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Waverley

S >> Sir Walter Scott >> Waverley




As he now ventured to his own house at night and left it in the
morning, he was espied during the dawn by a party of the enemy,
who fired at and pursued him. The fugitive being fortunate enough
to escape their search, they returned to the house and charged the
family with harbouring one of the proscribed traitors. An old
woman had presence of mind enough to maintain that the man they
had seen was the shepherd. 'Why did he not stop when we called to
him?' said the soldier. 'He is as deaf, poor man, as a peat-
stack,' answered the ready-witted domestic. 'Let him be sent for
directly.' The real shepherd accordingly was brought from the
hill, and, as there was time to tutor him by the way, he was as
deaf when he made his appearance as was necessary to sustain his
character. Invernahyle was afterwards pardoned under the Act of
Indemnity.

The Author knew him well, and has often heard these circumstances
from his own mouth. He was a noble specimen of the old Highlander,
far descended, gallant, courteous, and brave, even to chivalry. He
had been out, I believe, in 1715 and 1745, was an active partaker
in all the stirring scenes which passed in the Highlands betwixt
these memorable eras; and, I have heard, was remarkable, among
other exploits, for having fought a duel with the broadsword with
the celebrated Rob Roy MacGregor at the clachan of Balquidder.

Invernahyle chanced to be in Edinburgh when Paul Jones came into
the Firth of Forth, and though then an old man, I saw him in arms,
and heard him exult (to use his own words) in the prospect
of drawing his claymore once more before he died.' In fact, on
that memorable occasion, when the capital of Scotland was menaced
by three trifling sloops or brigs, scarce fit to have sacked a
fishing village, he was the only man who seemed to propose a plan
of resistance. He offered to the magistrates, if broadswords and
dirks could be obtained, to find as many Highlanders among the
lower classes as would cut off any boat's crew who might be sent
into a town full of narrow and winding passages, in which they
were like to disperse in quest of plunder. I know not if his plan
was attended to, I rather think it seemed too hazardous to the
constituted authorities, who might not, even at that time, desire
to see arms in Highland hands. A steady and powerful west wind
settled the matter by sweeping Paul Jones and his vessels out of
the Firth.

If there is something degrading in this recollection, it is not
unpleasant to compare it with those of the last war, when
Edinburgh, besides regular forces and militia, furnished a
volunteer brigade of cavalry, infantry, and artillery to the
amount of six thousand men and upwards, which was in readiness to
meet and repel a force of a far more formidable description than
was commanded by the adventurous American. Time and circumstances
change the character of nations and the fate of cities; and it is
some pride to a Scotchman to reflect that the independent and
manly character of a country, willing to entrust its own
protection to the arms of its children, after having been obscured
for half a century, has, during the course of his own lifetime,
recovered its lustre.

Other illustrations of Waverley will be found in the Notes at the
foot of the pages to which they belong. Those which appeared too
long to be so placed are given at the end of the chapters to which
they severally relate. [Footnote: In this edition at the end of
the several volumes.]





PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION


To this slight attempt at a sketch of ancient Scottish manners the
public have been more favourable than the Author durst have hoped
or expected. He has heard, with a mixture of satisfaction and
humility, his work ascribed to more than one respectable name.
Considerations, which seem weighty in his particular situation,
prevent his releasing those gentlemen from suspicion by placing
his own name in the title-page; so that, for the present at least,
it must remain uncertain whether Waverley be the work of a poet or
a critic, a lawyer or a clergyman, or whether the writer, to use
Mrs. Malaprop's phrase, be, 'like Cerberus, three gentlemen at
once.' The Author, as he is unconscious of anything in the work
itself (except perhaps its frivolity) which prevents its finding
an acknowledged father, leaves it to the candour of the public to
choose among the many circumstances peculiar to different
situations in life such as may induce him to suppress his name on
the present occasion. He may be a writer new to publication, and
unwilling to avow a character to which he is unaccustomed; or he
may be a hackneyed author, who is ashamed of too frequent
appearance, and employs this mystery, as the heroine of the old
comedy used her mask, to attract the attention of those to whom
her face had become too familiar. He may be a man of a grave
profession, to whom the reputation of being a novel-writer might
be prejudicial; or he may be a man of fashion, to whom writing of
any kind might appear pedantic. He may be too young to assume the
character of an author, or so old as to make it advisable to lay
it aside.

The Author of Waverley has heard it objected to this novel, that,
in the character of Callum Beg and in the account given by the
Baron of Bradwardine of the petty trespasses of the Highlanders
upon trifling articles of property, he has borne hard, and
unjustly so, upon their national character. Nothing could be
farther from his wish or intention. The character of Callum Beg is
that of a spirit naturally turned to daring evil, and determined,
by the circumstances of his situation, to a particular species of
mischief. Those who have perused the curious Letters from the
Highlands, published about 1726, will find instances of such
atrocious characters which fell under the writer's own
observation, though it would be most unjust to consider such
villains as representatives of the Highlanders of that period, any
more than the murderers of Marr and Williamson can be supposed to
represent the English of the present day. As for the plunder
supposed to have been picked up by some of the insurgents in 1745,
it must be remembered that, although the way of that unfortunate
little army was neither marked by devastation nor bloodshed, but,
on the contrary, was orderly and quiet in a most wonderful degree,
yet no army marches through a country in a hostile manner without
committing some depredations; and several, to the extent and of
the nature jocularly imputed to them by the Baron, were really
laid to the charge of the Highland insurgents; for which many
traditions, and particularly one respecting the Knight of the
Mirror, may be quoted as good evidence. [Footnote: A homely
metrical narrative of the events of the period, which contains
some striking particulars, and is still a great favourite with the
lower classes, gives a very correct statement of the behaviour of
the mountaineers respecting this same military license; and, as
the verses are little known, and contain some good sense, we
venture to insert them.]





THE AUTHOR'S ADDRESS TO ALL IN GENERAL


Now, gentle readers, I have let you ken
My very thoughts, from heart and pen,
'Tis needless for to conten'
Or yet controule,
For there's not a word o't I can men';
So ye must thole.

For on both sides some were not good;
I saw them murd'ring in cold blood,
Not the gentlemen, but wild and rude,
The baser sort,
Who to the wounded had no mood
But murd'ring sport!

Ev'n both at Preston and Falkirk,
That fatal night ere it grew mirk,
Piercing the wounded with their durk,
Caused many cry!
Such pity's shown from Savage and Turk
As peace to die.

A woe be to such hot zeal,
To smite the wounded on the fiell!
It's just they got such groats in kail,
Who do the same.
It only teaches crueltys real
To them again.

I've seen the men call'd Highland rogues,
With Lowland men make shangs a brogs,
Sup kail and brose, and fling the cogs
Out at the door,
Take cocks, hens, sheep, and hogs,
And pay nought for.

I saw a Highlander,'t was right drole,
With a string of puddings hung on a pole,
Whip'd o'er his shoulder, skipped like a fole,
Caus'd Maggy bann,
Lap o'er the midden and midden-hole,
And aff he ran.

When check'd for this, they'd often tell ye,
'Indeed her nainsell's a tume belly;
You'll no gie't wanting bought, nor sell me;
Hersell will hae't;
Go tell King Shorge, and Shordy's Willie,
I'll hae a meat.'

I saw the soldiers at Linton-brig,
Because the man was not a Whig,
Of meat and drink leave not a skig,
Within his door;
They burnt his very hat and wig,
And thump'd him sore.

And through the Highlands they were so rude,
As leave them neither clothes nor food,
Then burnt their houses to conclude;
'T was tit for tat.
How can her nainsell e'er be good,
To think on that?

And after all, O, shame and grief!
To use some worse than murd'ring thief,
Their very gentleman and chief,
Unhumanly!
Like Popish tortures, I believe,
Such cruelty.

Ev'n what was act on open stage
At Carlisle, in the hottest rage,
When mercy was clapt in a cage,
And pity dead,
Such cruelty approv'd by every age,
I shook my head.

So many to curse, so few to pray,
And some aloud huzza did cry;
They cursed the rebel Scots that day,
As they'd been nowt
Brought up for slaughter, as that way
Too many rowt.

Therefore, alas! dear countrymen,
O never do the like again,
To thirst for vengeance, never ben'
Your gun nor pa',
But with the English e'en borrow and len',
Let anger fa'.

Their boasts and bullying, not worth a louse,
As our King's the best about the house.
'T is ay good to be sober and douce,
To live in peace;
For many, I see, for being o'er crouse,
Gets broken face.





WAVERLEY

OR 'TIS SIXTY YEARS SINCE





CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTORY


The title of this work has not been chosen without the grave and
solid deliberation which matters of importance demand from the
prudent. Even its first, or general denomination, was the result
of no common research or selection, although, according to the
example of my predecessors, I had only to seize upon the most
sounding and euphonic surname that English history or topography
affords, and elect it at once as the title of my work and the name
of my hero. But, alas! what could my readers have expected from
the chivalrous epithets of Howard, Mordaunt, Mortimer, or Stanley,
or from the softer and more sentimental sounds of Belmour,
Belville, Belfield, and Belgrave, but pages of inanity, similar to
those which have been so christened for half a century past? I
must modestly admit I am too diffident of my own merit to place it
in unnecessary opposition to preconceived associations; I have,
therefore, like a maiden knight with his white shield, assumed for
my hero, WAVERLEY, an uncontaminated name, bearing with its sound
little of good or evil, excepting what the reader shall hereafter
be pleased to affix to it. But my second or supplemental title was
a matter of much more difficult election, since that, short as it
is, may be held as pledging the author to some special mode of
laying his scene, drawing his characters, and managing his
adventures. Had I, for example, announced in my frontispiece,
'Waverley, a Tale of other Days,' must not every novel-reader have
anticipated a castle scarce less than that of Udolpho, of which
the eastern wing had long been uninhabited, and the keys either
lost, or consigned to the care of some aged butler or housekeeper,
whose trembling steps, about the middle of the second volume, were
doomed to guide the hero, or heroine, to the ruinous precincts?
Would not the owl have shrieked and the cricket cried in my very
title-page? and could it have been possible for me, with a
moderate attention to decorum, to introduce any scene more lively
than might be produced by the jocularity of a clownish but
faithful valet, or the garrulous narrative of the heroine's fille-
de-chambre, when rehearsing the stories of blood and horror which
she had heard in the servants' hall? Again, had my title borne,
'Waverley, a Romance from the German,' what head so obtuse as not
to image forth a profligate abbot, an oppressive duke, a secret
and mysterious association of Rosycrucians and Illuminati, with
all their properties of black cowls, caverns, daggers, electrical
machines, trap-doors, and dark-lanterns? Or if I had rather chosen
to call my work a 'Sentimental Tale,' would it not have been a
sufficient presage of a heroine with a profusion of auburn hair,
and a harp, the soft solace of her solitary hours, which she
fortunately finds always the means of transporting from castle to
cottage, although she herself be sometimes obliged to jump out of
a two-pair-of-stairs window, and is more than once bewildered on
her journey, alone and on foot, without any guide but a blowzy
peasant girl, whose jargon she hardly can understand? Or, again,
if my Waverley had been entitled 'A Tale of the Times,' wouldst
thou not, gentle reader, have demanded from me a dashing sketch of
the fashionable world, a few anecdotes of private scandal thinly
veiled, and if lusciously painted, so much the better? a heroine
from Grosvenor Square, and a hero from the Barouche Club or the
Four-in-Hand, with a set of subordinate characters from the
elegantes of Queen Anne Street East, or the dashing heroes of the
Bow-Street Office? I could proceed in proving the importance of a
title-page, and displaying at the same time my own intimate
knowledge of the particular ingredients necessary to the
composition of romances and novels of various descriptions;--but
it is enough, and I scorn to tyrannise longer over the impatience
of my reader, who is doubtless already anxious to know the choice
made by an author so profoundly versed in the different branches
of his art.

By fixing, then, the date of my story Sixty Years before this
present 1st November, 1805, I would have my readers understand,
that they will meet in the following pages neither a romance of
chivalry nor a tale of modern manners; that my hero will neither
have iron on his. shoulders, as of yore, nor on the heels of his
boots, as is the present fashion of Bond Street; and that my
damsels will neither be clothed 'in purple and in pall,' like the
Lady Alice of an old ballad, nor reduced to the primitive
nakedness of a modern fashionable at a rout. From this my choice
of an era the understanding critic may farther presage that the
object of my tale is more a description of men than manners. A
tale of manners, to be interesting, must either refer to antiquity
so great as to have become venerable, or it must bear a vivid
reflection of those scenes which are passing daily before our
eyes, and are interesting from their novelty. Thus the coat-of-
mail of our ancestors, and the triple-furred pelisse of our modern
beaux, may, though for very different reasons, be equally fit for
the array of a fictitious character; but who, meaning the costume
of his hero to be impressive, would willingly attire him in the
court dress of George the Second's reign, with its no collar,
large sleeves, and low pocket-holes? The same may be urged, with
equal truth, of the Gothic hall, which, with its darkened and
tinted windows, its elevated and gloomy roof, and massive oaken
table garnished with boar's-head and rosemary, pheasants and
peacocks, cranes and cygnets, has an excellent effect in
fictitious description. Much may also be gained by a lively
display of a modern fete, such as we have daily recorded in that
part of a newspaper entitled the Mirror of Fashion, if we contrast
these, or either of them, with the splendid formality of an
entertainment given Sixty Years Since; and thus it will be readily
seen how much the painter of antique or of fashionable manners
gains over him who delineates those of the last generation.

Considering the disadvantages inseparable from this part of my
subject, I must be understood to have resolved to avoid them as
much as possible, by throwing the force of my narrative upon the
characters and passions of the actors;--those 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 the
fifteenth century, the brocaded coat of the eighteenth, or the
blue frock and white dimity waistcoat of the present day.
[Footnote: Alas' that attire, respectable and gentlemanlike in
1805, or thereabouts, is now as antiquated as the Author of
Waverley has himself become since that period! The reader of
fashion will please to fill up the costume with an embroidered
waistcoat of purple velvet or silk, and a coat of whatever colour
he pleases.] Upon these passions it is no doubt true that the
state of manners and laws casts a necessary colouring; but the
bearings, to use the language of heraldry, remain the same, though
the tincture may be not only different, but opposed in strong
contradistinction. The wrath of our ancestors, for example, was
coloured gules; it broke forth in acts of open and sanguinary
violence against the objects of its fury. Our malignant feelings,
which must seek gratification through more indirect channels, and
undermine the obstacles which they cannot openly bear down, may be
rather said to be tinctured sable. But the deep-ruling impulse is
the same in both cases; and the proud peer, who can now only ruin
his neighbour according to law, by protracted suits, is the
genuine descendant of the baron who wrapped the castle of his
competitor in flames, and knocked him on the head as he
endeavoured to escape from the conflagration. It is from the great
book of Nature, the same through a thousand editions, whether of
black-letter, or wire-wove and hot-pressed, that I have
venturously essayed to read a chapter to the public. Some
favourable opportunities of contrast have been afforded me by the
state of society in the northern part of the island at the period
of my history, and may serve at once to vary and to illustrate the
moral lessons, which I would willingly consider as the most
important part of my plan; although I am sensible how short these
will fall of their aim if I shall be found unable to mix them with
amusement--a task not quite so easy in this critical generation as
it was 'Sixty Years Since.'





CHAPTER II

WAVERLEY-HONOUR--A RETROSPECT


It is, then, sixty years since Edward Waverley, the hero of the
following pages, took leave of his family, to join the regiment of
dragoons in which he had lately obtained a commission. It was a
melancholy day at Waverley-Honour when the young officer parted
with Sir Everard, the affectionate old uncle to whose title and
estate he was presumptive heir.

A difference in political opinions had early separated the Baronet
from his younger brother Richard Waverley, the father of our hero.
Sir Everard had inherited from his sires the whole train of Tory
or High-Church predilections and prejudices which had
distinguished the house of Waverley since the Great Civil War.
Richard, on the contrary, who was ten years younger, beheld
himself born to the fortune of a second brother, and anticipated
neither dignity nor entertainment in sustaining the character of
Will Wimble. He saw early that, to succeed in the race of life, it
was necessary he should carry as little weight as possible.
Painters talk of the difficulty of expressing the existence of
compound passions in the same features at the same moment; it
would be no less difficult for the moralist to analyse the mixed
motives which unite to form the impulse of our actions. Richard
Waverley read and satisfied himself from history and sound
argument that, in the words of the old song,

Passive obedience was a jest,
And pshaw! was non-resistance;

yet reason would have probably been unable to combat and remove
hereditary prejudice could Richard have anticipated that his elder
brother, Sir Everard, taking to heart an early disappointment,
would have remained a bachelor at seventy-two. The prospect of
succession, however remote, might in that case have led him to
endure dragging through the greater part of his life as 'Master
Richard at the Hall, the Baronet's brother,' in the hope that ere
its conclusion he should be distinguished as Sir Richard Waverley
of Waverley-Honour, successor to a princely estate, and to
extended political connections as head of the county interest in
the shire where it lay.

But this was a consummation of things not to be expected at
Richard's outset, when Sir Everard was in the prime of life, and
certain to be an acceptable suitor in almost any family, whether
wealth or beauty should be the object of his pursuit, and when,
indeed, his speedy marriage was a report which regularly amused
the neighbourhood once a year. His younger brother saw no
practicable road to independence save that of relying upon his own
exertions, and adopting a political creed more consonant both to
reason and his own interest than the hereditary faith of Sir
Everard in High-Church and in the house of Stuart. He therefore
read his recantation at the beginning of his career, and entered
life as an avowed Whig and friend of the Hanover succession.

The ministry of George the First's time were prudently anxious to
diminish the phalanx of opposition. The Tory nobility, depending
for their reflected lustre upon the sunshine of a court, had for
some time been gradually reconciling themselves to the new
dynasty. But the wealthy country gentlemen of England, a rank
which retained, with much of ancient manners and primitive
integrity, a great proportion of obstinate and unyielding
prejudice, stood aloof in haughty and sullen opposition, and cast
many a look of mingled regret and hope to Bois le Due, Avignon,
and Italy. [Footnote: Where the Chevalier St. George, or, as he was
termed, the Old Pretender, held his exiled court, as his situation
compelled him to shift his place of residence.] The accession of
the near relation of one of those steady and inflexible opponents
was considered as a means of bringing over more converts, and
therefore Richard Waverley met with a share of ministerial favour
more than proportioned to his talents or his political importance.
It was, however, discovered that he had respectable talents for
public business, and the first admittance to the minister's levee
being negotiated, his success became rapid. Sir Everard learned
from the public 'News-Letter,' first, that Richard Waverley,
Esquire, was returned for the ministerial borough of Barterfaith;
next, that Richard Waverley, Esquire, had taken a distinguished
part in the debate upon the Excise Bill in the support of
government; and, lastly, that Richard Waverley, Esquire, had been
honoured with a seat at one of those boards where the pleasure of
serving the country is combined with other important
gratifications, which, to render them the more acceptable, occur
regularly once a quarter.

Although these events followed each other so closely that the
sagacity of the editor of a modern newspaper would have presaged
the two last even while he announced the first, yet they came upon
Sir Everard gradually, and drop by drop, as it were, distilled
through the cool and procrastinating alembic of Dyer's 'Weekly
Letter.' [Footnote: See Note I. ] For it may be observed in
passing, that instead of those mail-coaches, by means of which
every mechanic at his six-penny club, may nightly learn from
twenty contradictory channels the yesterday's news of the capital,
a weekly post brought, in those days, to Waverley-Honour, a
Weekly Intelligencer, which, after it had gratified Sir Everard's
curiosity, his sister's, and that of his aged butler, was
regularly transferred from the Hall to the Rectory, from the
Rectory to Squire Stubbs's at the Grange, from the Squire to the
Baronet's steward at his neat white house on the heath, from the
steward to the bailiff, and from him through a huge circle of
honest dames and gaffers, by whose hard and horny hands it was
generally worn to pieces in about a month after its arrival.

This slow succession of intelligence was of some advantage to
Richard Waverley in the case before us; for, had the sum total of
his enormities reached the ears of Sir Everard at once, there can
be no doubt that the new commissioner would have had little reason
to pique himself on the success of his politics. The Baronet,
although the mildest of human beings, was not without sensitive
points in his character; his brother's conduct had wounded these
deeply; the Waverley estate was fettered by no entail (for it had
never entered into the head of any of its former possessors that
one of their progeny could be guilty of the atrocities laid by
Dyer's 'Letter' to the door of Richard), and if it had, the
marriage of the proprietor might have been fatal to a collateral
heir. These various ideas floated through the brain of Sir Everard
without, however, producing any determined conclusion.

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