The Lady of the Lake
first thought might seem very romantick, of which I have been credibly
assured, that when the Highlanders are constrained to lie among the
hills, in cold dry weather, they sometimes soak the plaid in some river
or burn (i.e. brook), and then holding up a corner of it a little
above their heads, they turn themselves round and round, till they are
enveloped by the whole mantle. They then lay themselves down on the
heath, upon the leeward side of some hill, where the wet and the warmth
of their bodies make a steam, like that of a boiling kettle. The wet,
they say, keeps them warm by thickening the stuff, and keeping the wind
from penetrating. I must confess I should have been apt to question this
fact, had I not frequently seen them wet from morning to night, and,
even at the beginning of the rain, not so much as stir a few yards to
shelter, but continue in it without necessity, till they were, as we
say, wet through and through. And that is soon effected by the looseness
and spunginess of the plaiding; but the bonnet is frequently taken
off, and wrung like a dishclout, and then put on again. They have been
accustomed from their infancy to be often wet, and to take the water
like spaniels, and this is become a second nature, and can scarcely be
called a hardship to them, insomuch that I used to say, they seemed to
be of the duck kind, and to love water as well. Though I never saw this
preparation for sleep in windy weather, yet, setting out early in a
morning from one of the huts, I have seen the marks of their lodging,
where the ground has been free from rime or snow, which remained all
round the spot where they had lain' (Letters from Scotland, Lond. 1754,
8vo, ii. p. 108)."
809. His henchman. Scott quotes again the Letters from Scotland (ii.
159): "This officer is a sort of secretary, and is to be ready, upon
all occasions, to venture his life in defence of his master; and at
drinking-bouts he stands behind his seat, at his haunch, from whence
his title is derived, and watches the conversation, to see if any one
offends his patron. An English officer being in company with a certain
chieftain, and several other Highland gentlemen, near Killichumen, had
an argument with the great man; and both being well warmed with usky
[whisky], at last the dispute grew very hot. A youth who was henchman,
not understanding one word of English, imagined his chief was insulted,
and thereupon drew his pistol from his side, and snapped it at the
officer's head; but the pistol missed fire, otherwise it is more than
probable he might have suffered death from the hand of that little
vermin. But it is very disagreeable to an Englishman over a bottle with
the Highlanders, to see every one of them have his gilly, that is, his
servant, standing behind him all the while, let what will be the subject
of conversation."
829. On the morn. Modifying should circle, not the nearer verb had
sworn.
831. The Fiery Cross. See on iii. 18 below.
846. Point. Point out, appoint. Cf. Shakespeare, Sonn. 14. 6:
"Nor can I fortune to brief minutes tell,
Pointing to each his thunder, rain, and wind."
The word in this and similar passages is generally printed "'point" by
modern editors, but it is not a contraction of appoint.
860. Then plunged, etc. The MS. has "He spoke, and plunged into the
tide."
862. Steered him. See on i. 142 above.
865, 866. Darkening... gave. In the 1st ed. these lines are joined to
what precedes, as they evidently should be; in all the more recent eds.
they are joined to what follows.
Canto Third.
3. Store. See on i. 548 above.
5. That be. in old English, besides the present tense am, etc., there
was also this form be, from the Anglo-Saxon beon. The 2d person singular
was beest. The 1st and 3d person plural be is often found in Shakespeare
and the Bible.
10. Yet live there still, etc. See on ii. 692 above.
15. What time. Cf. ii. 307 above.
17. The gathering sound. The sound, or signal, for the gathering. The
phrase illustrates the difference between the participle and the verbal
noun (or whatever it may be called) in -ing. Cf. "a laboring man" and "a
laboring day" (Julius Caesar, i. 1. 4); and see our ed. of J. C. p. 126.
18. The Fiery Cross. Scott says here: "When a chieftain designed to
summon his clan, upon any sudden or important emergency, he slew a goat,
and making a cross of any light wood, seared its extremities in the
fire, and extinguished them in the blood of the animal. This was called
the Fiery Cross, also Crean Tarigh, or the Cross of Shame, because
disobedience to what the symbol implied, inferred infamy. It was
delivered to a swift and trusty messenger, who ran full speed with it to
the next hamlet, where he presented it to the principal person, with
a single word, implying the place of rendezvous. He who received the
symbol was bound to send it forward, with equal despatch, to the next
village; and thus it passed with incredible celerity through all the
district which owed allegiance to the chief, and also among his allies
and neighbours, if the danger was common to them. At sight of the Fiery
Cross, every man, from sixteen years old to sixty, capable of
bearing arms, was obliged instantly to repair, in his best arms and
accoutrements, to the place of rendezvous. He who failed to appear
suffered the extremities of fire and sword, which were emblematically
denounced to the disobedient by the bloody and burnt marks upon this
warlike signal. During the civil war of 1745-6, the Fiery Cross often
made its circuit; and upon one occasion it passed through the whole
district of Breadalbane, a tract of thirty-two miles, in three hours.
The late Alexander Stewart, Esq., of Invernahyle, described to me his
having sent round the Fiery Cross through the district of Appine, during
the same commotion. The coast was threatened by a descent from two
English trigates, and the flower of the young men were with the army of
Prince Charles Edward, then in England; yet the summons was so effectual
that even old age and childhood obeyed it; and a force was collected in
a few hours, so numerous and so enthusiastic, that all attempt at
the intended diversion upon the country of the absent warriors was in
prudence abandoned, as desperate."
19. The Summer dawn's reflected hue, etc. Mr. Ruskin says (Modern
Painters, iii. 278): "And thus Nature becomes dear to Scott in a
threefold way: dear to him, first, as containing those remains or
memories of the past, which he cannot find in cities, and giving hope of
Praetorian mound or knight's grave in every green slope and shade of its
desolate places; dear, secondly, in its moorland liberty, which has for
him just as high a charm as the fenced garden had for the mediaeval;...
and dear to him, finally, in that perfect beauty, denied alike in cities
and in men, for which every modern heart had begun at last to thirst,
and Scott's, in its freshness and power, of all men's most earnestly.
"And in this love of beauty, observe that the love of colour is a
leading element, his healthy mind being incapable of losing, under any
modern false teaching, its joy in brilliancy of hue. ... In general, if
he does not mean to say much about things, the one character which
he will give is colour, using it with the most perfect mastery and
faithfulness."
After giving many illustrations of Scott's use of colour in his
poetry, Ruskin quotes the present passage, which he says is "still more
interesting, because it has no form in it at all except in one word
(chalice), but wholly composes its imagery either of colour, or of that
delicate half-believed life which we have seen to be so important an
element in modern landscape."
"Two more considerations," he adds, "are, however, suggested by the
above passage. The first, that the love of natural history, excited
by the continual attention now given to all wild landscape, heightens
reciprocally the interest of that landscape, and becomes an important
element in Scott's description, leading him to finish, down to the
minutest speckling of breast, and slightest shade of attributed emotion,
the portraiture of birds and animals; in strange opposition to Homer's
slightly named 'sea-crows, who have care of the works of the sea,' and
Dante's singing-birds, of undefined species. Compare carefully the 2d
and 3d stanzas of Rokeby.
"The second point I have to note is Scott's habit of drawing a slight
moral from every scene,... and that this slight moral is almost always
melancholy. Here he has stopped short without entirely expressing it:
"The mountain-shadows..
..................... lie
Like future joys to Fancy's eye.'
His completed thought would be, that these future joys, like the
mountain-shadows, were never to be attained. It occurs fully uttered
in many other places. He seems to have been constantly rebuking his own
worldly pride and vanity, but never purposefully:
'The foam-globes on her eddies ride,
Thick as the schemes of human pride
That down life's current drive amain,
As frail, as frothy, and as vain.'"
Ruskin adds, among other illustrations, the reference to "foxglove and
nightshade" in i. 218, 219 above.
28. Like future joys, etc. This passage, quoted by Ruskin above, also
illustrates what is comparatively rare in figurative language--taking
the immaterial to exemplify the material. The latter is constantly used
to symbolize or elucidate the former; but one would have to search
long in our modern poetry to find a dozen instances where, as here,
the relation is reversed. Cf. 639 below. We have another example in the
second passage quoted by Ruskin. Cf. also Tennyson's
"thousand wreaths of dangling water-smoke,
That like a broken purpose waste in air;"
and Shelly's
"Our boat is asleep on Serchio's stream;
Its sails are folded like thoughts in a dream."
30. Reared. The 1st ed. has "oped."
32. After this line the MS. has the couplet,
"Invisible in fleecy cloud,
The lark sent down her matins loud,"
which reappears in altered form below.
33. Gray mist. The MS. has "light mist."
38. Good-morrow gave, etc. Cf. Byron, Childe Harold:
"and the bills
Of summer-birds sing welcome as ye pass."
39. Cushat dove. Ring-dove.
46. His impatient blade. Note the "transferred epithet." It is not the
blade that is impatient.
47. Beneath a rock, etc. The MS. reads:
"Hard by, his vassals' early care
The mystic ritual prepare."
50. Antiquity. The men of old; "the abstract for the concrete."
59. With her broad shadow, etc. Cf. Longfellow, Maidenhood:
"Seest thou shadows sailing by,
As the dove, with startled eye,
Sees the falcon's shadow fly?"
62. Rowan. The mountain-ash.
71. That monk, of savage form and face. Scott says here: "The state of
religion in the middle ages afforded considerable facilities for those
whose mode of life excluded them from regular worship, to secure,
nevertheless, the ghostly assistance of confessors, perfectly willing
to adapt the nature of their doctrine to the necessities and peculiar
circumstances of their flock. Robin Hood, it is well known, had his
celebrated domestic chaplain Friar Tuck. And that same curtal friar was
probably matched in manners and appearance by the ghostly fathers of
the Tynedale robbers, who are thus described in an excommunication
fulminated against their patrons by Richard Fox, Bishop of Durham,
tempore Henrici VIII.: 'We have further understood, that there are many
chaplains in the said territories of Tynedale and Redesdale, who are
public and open maintainers of concubinage, irregular, suspended,