Sunday Poetry - Sir Walter Scott

I raced through Ann Cleeves' latest Shetland novel, Cold Earth, this week & loved it. As usual, I had no idea of the solution but I hardly ever do work out the murderer before the detective decides to tell me. There's a great article on Cleeves here.
This beautiful photo of the Bay of Ollaberry was taken by Stuart Wilding & is from here. This week's poem is more Highland than Shetland but it is Sir Walter Scott & I couldn't resist the melancholy of Mackrimmon's Lament. Cha till sin tuille means We shall return no more.
It's been ages since I read any Scott, I should do something about that - any recommendations? I have a few on the tbr shelves - Rob Roy, Kenilworth & The Antiquary as well as his Journal plus the Complete Works on my Kindle so plenty to choose from!


MacLeod's wizard flag from the grey castle sallies,
The rowers are seated, unmoor'd are the galleys;
Gleam war-axe and broadsword, clang target and quiver,
As Mackrimmon sings, 'Farewell to Dunvegan for ever!
Farewell to each cliff, on which breakers are foaming;
Farewell, each dark glen, in which red-deer are roaming;
MacLeod may return, but Mackrimmon shall never!

'Farewell the bright clouds that on Quillan are sleeping;
Farewell the bright eyes in the Dun that are weeping;
To each minstrel delusion, farewell! - and for ever -
Mackrimmon departs, to return to you never!
The Banshee's wild voice sings the death-dirge before me,
The pall of the dead for a mantle hangs o'er me;
But my heart shall not flag, and my nerves shall not shiver,
Though devoted I go - to return again never!

'Too oft shall the notes of Mackrimmon's bewailing
Be heard when the Gael on their exile are sailing;
Dear land! to the shores whence unwilling we sever,
Return - return - return shall we never!
Cha till, cha till, cha till sin tuille!
Cha till, cha till, cha till sin tuille,
Cha till, cha till, cha till sin tuille,
Gea thillis MacLeod, cha till Mackrimmon!'

Rambling towards Christmas

I seem to be jumping from one book to the next at the moment, led by serendipity to a story here, a dip into an old favourite there, but not actually finishing very much. This seems to happen to me more and more these days. I could blame age or the internet for my short attention span but really, I just wish I wasn't interested in so many different subjects, genres & authors. I'm halfway through The English Festivals by Laurence Whistler (brother of Rex, who I wrote about here) just reprinted by Dean Street Press. This is a lovely book about the traditions & customs of the festivals of the English year from Christmas to Candlemas, Plough Sunday & Easter, which is where I'm up to at the moment. I'm just about to start The Octopus by Frank Norris with my 19th century bookgroup which I'll be reading in weekly instalments for about 6 weeks. It's the story of a dispute between wheat farmers & the railroad in California in 1880. I haven't read any Norris so I'm looking forward to that.

I'm listening to Antonia Fraser's childhood memoir, My History, on audio, read by Penelope Wilton. It's wonderful. If you would like a taste of it, the lovely blog, Books as Food, has had some excerpts here. It's not only about Fraser's childhood, her own history, but about how she came to love history as a subject. It's sent me off on some reading & browsing trails as well as wanting to reread some of Antonia Fraser's biographies. She mentions Our Island Story by H E Marshall, which was recently reprinted & which is on the tbr shelves. Reading the chapter about the Princes in the Tower made me wonder if this was the school book that the Amazon loaned to Alan Grant in The Daughter of Time (do I have time to read it again?).

Part of her schooldays were spent at a convent school founded by Mary Ward, a seventeenth century nun who believed passionately in education for girls. Fraser wrote about Mary Ward in her book on seventeenth century women, The Weaker Vessel, which I haven't read since it was published 30 years ago. I picked it up to read about Mary Ward but I'm much more interested in the seventeenth century than I was back then so I'd love to read the whole book again.

The nuns & the convent school also provided the setting for Fraser's first detective novel, Quiet as a Nun, published in 1977. Open Library had the same edition that I read all those years ago so I'm reading it for at least the third or fourth time. I loved the Jemima Shore books & this first one, about the mysterious death of a nun in the tower called Blessed Eleanor's Retreat in the convent grounds, was the best.

Then, I received an email about a conference on the work of Mary Elizabeth Braddon. Among the sessions was a reading group discussion of one of her stories, The Mystery at Fernwood. Braddon is one of my favourite sensation novelists & I had this story in the Delphi collection on my eReader so I dropped everything to read it. Braddon is an early member of the Had I But Known school of mystery writing.
  
If I had but gone with her! It is so difficult to reconcile oneself to the irrevocable decrees of Providence, it is so difficult to bow the head in meek submission to the awful fiat; so difficult not to look back to the careless hours which preceded the falling of the blow, and calculate how it might have been averted.

Isabel is intrigued by the air of mystery at the home of her fiance, Laurence Wendale. There are forebodings of misery & secrets & a mysterious invalid who lives in a separate wing of the house & is never seen. The secret wasn't so very mysterious but Braddon's writing is so atmospheric. She uses the weather so well to suggest a sinister atmosphere & heightened emotion. I loved it. However, Laurence's sister, Lucy, mentions Sir Walter Scott's Demonology & I'd never heard of it so needed to find out what it was. Then, I checked my Delphi edition of Scott, & there it was, so that's another book I want to read.

Christmas is coming so I'm starting to think about some suitable reading, listening & watching for the next few weeks. I've started reading one story each day from Silent Nights, the Christmas mystery anthology edited by Martin Edwards for the British Library Crime Classics series. The first story is an old favourite, The Sherlock Holmes story, The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle, but most of the stories are completely new to me.

I'm also reading poetry. Last year, someone mentioned Janet Morley's anthology, Haphazard by Starlight, a poem a day from Advent to Epiphany. I was too late to get hold of it then but I did buy it & also the Lent anthology, The Heart's Time, which I enjoyed reading. The poems aren't all religious, or not overtly religious, but I'm enjoying concentrating on one poem a day. I've started listening to Christmas carols & I watched Miracle on 34th Street again last weekend. It begins at Thanksgiving so I always seem to watch it at this time of year. The original version only, please. I'm sure I'm not the only one who cries when Kris sings with the little Dutch girl, no matter how many times I see it. I just love 1940s movies, especially set in New York. You'd never have a movie these days where the romantic leads were called Fred & Doris, would you? Such lovely, old-fashioned names. Maureen O'Hara, the last of the main cast members, died recently. She was such a beautiful actress, I remember her in How Green Was My Valley as well.

I'll be listening to Miriam Margolyes reading Dickens's A Christmas Carol, & I've borrowed a couple of Christmas mysteries from work, new reprints of 1930s titles - Crime at Christmas by C H B Kitchin & Murder for Christmas by Francis Duncan. Not the most imaginative titles but they have lovely retro covers (I tried to load a photo but it came out upside down) & the more reprints the better!

I have finished reading a book, Rogue Herries by Hugh Walpole, which I'll be reviewing soon. My non-book buying has been going well (I obviously don't need to buy books when I have so many on my shelves & eReader to dip into) although I do have a little confession to make but that can wait a couple of days. This post is long enough already.

Sunday Poetry - Sir Walter Scott

I've had a lovely time browsing through the first section, Romantic Hallmarks, of my anthology The New Penguin Book of Romantic Verse. Lochinvar by Sir Walter Scott is one of my favourite poems.

I first read it as a child in this anthology by Louis Untermeyer. This edition is dated 1968 although I was probably a little older when I really began to enjoy it. Looking through it again I was reminded how many of my favourite poems were first read in this book.

The lovely illustrations by Joan Walsh Anglund have also become part of my memory of the poems. I've also been listening to a BBC audiobook called Great Love Poems over the last week & Lochinvar was beautifully read by Bill Paterson so finding it in my anthology was obviously meant to be. Lochinvar is part of the much longer narrative poem, Marmion. It is Marmion that St John Rivers gives to Jane Eyre on that wintry November night when he tears an absentminded scribble from the corner of one of Jane's drawings & discovers her secret.

O young Lochinvar is come out of the west,
Through all the wide Border his steed was the best;
And save his good broadsword he weapons had none,
He rode all unarm’d, and he rode all alone.
So faithful in love, and so dauntless in war,
There never was knight like the young Lochinvar.

He staid not for brake, and he stopp’d not for stone,
He swam the Eske river where ford there was none;
But ere he alighted at Netherby gate,
The bride had consented, the gallant came late:
For a laggard in love, and a dastard in war,
Was to wed the fair Ellen of brave Lochinvar.

So boldly he enter’d the Netherby Hall,
Among bride’s-men, and kinsmen, and brothers and all:
Then spoke the bride’s father, his hand on his sword,
(For the poor craven bridegroom said never a word,)
“O come ye in peace here, or come ye in war,
Or to dance at our bridal, young Lord Lochinvar?”

“I long woo’d your daughter, my suit you denied;—
Love swells like the Solway, but ebbs like its tide—
And now I am come, with this lost love of mine,
To lead but one measure, drink one cup of wine.
There are maidens in Scotland more lovely by far,
That would gladly be bride to the young Lochinvar.”

The bride kiss’d the goblet: the knight took it up,
He quaff’d off the wine, and he threw down the cup.
She look’d down to blush, and she look’d up to sigh,
With a smile on her lips and a tear in her eye.
He took her soft hand, ere her mother could bar,—
“Now tread we a measure!” said young Lochinvar.

So stately his form, and so lovely her face,
That never a hall such a galliard did grace;
While her mother did fret, and her father did fume,
And the bridegroom stood dangling his bonnet and plume;
And the bride-maidens whisper’d, “’twere better by far
To have match’d our fair cousin with young Lochinvar.”

One touch to her hand, and one word in her ear,
When they reach’d the hall-door, and the charger stood near;
So light to the croupe the fair lady he swung,
So light to the saddle before her he sprung!
“She is won! we are gone, over bank, bush, and scaur;
They’ll have fleet steeds that follow,” quoth young Lochinvar.

There was mounting ’mong Graemes of the Netherby clan;
Forsters, Fenwicks, and Musgraves, they rode and they ran:
There was racing and chasing on Cannobie Lee,
But the lost bride of Netherby ne’er did they see.
So daring in love, and so dauntless in war,
Have ye e’er heard of gallant like young Lochinvar?

Sunday poetry - Unromantics

I've been reading quite a bit of Sir Walter Scott (picture from here) lately. I've recently read a couple of his short stories & a novella, The Highland Widow. Then, I've just finished reading The Talisman with my 19th century bookgroup. The Talisman is one of Scott's medieval tales, set mostly at the camp of the crusaders led by Richard the Lionheart. It's a story full of disguises (there's even a disguised dog), dastardly plots & a romance between a poor Scottish knight, Sir Kenneth, & the Lady Edith, a relative of King Richard's that seems doomed because of their difference in rank.

Today's poem from my anthology of Scottish love poetry is from a section called Unromantics & an unromantic lot they are. This poem, Nora's Vow, shows what can happen when a woman makes extravagant claims about what she will & won't do. I think she protests too much! I wonder what she was holding out for?

Hear what Highland Nora said,-
'The Earlie's son I will not wed,
Should all the race of nature die,
And none be left but he and I.
For all the gold, for all the gear,
And all the lands both far and near
That ever valour lost or won,
I would not wed the Earlie's son.'

'A Maiden's vows,' old Callum spoke,
'Are lightly made and lightly broke;
The heather on the mountain's height
Begins to bloom in purple light;
The frost-wind soon shall sweep away
That lustre deep from glen and brae;
Yet Nora, ere its bloom be gone,
May blithely wed the Earlie's son.'

'The swan,' she said, 'the lake's clear breast
May barter for the eagle's nest;
The Awe's fierce stream may backward turn,
Ben-Cruaichan fall, and crush Kilchurn;
Our kilted clans, when blood is high,
Before their foes may turn and fly;
But I, were all these marvels done,
Would never wed the the Earlie's son.'

Still in the water-lily's shade
Her wonted nest the wild-swan made;
Ben-Cruaichan stands as fast as ever,
Still downward foams the Awe's fierce river;
To shun the clash of foeman's steel
No Highland brogue has turn'd the heel;
But Nora's heart is lost and won,
-She's wedded to the Earlie's son!

The Highland Widow - Sir Walter Scott

After reading the essay on Sir Walter Scott in The Best of Books & Co, I was inspired to have a look at what I had of Sir Walter's on the tbr shelves. My 19th century bookgroup is about to start reading Scott's The Talisman next week, so I didn't want a full-length novel. I did find this novella from Hesperus Press & another volume of three short stories which was just about right.


The Highland Widow is from the collection of three tales, Chronicles of the Canongate. The tales are framed by a story about a man called Chrystal Croftangry who wants to show the past of Scotland through a series of tales told to him by his friends. The Highland Widow is told to him by Mrs Bethune Baliol, who is travelling through the Highlands & comes across a woman sitting silent & motionless in front of her croft.

She guessed, perhaps, that it was curiosity, arising out of her uncommon story, which induced me to intrude on her solitude... Yet the look with which she regarded me was one of scorn rather than embarrassment. The opinion of the world and all its children could not add or take an iota from her load of misery, and, save from the half-smile that seemed to intimate the contempt of a being rapt by the very intensity of her affliction above the sphere of ordinary humanities, she seemed as indifferent to my gaze, as if she had been a dead corpse or a marble statue.

When she enquires about her, she is told the story of her life. Elspat MacTavish is feared & shunned by her neighbours. Known as the Woman of the Tree, she has lived alone for many years. Elspat was married to MacTavish Mhor, a scoundrel & cattle thief who ran a protection racket in the area. The MacTavishs & their son, Hamish, lived well on the proceeds of crime. Elspet was beautiful, happy & rich. MacTavish Mhor came out for Prince Charlie in the 1745 rebellion & was outlawed. He was killed fighting desperately against a detachment of redcoats sent to capture him, Elspat at his side, loading his gun.

After MacTavish Mhor's death, Elspat focuses on her son, Hamish, expecting that he will take up his father's mantle. She has cut herself off from her neighbours & is unaware of the changes in Scotland since the failure of the Jacobite rebellion. Hamish grows up to realise that his father's trade was dishonourable & although he loves his mother, he decides that he needs to follow his own path. As he becomes more independent, his mother's jealous love becomes more obsessive. When Hamish joins a Highland regiment of the British army, Elspat's disgust knows no bounds. She sees this as a betrayal of her, his father & all the Highland traditions that had been destroyed by the English. Hamish sees it as a way to make a living & provide for his mother. Hamish accepts that the clans have been finally defeated & must bow to the inevitable but Elspat never will,

'Dearest mother,' answered Hamish, 'how shall I convince you that you live in this land of our fathers, as if our fathers were yet living? You walk as it were in a dream, surrounded by the phantoms of those who have been long with the dead.... The land is conquered - its lights are quenched - Glengary, Lochiel, Perth, Lord Lewis, all the high chiefs are dead or in exile. We may mourn for it but we cannot help it. Bonnet, broadsword, and sporran - power, strength and wealth, were all lost on Drummossie Muir.'
'It is false!' said Elspat fiercely, 'you, and such like dastardly spirits, are quelled by your own faint hearts, not by the strength of the enemy. You are like the fearful waterfowl, to whom the least cloud in the sky seems the shadow of the eagle.' 

Elspat then makes a fateful decision. She decides to prevent Hamish returning to his regiment after his leave. He will be condemned as a deserter & flogged & she thinks that, rather than submit to such humiliation, Hamish will consent to her plan of hiding him in the Highlands as happened in the old days. Elspat's plan destroys her & she lives out the rest of her days alone, shunned & feared by her neighbours.

The Highland Widow is about the fury of a woman who can't embrace change, whose love for her son destroys them both. Elspat is almost an elemental creature. She seems to subsist on very little, she lives on her rage & desire for revenge & on her terrible nostalgia for the old days. Elspat is like a fierce witch or soothsayer, prophesying doom & cursing those who don't see things as she does. She never softens or asks for help, even at her lowest point.

I also read a few short stories by Scott. The most interesting was My Aunt Margaret's Mirror, a Gothic tale originally written for The Keepsake annual in 1828. Aunt Margaret tells the narrator a story about her ancestor & namesake who died 200 years before. This Margaret had a sister, Jemmie, a delicate beauty but not a clever girl. Jemmie married a young rake, Sir Philip Forester, who soon tired of her & neglected her. He spent little time at home &, eventually decided to go to the Continent where he hoped to join the Army & have an adventure or two. He left Jemmie fretting at home &, when he had been gone some time, Jemmie decided to consult a mysterious doctor from Padua, Baptisti Damiotti, who had a reputation among the society ladies of Edinburgh of being able to see into the future. Margaret is determined to go with her sister &, although they disguise themselves, the Doctor sees through this immediately. The Doctor, by some supernatural means, shows the ladies a scene in a huge mirror that he says is happening many miles away at that very moment. The shock destroys what's left of Jemmie's intelligence & she never recovers.

My Aunt Margaret's Mirror is a suitable spooky tale for an Annual. Annuals were usually published around Christmas time & were full of ghost stories, holiday tales & poetry. The story was apparently based on one told to Scott by his own great-aunt, Margaret Swinton & her stories formed part of the inspiration for his novel, The Bride of Lammermoor.

The Bride of Lammermoor - Sir Walter Scott

I read several of Sir Walter Scott’s novels as a teenager over 30 years ago. One of them was The Bride of Lammermoor but I didn’t remember very much about it at all. My most vivid memory of the story is a famous photo of Dame Joan Sutherland in the mad scene from Donazetti’s opera, Lucia di Lammermoor which was based on the book. All blood-stained white dress, long hair & staring eyes. So, when my 19th century book group decided to read The Bride as part of our series of books that form the basis of operas & musicals, I was looking forward to reading it again. The Bride of Lammermoor is a story full of omens, myths & doom. It’s the story of a tragic love affair with echoes of several Shakespeare plays, Macbeth, Hamlet, Romeo & Juliet & Othello.

The ancient family of Ravenswood has lost everything. The book opens at the funeral of the Laird after he has lost his ancestral home to Sir William Ashton, a nouveau riche politician & wily lawyer. The Laird’s son, Edgar, known as the Master of Ravenswood, vows revenge for his father’s death & his family’s downfall. Edgar is left with only the lonely tower, Wolf’s Crag, as his estate. His few servants are loyal, especially his butler, Caleb Balderstone, who comically goes to extraordinary lengths to save the family’s face & honour. As the master stalks the nearby woods, waiting for his moment to take revenge on Sir William, he’s thwarted by his noble action in saving Ashton & his beautiful daughter, Lucy, from a charging bull.

His fate is sealed. He falls in love with Lucy, the daughter of his enemy, & finds that his desire for revenge disappears as he gets to know Sir William & Lucy. Their secret engagement is haunted by omens. A raven sits nearby as they talk & is then shot by Lucy’s young brother. The bird falls at their feet & splashes Lucy’s dress with blood. Old, blind Alice, a tenant of the Ravenswoods & now the Ashtons, warns the Master of the danger he is courting. Even the old prophecy doesn’t change his mind,

When the last Laird of Ravenswood to Ravenswood shall ride And woo a dead maiden to be his bride, He shall stable his steed in the Kelpie’s flow, And his name shall be lost for evermoe!

Sir William has married above his station, & his haughty wife, Margaret Douglas, is not impressed by the claims of a penniless man without prospects. She wants Lucy to marry Bucklaw, a young man who has just inherited his Aunt’s property nearby. When she returns from a visit to find the Master virtually one of the family & her husband treating the Master as a friend, she is so rude to Edgar that he abruptly leaves. His pride is as much to blame for the tragedy that follows as Margaret’s domineering nature or Lucy’s passivity. Margaret intercepts his letters & browbeats Lucy into denying her attachment to Edgar. On the day of Lucy’s formal betrothal to Bucklaw, the Master returns & demands to know Lucy’s true feelings,

If this young lady, of her own free will, desires the restoration of this contract, as her letter would seem to imply – there is not a withered leaf which this autumn wind strews on the heath, that is more valueless in my eyes. But I must and will hear the truth from her own mouth – without that satisfaction I will not leave this spot. Murder me by numbers you possibly may; but I am an armed man – I am a desperate man - and I will not die without ample vengeance. This is my resolution, take it as you may. ... Choose if you will have this hall floated with blood, or if you will grant me the decisive interview with my affianced bride, which the laws of God and the country alike entitle me to demand.

Her fragile mental balance is overturned & she goes mad with horrible results. I enjoyed The Bride of Lammermoor very much. It’s almost unrelievedly gloomy, very Scottish in the emphasis on prophecies & omens. I haven’t even touched on the political dimension. The story is set in the early 18th century when the battle between the Protestant government in London & the lingering loyalties to the Catholic Jacobite pretenders was still very current. It was based on a true story told to Scott by his mother & great-aunt,

The story is a dismal one, and I doubt sometimes whether it will bear working out to much length after all. Query, if I shall make it so effective in two volumes as my mother does in her quarter of an hour’s crack by the fireside? But nil desperandum. (Letter to James Ballantyne)

Scott has a reputation for being quite stodgy but The Bride of Lammermoor is an exciting read, full of tragedy & heightened emotions.