns out

10062-451: The ruin of Smailholm Tower , the earlier family home. Here, he was taught to read by his aunt Jenny Scott and learned from her the speech patterns and many of the tales and legends that later marked much of his work. In January 1775, he returned to Edinburgh, and that summer with his aunt Jenny took spa treatment at Bath in Somerset, southern England, where they lived at 6 South Parade . In

10179-421: The six cantos with an epistle from the author to a friend: William Stewart Rose , The Rev. John Marriot , William Erskine , James Skene , George Ellis , and Richard Heber : the epistles develop themes of moral positives and special delights imparted by art. In an unprecedented move, the publisher Archibald Constable purchased the copyright of the poem for a thousand guineas at the beginning of 1807, when only

10296-463: The song and a common one is given here. To help Jane identify the tune, Scott gave a few lines from each of three songs for which it had been used. His first quotation is from Jockey's Escape from Dundee ; the second is from Scots Callan o' Bonnie Dundee (though a version of these lines also appears in Jockey's Escape ); and the third is from John Gay , The Beggar's Opera (1728; Air LVII, The Charge

10413-575: The story "Her Majesty's Servants", in The Jungle Book published in 1894: During the American Civil War traditional English, Irish, and Scottish songs were often sung or modified. The Confederates did this very often. The song Riding a Raid takes place during the 1862 Antietam Campaign . J.E.B. Stuart 's Confederate cavalry set off on a screening movement on the flank of Robert E. Lee 's army in order to give Lee time to prepare his army to meet

10530-498: The threat of a French invasion persuaded Scott and many of his friends to join the Royal Edinburgh Volunteer Light Dragoons , where he served into the early 1800s, and was appointed quartermaster and secretary. The daily drill practices that year, starting at 5 a.m., indicate the determination with which the role was undertaken. Scott was prompted to take up a literary career by enthusiasm in Edinburgh in

10647-516: The time for such enthusiasms has passed and accepting the more rational, humdrum reality of Hanoverian Britain. Another example appears in 15th-century Europe in the yielding of the old chivalric world view of Charles, Duke of Burgundy to the Machiavellian pragmatism of Louis XI . Scott is intrigued by the way different stages of societal development can exist side by side in one country. When Waverley has his first experience of Highland ways after

10764-568: The time, the compositors would supply the punctuation.) He received proofs, also in batches, and made many changes at that stage, but these were almost always local corrections and enhancements. As the number of novels grew, they were republished in small collections: Novels and Tales (1819: Waverley to A Tale of Montrose ); Historical Romances (1822: Ivanhoe to Kenilworth ); Novels and Romances (1824 [1823]: The Pirate to Quentin Durward ); and two series of Tales and Romances (1827: St Ronan's Well to Woodstock ; 1833: Chronicles of

10881-565: The tune appears in an appendix to John Playford 's 1688 edition of The Dancing Master , an English publication. The tune has been used for the following popular song: "Saint Johnstone" refers to Perth , and "Bonny Dundee" is the town of Dundee . This song was parodied in English publications of the early 18th century with coarser wording, under the title Jockey's Deliverance, or the Valiant Escape from Dundee , to be sung "to an Excellent Tune, called Bonny Dundee ." A 1719 collection titled

10998-507: The two Bürger translations in a privately printed anthology, Apology for Tales of Terror . In 1800 Scott suggested that Ballantyne set up business in Edinburgh and provided a loan for him to make the transition in 1802. In 1805, they became partners in the printing business, and from then until the financial crash of 1826 Scott's works were routinely printed by the firm. Scott was known for his fondness of dogs , and owned several throughout his life. Upon his death, one newspaper noted "of all

11115-551: The whole system of thought for which it stood." Initially the protest was led by Rev. Murdoch Macaskill of Dingwall, though he did not in the end separate with the two ministers from Syke who created the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland in 1893. The poem 'Orthodoxee' was published in the 'Grantown Supplement' weekly newspaper, Grantown-on-Spey , on 25 June 1892. From "Parade Song of the Camp Animals", which follows

11232-612: The winter of 1776, he went back to Sandyknowe, with another attempt at a water cure at Prestonpans the following summer. In 1778, Scott returned to Edinburgh for private education to prepare him for school and joined his family in their new house, one of the first to be built in George Square . In October 1779, he began at the Royal High School in Edinburgh (in High School Yards). He was by then well able to walk and explore

11349-624: The works of Jonathan Swift (19 vols, 1814). On a trip to the English Lake District with old college friends, he met Charlotte Charpentier (Anglicised to "Carpenter"), a daughter of Jean Charpentier of Lyon in France and a ward of Lord Downshire in Cumberland , an Anglican. After three weeks' courtship, Scott proposed and they were married on Christmas Eve 1797 in St Mary's Church, Carlisle (now

11466-405: Was a Freemason, being a member of Lodge St David, No. 36 (Edinburgh), and Scott also became a Freemason in his father's Lodge in 1801, albeit only after the death of his father. When Scott was a boy, he sometimes travelled with his father from Selkirk to Melrose, where some of his novels are set. At a certain spot, the old gentleman would stop the carriage and take his son to a stone on the site of

11583-711: Was a fairly open secret, but as he himself said, with Shylock , "such was my humour." Scott was an almost exclusively historical novelist. Only one of his 27 novels – Saint Ronan's Well – has a wholly modern setting. The settings of the others range from 1794 in The Antiquary back to 1096 or 1097, the time of the First Crusade , in Count Robert of Paris . Sixteen take place in Scotland. The first nine, from Waverley (1814) to A Legend of Montrose (1819), all have Scottish locations and 17th- or 18th-century settings. Scott

11700-442: Was a prolific writer of and about music, but his songs are not listed separately in any bibliography. His name sometimes appears as having "arranged" Bonnie Dundee . The song is the authorized regimental march for the following Canadian regiments : It is used by several British cavalry regiments and the Royal Horse Artillery , in addition to being the regimental march for Tayforth Universities Officers Training Corps which

11817-405: Was able to draw on his unrivalled familiarity with Border history and legend acquired from oral and written sources beginning in his childhood to present an energetic and highly coloured picture of 16th-century Scotland, which both captivated the general public and with its voluminous notes also addressed itself to the antiquarian student. The poem has a strong moral theme, as human pride is placed in

11934-453: Was appointed Deputy Keeper of the " Scottish Regalia ". The Scottish patronage system swung into action and after elaborate negotiations the Prince Regent granted Scott the title of baronet : in April 1820 he received the baronetcy in London, becoming Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet. After George's accession, the city council of Edinburgh invited Scott, at the sovereign's behest, to stage-manage

12051-401: Was attended with uncertainty. The first few chapters of Waverley were complete by roughly 1805, but the project was abandoned as a result of unfavourable criticism from a friend. Soon after, Scott was asked by the publisher John Murray to posthumously edit and complete the last chapter of an unfinished romance by Joseph Strutt . Published in 1808 and set in 15th-century England, Queenhoo Hall

12168-517: Was better versed in his material than anyone: he could draw on oral tradition and a wide range of written sources in his ever-expanding library (many of the books rare and some unique copies). In general it is these pre-1820 novels that have drawn the attention of modern critics – especially: Waverley , with its presentation of the 1745 Jacobites drawn from the Highland clans as obsolete and fanatical idealists; Old Mortality (1816) with its treatment of

12285-526: Was born in 1801, the Scotts moved to a spacious three-storey house at 39 North Castle Street, which remained his Edinburgh base until 1826, when it was sold by the trustees appointed after his financial ruin. From 1798, Scott had spent summers in a cottage at Lasswade , where he entertained guests, including literary figures. It was there his career as an author began. There were nominal residency requirements for his position of Sheriff-Depute, and at first he stayed at

12402-540: Was born with the surname 'Haliburton', and of the same's son the architect Decimus Burton . Walter became a member of the Clarence Club , of which the Burtons were members. A childhood bout of polio in 1773 left Scott lame, a condition that would greatly affect his life and writing. To improve his lameness he was sent in 1773 to live in the rural Scottish Borders , at his paternal grandparents' farm at Sandyknowe, by

12519-538: Was called the Glorious Revolution , Claverhouse was one of the few Scottish nobles who remained loyal to James. After trying to influence the Convention of Estates of Scotland on James's behalf, at some danger to himself, he led his cavalry out of Edinburgh to carry on the struggle in the field and was killed at the moment of victory in the battle of Killiecrankie (1689). His forces were subsequently defeated at

12636-570: Was kept at Abbotsford after Scott's death, but was bought by the financier J. P. Morgan around 1900, and is now in the Morgan Library in New York . In July 1825 Scott acquired a copy of the Diary of Samuel Pepys , which had just been published for the first time, and according to his son-in-law J. G. Lockhart , "I never observed him more delighted with any book whatsoever". Later that year he read

12753-463: Was landed in England, Scott was transported back to die at Abbotsford on 21 September 1832. He was 61. Scott was buried in Dryburgh Abbey , where his wife had earlier been interred. Lady Scott had been buried as an Episcopalian; at Scott's own funeral, three ministers of the Church of Scotland officiated at Abbotsford and the service at Dryburgh was conducted by an Episcopal clergyman. Although Scott died owing money, his novels continued to sell, and

12870-437: Was not a success due to its archaic language and excessive display of antiquarian information. The success of Scott's Highland narrative poem The Lady of the Lake in 1810 seems to have put it into his head to resume the narrative and have his hero Edward Waverley journey to Scotland. Although Waverley was announced for publication at that stage, it was again laid by and not resumed until late 1813, then published in 1814. Only

12987-583: Was prominent in Edinburgh's Tory establishment , active in the Highland Society , long time a president of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (1820–1832), and a vice president of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland (1827–1829). His knowledge of history and literary facility equipped him to establish the historical novel genre as an exemplar of European Romanticism . He became a baronet of Abbotsford in

13104-412: Was published by Boosey & Sons as "sung by Miss Dolby" and (after 1860) "sung by Madame Sainton-Dolby", but Boosey credits her only with performing the song and arranging the accompaniment; no composer is named, and Boosey lists the piece as a Scotch Air . However, Bonnie Dundee has been included among Dolby's works. It has been suggested that the melody comes from a piano piece called The Band at

13221-440: Was purchased until Scott owned nearly 1,000 acres (4.0 km ). In 1817 as part of the land purchases Scott bought the nearby mansion-house of Toftfield for his friend Adam Ferguson to live in along with his brothers and sisters and on which, at the ladies' request, he bestowed the name of Huntlyburn. Ferguson commissioned Sir David Wilkie to paint the Scott family resulting in the painting The Abbotsford Family in which Scott

13338-600: Was thanked by Burns. Scott describes the event in his memoirs, where he whispers the answer to his friend Adam , who tells Burns; another version of the event appears in Literary Beginnings . When it was decided that he would become a lawyer, he returned to the university to study law, first taking classes in moral philosophy (under Dugald Stewart ) and universal history (under Alexander Fraser Tytler ) in 1789–1790. During this second university spell Scott became prominent in student intellectual activities: he co-founded

13455-622: Was the common description of the town of Dundee before Scott transferred the description to Claverhouse. On 22 December 1825 Scott wrote in his journal : The air of ‘Bonnie Dundee’ running in my head today I [wrote] a few verses to it before dinner, taking the key-note from the story of Claverse leaving the Scottish Convention of Estates in 1688-9. Scott sent a copy of the verses to his daughter-in-law Jane, mentioning that his great-grandfather had been among Claverhouse's followers and describing himself as "a most incorrigible Jacobite". This

13572-507: Was to be sung to this melody, and in John Gay 's The Beggar's Opera published in 1765. From 1668 John Graham, the laird of Claverhouse was at the forefront of Royalist repression of the Covenanters , for which he was called "Bluidy Clavers" (Bloody Claverhouse) by his covenanting opponents. In 1688 he was made 1st Viscount of Dundee by James VII of Scotland (James II of England) . When William of Orange overturned James in 1688 in what

13689-423: Was welcomed and celebrated wherever he went. On his journey home he boarded the steamboat Prins Frederik going from Cologne to Rotterdam. While on board he had a final stroke near Emmerich . After local treatment, a steamboat took him to the steamship Batavier , which left for England on 12 June. By pure coincidence, Mary Martha Sherwood was also on board. She would later write about this encounter. After he

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