The Country of Sir Walter Scott

by Charles S. Olcott

The monks of Melrose made fat kail
On Fridays when they fasted,
Nor wanted they gude beef and ale
So lang's their neighbours' lasted.

In a richly carved chair before the fire sits a portly abbot, with round face, rosy cheeks, and good-natured, laughing eyes, the product of a long life of good feeding and indolent ease. By his side stands the sub-prior, a cadaverous, sharp-faced little man, with piercing grey eyes bespeaking a high order of intellect, his emaciated features testifying to rigid fastings and relentless self-abasement. The abuse of the monastic privileges, common enough at the time, is thus contrasted with the conscientious observance of all the rules of the order. In and out of the cloisters, the refectory, and the palace, monks in black gowns and white scapularies are continually passing. The old ruin has been restored by the genius of the novelist to the life and activity of the sixteenth century.

The earliest date referred to in the story is 1547, the year of the battle of Pinkie, when the Scottish forces met with a disaster exceeded only by Flodden Field. In this battle Simon Glendinning, a soldier fighting for the 'Halidome' of St. Mary's, met his death. His son Halbert was then nine or ten years old. The story comes to a close when he is nineteen, which would be 1557. The hostility of Henry VIII had caused great anxiety to the abbots of Melrose long before this time and the persecution reached a climax in 1545. Sir Ralph Ewers and Sir Brian Latoun systematically ravaged the Scottish Border, burning hundreds of towns, castles, and churches, slaughtering and imprisoning the people by the thousands and driving off their cattle and horses. In the course of their raids, they reached Melrose with a force of five thousand men and vented their spite on the beautiful old abbey. The Scots took prompt vengeance. They quickly raised an army, and under the leadership of Sir Walter Scott of Buccleuch, met the English and defeated them with heavy losses. Both Ewers and Latoun were among the slain, and the monks of Melrose buried them in the abbey with great satisfaction. 'The Monastery' does not refer to this event, but its graphic picture of the unsettled state of the country and the consequent anxiety of the monks constitutes its chief value.

North of the abbey and across the Tweed is a green hillside, at the base of which is a weir or dam. This is the place where the sacristan of St. Mary's was pitched out of his saddle into the stream by the 'White Lady of Avenel,' who dipped him in the water two or three times to make sure that 'every part of him had its share of wetting.'

The old bridge, which the sacristan was prevented from crossing by the perversity of old Peter, the bridge-tender, was about a mile and a half up the stream. Such a bridge once existed, though now there are no traces visible. Scott used to see the foundations occasionally when drifting down the river at night in pursuit of one of his favourite pastimes, spearing salmon by torchlight. There were three towers in the water. A keeper lived in the middle one and controlled the traffic by raising or lowering the draws at his pleasure. Those who refused to pay his price, or whom he did not wish to accommodate, might ford the stream, but at some stages of the water this was a perilous operation.

The river Allan flows into the Tweed near the site of this bridge. It is a little mountain brook that flows, in serpentine course, through the valley of Glendearg. A mile or so up the rivulet there is a picturesque and shady glen called Fairy Dean. After a flood, little pieces of curious stones, in fantastic shapes, are often found, the play of the waters having transformed the fragments of rock into fairy cups and saucers, guns, boats, cradles, or whatever a childish imagination might suggest. This was the abode of the fairies where the little elfin folk held their nightly carnivals, and who knows but Queen Titania herself might have held her moonlight revels upon this very spot? At any rate, the neighbouring people, for centuries, by common consent, recognized the feudal rights of the fairy race to this little dell, and left them undisturbed. It must have been the abode of the White Lady, and no doubt stood in the author's mind for the secluded glen which he calls, in Celtic, Corrie nan Shian, meaning 'Hollow of the Fairies,' where Halbert Glendinning found the huge rock, the wild holly tree, and the spring beneath its branches. Here, doubtless, for no more appropriate spot can be found, Halbert summoned the mystic maiden with the words:—

Thrice to the holly brake—
Thrice to the well:—
I bid thee awake,
White Maid of Avenel!

Noon gleams in the Lake—
Noon glows on the Fell—
Wake thee, O wake,
White Maid of Avenel!

At the head of the glen there are three ruined peel-houses or Border towers, known as Hillslap, Colmslie, and Langshaw. The first of these may fairly stand for the original of Glendearg, the home of the Glendinnings. This old tower has a sculptured date on the lintel of the entrance which seems to indicate that it was built in 1585—a little too late for the story, to be sure, but trifles like that never worried Sir Walter. He wanted to place the Widow Glendinning and her two children in a tower suited to the ancient family connexions of her husband who might have been able to defend his secluded retreat against all comers for many years, had not the necessities of the time required his service in the wars for the defence of his country. Hillslap offered an excellent type of such a Border fortalice, and its situation at the head of the glen, well protected by the surrounding mountains and isolated by its remoteness from the ordinary lines of travel, made it suitable for the purposes of the tale.