The Country of Sir Walter Scott

by Charles S. Olcott

On the English side of the Solway, the Wampool River, where the Jumping Jenny landed Alan Fairford, along with a cargo of contraband goods, including gunpowder for the use of the Jacobites, may be easily found on the map. The English scenes were laid between here and Carlisle, but the story of the visit to this region of Charles Edward, disguised as Father Buonaventure, is pure fiction, and of course the localities cannot be identified, except Burgh-upon-Sands, where there is a monument to Edward I, to which Hugh Redgauntlet refers as the party is passing by.

The English residence of Hugh Redgauntlet to which Darsie was conducted by his captor, described as ancient and strong, with battlemented roof and walls of great thickness, but otherwise resembling a comfortable farmhouse, is purely fictitious. We visited, however, on the Scottish side of the Solway, a splendid modern castle, which, judged by an old painting of the place as it was in 1789, would admirably fit the description. This is Hoddam Castle, five miles southwest of the village of Ecclefechan, Carlyle's birthplace, where we spent a night in one of the quaintest little inns in Scotland, a survival of the time when Scottish inns offered few comforts to the traveller, but made up for it in proffered sociability.

Hoddam Castle is beautifully situated in the midst of a grove of fine trees overlooking the river Annan. A battlemented tower, surmounted by conical turrets, rises high above the extensive modern structure surrounding it. This is the ancient building, for centuries occupied by the Herries family. Scott originally intended to call his novel 'Herries' instead of 'Redgauntlet,' and was with much difficulty persuaded by Constable to accept the latter title. The old castle was built in the fifteenth century by John, Lord Herries, to whom was granted an extensive tract of land, extending over three or four counties.

The Herries family, to which Hugh Redgauntlet is supposed to belong, was always powerful. In their later years, like their fictitious descendant, its members were ardent supporters of the Stuart family. John Maxwell, who took the name of Lord Herries upon his marriage, was a zealous defender of Mary Queen of Scots. He assisted her escape from Loch Leven Castle, fought for her at Langside, escorted her, after the battle, to his own house in Galloway, and thence to Dundrennan Abbey, and finally conducted her, in a small vessel, to England. His descendant, William, the ninth Lord Herries and fifth Earl of Nithsdale, participated in the Jacobite uprising of 1715. He was made a prisoner at Preston and sent to the Tower, where he was tried and condemned to death. His countess, with rare courage and resourcefulness, first forced her way to an audience with the King in St. James's Palace, and pleaded on her knees for her husband's life. Finding this ineffectual, she paid a last farewell visit to her husband, taking several lady friends with her. They succeeded in disguising the Earl in feminine apparel and thus effected his escape. When Darsie Latimer was obliged, at his uncle's command, to wear petticoats as a means of concealing his identity, he was only following the example of one of his ancestors.

HODDAM CASTLE

In 1690 the castle and Barony of Hoddam passed from the Herries family to John Sharpe, and remained in the hands of his heirs until very recent times. One of these was Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, Scott's intimate friend, who helped collect the 'Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border,' to which he contributed two ballads. Scott was a frequent guest at his house, and he often dined with Scott's family in Edinburgh or at Abbotsford. He was a man of distinction in letters and an artist as well. Two well-known etchings by him, the 'Dish of Spurs' and 'Muckle-Mouthed Meg,' besides a caricature of Queen Elizabeth, adorn the walls of Abbotsford. His ancestors, like the Herries family, were ardent Jacobites.

The Sharpes claimed relationship to the notorious Grierson of Lag, who was the original of Sir Robert Redgauntlet in 'Wandering Willie's Tale.' Sir Robert Grierson, who was born in 1655 and died in 1733, was an infamous scoundrel who took fiendish delight in persecuting the Covenanters. In his drunken revels he made them the theme of scurrilous jests. In a vaulted chamber of his Castle of Lag, now in ruins, he had an iron hook upon which he hanged his prisoners. Often he would amuse himself by rolling his victims down a steep hill in barrels filled with knives and iron spikes. He was an object of terror and hatred through all the neighbouring country and for many years after his death was represented in theatrical productions as a hideous monster. Scott heard in his youth the wild tales of the terrible Grierson, and made them the basis of the story told by Wandering Willie.

If by Redgauntlet Castle we mean the house of the blind fiddler's hero, we must take for its original the ancient ruin of Lag Castle, built in the fourteenth century; but if the seat of the Herries family is meant, Hoddam Castle is of course the prototype, even though Scott places it on the English side of the Solway.