The great Earl in his stirrups stood
That Highland host to see;
“Now here a knight that’s stout and good
May prove a jeopardie:
“What wouldst thou do, my squire so gay,
That rides beside my reyne,
Were ye Glenallan’s Earl the day,
And I were Roland Cheyne?
“To turn the rein were sin and shame,
To fight were wondrous peril,
What would ye do now, Roland Cheyne,
Were ye Glenallan’s Earl?”
“Were I Glenallan’s Earl this tide
And ye were Roland Cheyne,
The spur should be in my horse’s side,
And the bridle upon his mane.
“If they hae twenty thousand blades,
And we twice ten times ten,
Yet they hae but their tartan plaids,
And we are mail-clad men.
“My horse shall ride through ranks sae rude,
As through the moorland fern,
Then ne’er let the gentle Norman blude
Grow cauld for Highland kerne.”
In this novel Scott began his practice of inventing mottoes, mainly from “Old Plays,” for the headings of his chapters, and among these scraps are plain warrants for his title of poet. When they were collected into a little volume he owned that he could not, in all cases, profess to be certain of his authorship. His memory of the works of others was better than his memory of his own. “Pretty verses these, are they Byron’s?” he said, on hearing some lady sing Cleveland’s song from The Pirate. Of his memory Hogg tells the following anecdote, which may be given verbatim, as Hogg’s Domestic Manners of Sir Walter Scott is a rather rare little book.
“He, and Skene of Rubislaw, and I were out one night about midnight, leistering kippers in Tweed, about the end of January, not long after the opening of the river for fishing, which was then on the tenth, and Scott having a great range of the river himself, we went up to the side of the rough haugh of Elibank; but when we came to kindle our light, behold, our peat was gone out. This was a terrible disappointment, but to think of giving up our sport was out of the question, so we had no other shift save to send Bob Fletcher all the way through the darkness, the distance of two miles, for another fiery peat.
HOGG
“The night was mild, calm, and as dark as pitch, and while Fletcher was absent we three sat down on the brink of the river, on a little green sward which I will never forget, and Scott desired me to sing them my ballad of ‘Gilman’s-cleuch.’ Now, be it remembered that this ballad had never been printed, I had merely composed it by rote, and, on finishing it three years before, had sung it once over to Sir Walter. I began it, at his request, but at the eighth or ninth stanza I stuck in it, and could not get on with another verse, on which he began it again and recited it every word from beginning to end. It being a very long ballad, consisting of eighty-eight stanzas, I testified my astonishment, knowing that he had never heard it but once, and even then did not appear to be paying particular attention. He said he had been out with a pleasure party as far as the opening of the Frith of Forth, and, to amuse the company, he had recited both that ballad and one of Southey’s (‘The Abbot of Aberbrothock’), both of which ballads he had only heard once from their respective authors, and he believed he recited them both without misplacing a word.”