None, by sabre or by shot,
Fell half so flat as Walter Scott.
“THE ANTIQUARY”
The emendations made by John Ballantyne on the proof sheets of this effort show considerable intelligence and taste, and in several cases were approved of and accepted by the author, though he once said that he was “the Black Brunswicker of literature who neither took nor gave criticism.” In fact he took rather too much, in some cases, as in St. Ronan’s Well, altered and spoiled to please the prudery of James Ballantyne. The profits of the first edition of Waterloo went to the fund for the widows and orphans of soldiers. By December 1815, Paul’s Letters to his Kinsfolk were published, and the “sweet heathen of Monkbarns,” The Antiquary, was in hand.
In this novel Scott wrote of his own day, and with one or two old friends, was himself the composite model for The Antiquary. As usual, the reader cares not much for Lovel and his lady, Miss Wardour, but the humour of the portraits of the sturdy Whig antiquary, his sense, and his foibles, and of his rival and friend the foolish Tory, Sir Arthur Wardour, are perennially delightful. Perhaps only archæological amateurs can thoroughly appreciate the learning of which Monkbarns is so profuse, and this, no doubt, is a drawback to the popularity of the tale. The charlatan, Dousterswivel, is in a rather forced vein of humour, but the figures of Edie Ochiltree, of the gossips in the village post-office, of the barber, and all the country folk, with the incident of the escape from the rising tide, and the romance of Elspeth of the Burnfoot and the stoicism of Mucklebackit, are, in their various ways, examples of Scott at his very best, while the ballad of the Red Harlaw stands absolutely alone, far above all modern attempts to imitate ancient popular Volkslieder.
Now haud your tongue, baith wife and carle,
And listen, great and sma’,
And I will sing of Glenallan’s Earl
That fought on the red Harlaw.
The cronach’s cried on Bennachie,
And doun the Don and a’,
And hieland and lawland may mournfu’ be
For the sair field of Harlaw.
They saddled a hundred milk-white steeds,
They hae bridled a hundred black,
With a chafron of steel on each horse’s head,
And a good knight upon his back.
They hadna ridden a mile, a mile,
A mile, but barely ten,
When Donald came branking down the brae
Wi’ twenty thousand men.
Their tartans they were waving wide,
Their glaives were glancing clear,
The pibrochs rung frae side to side,
Would deafen ye to hear.
HARLAW