Still, such as it is, it is Blackmore’s best, and although he wrote many other novels, he never again approached “Lorna Doone,” either in sheer writing, or in commercial success. Booksellers stocked, and the public bought, or borrowed from the libraries, his later works, because they were by the author of “Lorna Doone,” and not for their intrinsic merits. For Blackmore always just failed to convince, and never quite dispelled an unreal kind of atmosphere that took his novels quite out of the experiences of actual life, and made his characters so many jumping-jacks, obviously actuated by strings.
The origin of “Lorna Doone” demands some notice. Blackmore freely acknowledged that he was led to contemplate a romance on the subject of the legendary wild squatters of these parts by reading a story published in the Leisure Hour during 1863, entitled “The Doones of Exmoor,” a very poor piece of work, loosely strung together from recollections of the Wichehalse and Doone legends that had long been floating about the West Country. He rightly conceived he could do better, and set to work upon his own early recollections of those legends, and, moreover, revisited Porlock and Oare and other places, for the purpose of acquiring more local colour, before beginning to write.
The question, Had the Doones ever a real existence? was debated somewhat half-heartedly in the lifetime of Blackmore, but has since his death been more and more keenly continued; until the literature written around the subject, for and against the credibility of such a band of outlaws having really made Exmoor their home, has assumed considerable dimensions.
An examination of the evidence available appears to conclusively establish the fact that no unassailably genuine documents have ever been produced by which the existence of the Doones can be proved. No one has ever traced legal documents, baptismal or other registers, or even records of sessional proceedings in which the name Doone appears in Somerset or Devon. Outlaws such as these, illiterate and half-savage, would not, on the face of it, be likely to find a place in church registers; but they would, on the other hand, it is fairly arguable, easily have found mention in the records of punishments, great or small, inflicted upon criminals or petty evil-doers. The inference that they, as Doones, never existed here, is therefore well-nigh irresistible.
But the legendary belief in them in all this countryside is strong, and dates far back beyond the appearance of Blackmore upon the scene with his “Lorna Doone.” Aged people who lived at Porlock, and in all the districts affected by legends of these robbers, and whose memories carried them back to the early years of the nineteenth century, have given testimony, not only to their having heard abundantly of “Doones” on Exmoor, but to their having received the legends from their parents. The long-lived fishermen of Porlock Weir, confronted with pamphlets written and published, elaborately arguing against the existence of those people, indignantly declared that one might as well pretend there were never Aclands of Holnicote. They were not in the least concerned with Blackmore’s story; for they had never read it, and did not carry the author’s name in their minds. A curious thing is that so few people of these districts have ever read “Lorna Doone.” But the fishermen, in common with others, knew the usual run of the stories; although, to be sure, they believed that the Doones were almost extinguished by the Reds of Culbone, and knew little or nothing of the Ridds of Oare.
We are met with several theories as to the origin of these floating legends, and the name of Doone. A favourite theory is that which dismisses these stories by contending that the name is a corruption of “Danes,” and that these more or less mysterious outcasts were really belated memories of those Danish sea-rovers who made such fierce havoc along all these shores in the ninth and tenth centuries.
A second belief, strangely supported by the undoubted existence in South Wales of a family, or band, of Dwns (the pronunciation is exactly that of “Doone”) in the time of Queen Elizabeth, is that a number of Welsh outlaws, fleeing from justice, came across the Channel from Carmarthenshire and became the Exmoor Doones. These Dwns were very objectionable people in their own country, and were largely intermarried, strange to say, with Ryds.
A third guess at the origin of the Doones is found in the belief, sometimes held, that they were originally fugitives from Sedgemoor fight, hiding from the retribution of the Government in what were then the fastnesses of the moor; but the obvious criticism of this view is that all danger would have been past after the revolution of 1688, and they would then no longer have needed to hide.
The fourth theory, and one stated to have been shared by Blackmore himself (although he was not necessarily a prime expert in the matter) is that the Doones were Scottish exiles. We have but to spell the name “Doune” for it to be at once recognised as Scottish. Certainly it is no West of England patronymic. At what period this view of the puzzle holds those supposititious Dounes to have come from Scotland does not appear. Scottish history may, if necessary, be made to afford many likely junctures at which various people would find it advisable to seek a sanctuary abroad. Of recent years an odd claim to relationship with the Doones, involving an attempt to connect them with Scottish exiles, has been made by the owner of a curiosity-shop at Hunstanton, Norfolk. This person, Beeton by name, and his niece, one Ida M. Browne, who has adopted the pseudonym “Audrie Doon” for literary purposes, have since 1901 produced what purport to be old family portraits, relics, and documents, taking their history back to the seventeenth century and connecting them and the Doones with the Earl of Moray of the early years of that century. According to this story, a brother of the Earl of Moray assumed the name of Doune, and after much persecution in the course of family disputes over property, was obliged in 1620 to leave Scotland. This “Sir Ensor Doune” as the claim has it, settled in this neighbourhood, where he and his “were more or less hated and feared by the countryside until their return to Perthshire in 1699.”
Thus Miss Ida M. Browne.