Sir Walter Scott’s Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border Rediscovered

 

Hi everybody,

Holiday time and time reading too 😉

We’d like to wish you a very good summer, whether you go on holiday or not. Why not take advantage of this leisure time to read this or that old volume by one of your favourite authors that has been waiting for you since ages in a dark corner of your library…

On Scotiana, we have plenty of good ideas to suggest to you and we’re preparing a new page with our own reading lists… lots of Scottish books to read, in many genres, by late as well as contemporary authors : novels, poetry, short stories books, biographies, travel books…

We’re also preparing itineraries to visit Scotland…

 

In my last post, I briefly  introduced The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border by Sir Walter Scott and told you about one edition I have in my library : it is ‘edited and arranged with introduction and notes by Alfred Noyes’ and  published by James Thin in 1979 at the Mercat Press. This edition is not easy to find today but I would not recommend it. I find it too limited in its contents and much too critical about the author. It must have been a hard task to collect, edit and annotate all these ballads. I do like the first lines of the introduction by Alfred Noyes (I’ve quoted them in my last post), but I don’t agree at all with what comes after, and especially the tone of the article : ‘The present edition seeks to remove two serious obstacles which have hitherto interfered with the complete enjoyment of the book – first, the absurdly large mass of prefaces, appendices, “advertisements,” footnotes and what-not, wherein Sir Walter Scott saw fit to bury the gems he had just discovered and collected (..)’ Personally,  I could not do without these notes and, anyway,  if the reader can’t find any interest in these notes he is free not to read them. I usually make my first reading of a ballad, a poem or of any text, without reading the notes but then I try to know more… One of the main interests of this edition is its six beautiful  illustrations by John Macfarlane.

 

 

Today, while Janice is busy preparing the first of  her series of posts about Sir Walter Scott’s friends, and it can be but a long list ;-),  I’d like to tell you about the ancient edition of The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border I’ve  received this morning. The title page reads : ‘Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border consisting of Historical and Romantic Ballads Collected in the Southern Counties of Scotland with a few of Modern Date founded upon Local Tradition Edited with a New Glossary, by Thomas Anderson’.

 

 

The songs to savage virtue dear,

That won of yore the public ear,

Ere Polity, sedate and sage,

Had quench’d the fires of feudal rage.

Warton

(Frontispiece of Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border by Sir Walter Scott – 1931 Thomas Henderson Edition)

Here it is! It dates from 1931, a rather modern edition of the book since its first publication dates from 1802 ! It is a beautiful ancient edition with more than 731 pages, a gilded leather binding with golden thistles on the spine, a new introduction and glossary by Thomas Henderson, many notes and last but not least twelve nice illustrations ( Sir Walter Scott on the frontispiece, Edinburgh, Kelso, Berwick, Carlisle, Bothwell Castle, Jedburgh Abbey, Caerlaverock Castle, Lincluden, Hawthornden, Melrose) which I intend to scan and insert in our special page devoted to The Minstrelsy.

Below is the contents of this edition and as you can see, if you compare it with the contents of James Thin’s edition it is much longer.

Just have a look at the above portrait of Sir Walter Scott with the light on his face and hands and the lively (and lovely) representation of his dog Camp. This engraving ornates the frontispiece of this edition. Raeburn was a great portraitist of men and animals.  I like very much this artist and this portrait of  Sir Walter Scott with his beloved Camp… There is strong contrast with the air of serenity of the characters and the gloomy atmosphere of the ruined castle. There is indeed a lot to say about Hermitage Castle, which we didn’t visit yet (I’m very happy to realize how many fascinating things we still have to discover in Scotland!)

 

In the Walter Scott Digital Archive
In 1808, Scott’s publisher Archibald Constable, delighted by the unprecedented success of Scott’s second narrative poem Marmion, commissioned a portrait from Sir Henry Raeburn. Unlike the earlier portraits of Scott which were designed for a private, domestic setting, Raeburn’s portrait was very much conceived with reproduction in mind. For over a decade, it would be the most frequently engraved and widely diffused image of Scott. It proved immensely influential not only in framing Scott in the public’s mind-eye but in creating a prototype for Romantic portraiture. Here for the first time Scott is explicitly personified as a poet in a setting imbued with allusions to his own work. He is portrayed deep in thought, with a notebook in one hand and a pen in the other. He sits on a fallen stone before a ruined medieval tower with his favourite dog Camp at his feet. In the background may be seen the hills of Liddesdale and Hermitage Castle, which are featured both in Marmion and Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. Click on the thumbnail to the right to see an engraving of Raeburn’s 1808 portrait made by John Horsburgh.
When exhibited in Edinburgh in 1809, the Scots Magazine judged it ‘an admirable painting, with most appropriate scenery’. The Repository of Arts, however, wrote that: ‘This last of the minstrels shows how lamentably the race is degenerated, for never was a more unpoetical physiognomy delineated on canvas; we might take him for an auctioneer or a land-surveyor, a travelling dealer or chapman: in short for any character but a bard’ (III, 18:VI:1810, p. 36). Scott’s friend J.S. Morritt considered it ‘a most faithful likeness’. Scott’s expression was ‘serious and contemplative, very unlike the hilarity and vivacity then habitual to his speaking face, but quite true to what it was in the absence of such excitement’. However, Morritt felt that Raeburn had failed to convey the ‘flashes of the mind within’ which ‘almost always lighted up’ features that might otherwise appear ‘commonplace and heavy’ (quoted in Lockhart, Life, 2nd ed., III, 99-100).

http://www.walterscott.lib.ed.ac.uk/portraits/paintings/raeburn1808.htm

But let us go back to The Minstrelsy (I must not forget to put this volume into my travelling library…)

First, the contents :

PART I

ROMANTIC BALLADS.

Sir Patrick Spens

Auld Maitland

Battle of Otterbourne

The Sang of the Outlaw Murray

Johnie Armstrang

Lord Ewrie

The Lochmaben Harper

Jamie Telfer of the Fair Dodhead

The Raid of the Reidswire

Kinmont Willie

Dick O’ The Cow

Jock O’ The Side

The Death of Featherstonhaugh

Hobbie Noble

Rookhope Ryde

Barthram’s Dirge

Archie of Ca’field

Armstrong’s Goodnight

The Fray of Suport

Lord Maxwell’s Goodnight

The Lads of Wamphray

Lesly’s March

The Battle of Philiphaugh

The Gallant Grahams

The Battle of Pentland Hills

The Battle of Loudon-Hill

The Battle of Bothwell Bridge

PART SECOND.

ROMANTIC BALLADS.

Scottish Music, an Ode

Introduction to the Tale of Tamlane

The Young Tamlane

Erlinton

The Twa Corbies

The Douglas Tragedy

Young Benjie

Lady Anne

Lord William

The Broomfield-Hill

Proud Lady Margaret

The Original Ballad of the Broom of Cowdenknows

Lord Randal

Sir Hugh Le Blond

Graeme and Bewick

The Duel of Wharton and Stuart

The Lament of the Border Widow

Fair Helen of Kirkconnel

Hughie the Graeme

Johnie of Breadislee

Katherine Janfarie

The Laird o’ Logie

A Lyke-wake Dirge

The Dowie Dens of Yarrow

The Gay Goss Hawk

Brown Adam

Jellon Grame

Willie’s Ladye

Clerk Saunders

Earl Richard

The Lass of Lochroyan

Rose the Red and White Lily

Fause Foodrage

Kempion

Lord Thomas and Fair Annie

The Wife of Sir Usher’s Well

Cospatrick

Prince Robert

King Henrie

Annan Water

The Cruel Sister

The Queen’s Marie

The Bonnie Hynd

O Gin My Love Were Yon Red Rose

O Tell Me How to Woo Thee

The Souters of Selkirk

The Flowers of the Forest, Part I

The Flowers of the Forest, Part II

The Laird of Muirhead

Ode on Visiting Flodden

Introductory Remarks on Popular Poetry

Appendix to Remarks

 

PART THREE

IMITATIONS OF THE ANCIENT BALLAD
Essay on Imitations of the Ancient Ballad

Appendix to Essay

Christie’s Will

Thomas the Rhymer, Part I

Thomas the Rhymer, Part II

Thomas the Rhymer, Part III

The Eve of St John

Lord Soulis

The Cout of Keeldar

Glenfilas, or Lord Ronald’s Coronach

The Mermaid

The Lord Herries his Complaint

The Murder of Caerlaveroc

Sir Agirthorn

Rich Auld Willie’s Farewell

Water Kelpie

Ellandonan Castle

Cadyow Castle

The Gray Brother

The Curse of Moy

War-Song of The Royal Edinburgh Light Dragoons

The Feast of  Spurs

On a Visit Paid to the Ruins of Melrose Abbey by the Countess of Dalkeith and her Son, Lord Scott

Archie Armstrong’s Aith

GLOSSARY

 

I’m not going on holiday but where I’m going (for a fortnight) I will have plenty of time to read 😉 No access to Internet there, so I will  need my books absolutely.There are still many of them on my desk, ready to join the first chosen ones into the limited place of my luggage. How to choose between my favourite authors :  George Mackay Brown, Iain Crichton Smith, Kenneth White, Sir Walter Scott, H.V. Morton, Stevenson, Neil Gunn, Rankin, Alexander McCall… and so many others.  I will need my books about Charles Rennie Mackintosh too and I can’t leave without my dear  ‘Moobli’… What a dilemma!

I hope you’ll find it easier to prepare your ‘portable library’… just two or three books maybe wiser  😉

Anyway and whatever you happen to be doing during the summer time I wish you plenty of good time and reading.

Bonne lecture! A bientôt.

MairiUna