The following pages are reprinted partly from Chambers’s Journal, and partly from the Gentleman’s Magazine, the proprietors of which kindly permitted their republication.
R. C.
Inverness.
ABBOTSFORD NOTANDA.
The death of Mr William Laidlaw, a man of fine natural powers, and of most estimable character, removed another of the few individuals connected directly and confidentially with the daily life and literary history of Sir Walter Scott, and also with the revival of the antique Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. The loss of Hogg, while the twilight from Scott’s departed greatness still shone on the land, was universally regretted; and by the death of Laidlaw, another ‘flower of the forest,’ less bright, but a genuine product of the soil, was ‘wede away.’ As the author of one of our sweetest and most characteristic Scottish ballads, Lucy’s Flittin’, and as a collaborateur with Scott in the collection of the ancient minstrelsy, Laidlaw is entitled to honourable remembrance. Let us never forget those who have added even one wild-rose to the chaplet of Scottish song! It is chiefly, however, as the companion and factor or land-steward of Scott, that William Laidlaw will be known in after-times. During most of those busy and glorious years when Scott was pouring out so prodigally the treasures of his prose fictions, and building up his baronial romance of Abbotsford, Laidlaw was his confidential adviser and assistant. From 1817 to 1832, he was resident on the poet’s estate, and emphatically one of his household friends. Not a shade of distrust or estrangement came between them; and this close connection, notwithstanding a disparity in circumstances and opinions, in fame and worldly consequence, is too honourable to both parties to be readily forgotten. The manly kindness and consideration of one noble nature was paralleled by the affectionate devotion and admiration of another; and literary history is brightened by the rare conjunction.
Scott’s early excursions to Liddesdale and Ettrick form one of the most interesting epochs of his life. He was then young, not great, but prosperous, high-spirited, and overflowing with enthusiasm. His appointment as sheriff had procured him confidence and respect. He had given hostages to fortune as a husband and a father, and no one felt more strongly the force and tenderness of those ties. Friends were daily gathering round him; his German studies and ballads inspired visions of literary distinction; and he was full of hope and ambition. In his Border raids, he revelled among the choice and curious stores of Scottish poetry and antiquities. Almost every step in his progress was marked by some memorable deed or plaintive ballad—some martial achievement or fairy superstition. Every tragic tale and family tradition was known to him. The old peels, or castles, the bare hills and treeless forest, and solitary streams were all sacred in his eyes. They told of times long past—of warlike feuds and forays—of knights and freebooters, and of primitive manners and customs, fast disappearing, yet embalmed in songs, often rude and imperfect, but always energetic or tender. Thus, the Border towers, and streams, and rocks were equally dear to him as memorials of feudal valour, and as the scenes of lyric poetry and pastoral tranquillity. He contrasted the strife and violence of the warlike Douglases, the Elliots, and Armstrongs, with the peace and security of later times, when shepherds ranged the silent hill, or Scottish maidens sang ancient songs, and, like the Trojan dames,
‘Washed their fair garments in the days of peace.’
Much of this romance was in the scene, but more was in the mind of the beholder.
William Laidlaw’s acquaintance with Scott commenced in the autumn of 1802, after two volumes of the Minstrelsy had been published, and the editor was making collections for a third. The eldest son of a respectable sheep-farmer, Mr Laidlaw was born at Blackhouse, Selkirkshire, in November 1780. He had received a good education, had a strong bias towards natural history and poetry, was modest and retiring, and of remarkably mild and agreeable manners. The scheme of collecting the old ballads of the Forest was exactly suited to his taste. Burns had filled the whole land with a love of song and poetry, James Hogg was his intimate friend and companion. Hogg had been ten years a shepherd with Mr Laidlaw’s father, had taught the younger members of the family their letters, and recited poetry to the old, and was engaged in every ploy and pursuit at Blackhouse, the name of the elder Laidlaw’s farm.