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Title: The Pirate
Author: Walter Scott
Editor: Andrew Lang
Release date: March 23, 2013 [eBook #42389]
Most recently updated: October 23, 2024
Language: English
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Transcriber's note:
[oe] represents the oe-ligature.
THE PIRATE.
Nothing in him----
But doth suffer a sea-change.
_Tempest._
Bibliophile Edition
This Edition of the Works of Sir Walter Scott,
Bart, is limited to One Thousand Numbered and
Signed Sets, of which this is
Number ...
University Library Association
[Illustration]
Bibliophile Edition
The Waverley Novels
With New Introductions, Notes and Glossaries by Andrew Lang
THE PIRATE
by
SIR WALTER SCOTT, Bart.
Illustrated
[Illustration]
University Library Association
Philadelphia
Copyright, 1893
By Estes & Lauriat
Andrew Lang Edition.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
THE PIRATE.
VOLUME I.
PAGE
MORDAUNT IN YELLOWLEY'S COTTAGE. _Frontispiece_
THE SWORD DANCE 234
VOLUME II.
MINNA ON THE CLIFF 103
THE PIRATE'S COUNCIL 208
MINNA TAKING THE PISTOL 250
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION TO THE PIRATE.
The circumstances in which "The Pirate" was composed have for the Editor
a peculiar interest. He has many times scribbled at the old bureau in
Chiefswood whereon Sir Walter worked at his novel, and sat in summer
weather beneath the great tree on the lawn where Erskine used to read
the fresh chapters to Lockhart and his wife, while the burn murmured by
from the Rhymer's Glen. So little altered is the cottage of Chiefswood
by the addition of a gabled wing in the same red stone as the older
portion, so charmed a quiet has the place, in the shelter of Eildon
Hill, that there one can readily beget the golden time again, and think
oneself back into the day when Mustard and Spice, running down the shady
glen, might herald the coming of the Sheriff himself. Happy hours and
gone: like that summer of 1821, whereof Lockhart speaks with an emotion
the more touching because it is so rare,--
the first of several seasons, which will ever dwell on my memory
as the happiest of my life. We were near enough Abbotsford to
partake as often as we liked of its brilliant society; yet could
do so without being exposed to the worry and exhaustion of spirit
which the daily reception of new visitors entailed upon all the
society except Sir Walter himself. But, in truth, even he was not
always proof against the annoyances connected with such a style of
open-house-keeping. Even his temper sank sometimes under the
solemn applause of learned dulness, the vapid raptures of painted
and periwigged dowagers the horse-leech avidity with which
underbred foreigners urged their questions, and the pompous
simpers of condescending magnates. When sore beset in this way, he
would every now and then discover that he had some very particular
business to attend to on an outlying part of his estate, and,
craving the indulgence of his guests overnight, appear at the
cabin in the glen before its inhabitants were astir in the
morning. The clatter of Sibyl Grey's hoofs, the yelping of Mustard
and Spice, and his own joyous shout of _reveillée_ under our
window, were the signal that he had burst his bonds, and meant for
that day to take his ease in his inn.... After breakfast he would
take possession of a dressing-room upstairs, and write a chapter
of "The Pirate"; and then, having made up and dispatched his
parcel for Mr. Ballantyne, away to join Purdie where the foresters
were at work....
The constant and eager delight with which Erskine watched the
progress of the tale has left a deep impression on my memory: and
indeed I heard so many of its chapters first read from the MS. by
him, that I can never open the book now without thinking I hear
his voice. Sir Walter used to give him at breakfast the pages he
had written that morning, and very commonly, while he was again at
work in his study, Erskine would walk over to Chiefswood, that he
might have the pleasure of reading them aloud to my wife and me
under our favourite tree.[1]
"The tree is living yet!" This long quotation from a book but too little
read in general may be excused for its interest, as bearing on the
composition of "The Pirate," in the early autumn of 1821. In "The
Pirate" Scott fell back on his recollections of the Orcades, as seen by
him in a tour with the Commissioners of Light Houses, in August 1814,
immediately after the publication of "Waverley." They were accompanied
by Mr. Stevenson, the celebrated engineer, "a most gentlemanlike and
modest man, and well known by his scientific skill."[2] It is understood
that Mr. Stevenson also kept a diary, and that it is to be published by
the care of his distinguished grandson, Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson,
author of "Kidnapped," "The Master of Ballantrae," and other novels in
which Scott would have recognised a not alien genius.
Sir Walter's Diary, read in company with "The Pirate," offers a most
curious study of his art in composition. It may be said that he scarcely
noted a natural feature, a monument, a custom, a superstition, or a
legend in Zetland and Orkney which he did not weave into the magic web
of his romance. In the Diary all those matters appear as very ordinary;
in "The Pirate" they are transfigured in the light of fancy. History
gives Scott the career of Gow and his betrothal to an island lady:
observation gives him a few headlands, Picts' houses, ruined towers, and
old stone monuments, and his characters gather about these, in rhythmic
array, like the dancers in the sword-dance. We may conceive that
Cleveland, like Gow, was originally meant to die, and that Minna, like
Margaret in the ballad of Clerk Saunders, was to recover her troth from
the hand of her dead lover. But, if Scott intended this, he was
good-natured, and relented.
Taking the incidents in the Diary in company Next |