The Pirate
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Transcriber's note:
[oe] represents the oe-ligature.
THE PIRATE.
Nothing in him----
But doth suffer a sea-change.
_Tempest._
Bibliophile Edition
This Edition of the Works of Sir Walter Scott,
Bart, is limited to One Thousand Numbered and
Signed Sets, of which this is
Number ...
University Library Association
Bibliophile Edition
The Waverley Novels
With New Introductions, Notes and Glossaries by Andrew Lang
THE PIRATE
by
SIR WALTER SCOTT, Bart.
Illustrated
University Library Association
Philadelphia
Copyright, 1893
By Estes & Lauriat
Andrew Lang Edition.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
THE PIRATE.
VOLUME I.
PAGE
MORDAUNT IN YELLOWLEY'S COTTAGE. _Frontispiece_
THE SWORD DANCE 234
VOLUME II.
MINNA ON THE CLIFF 103
THE PIRATE'S COUNCIL 208
MINNA TAKING THE PISTOL 250
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION TO THE PIRATE.
The circumstances in which "The Pirate" was composed have for the Editor
a peculiar interest. He has many times scribbled at the old bureau in
Chiefswood whereon Sir Walter worked at his novel, and sat in summer
weather beneath the great tree on the lawn where Erskine used to read
the fresh chapters to Lockhart and his wife, while the burn murmured by
from the Rhymer's Glen. So little altered is the cottage of Chiefswood
by the addition of a gabled wing in the same red stone as the older
portion, so charmed a quiet has the place, in the shelter of Eildon
Hill, that there one can readily beget the golden time again, and think
oneself back into the day when Mustard and Spice, running down the shady
glen, might herald the coming of the Sheriff himself. Happy hours and
gone: like that summer of 1821, whereof Lockhart speaks with an emotion
the more touching because it is so rare,--
the first of several seasons, which will ever dwell on my memory
as the happiest of my life. We were near enough Abbotsford to
partake as often as we liked of its brilliant society; yet could
do so without being exposed to the worry and exhaustion of spirit
which the daily reception of new visitors entailed upon all the
society except Sir Walter himself. But, in truth, even he was not
always proof against the annoyances connected with such a style of
open-house-keeping. Even his temper sank sometimes under the
solemn applause of learned dulness, the vapid raptures of painted
and periwigged dowagers the horse-leech avidity with which
underbred foreigners urged their questions, and the pompous
simpers of condescending magnates. When sore beset in this way, he
would every now and then discover that he had some very particular
business to attend to on an outlying part of his estate, and,
craving the indulgence of his guests overnight, appear at the
cabin in the glen before its inhabitants were astir in the
morning. The clatter of Sibyl Grey's hoofs, the yelping of Mustard
and Spice, and his own joyous shout of _reveillée_ under our
window, were the signal that he had burst his bonds, and meant for
that day to take his ease in his inn.... After breakfast he would
take possession of a dressing-room upstairs, and write a chapter
of "The Pirate"; and then, having made up and dispatched his
parcel for Mr. Ballantyne, away to join Purdie where the foresters
were at work....
The constant and eager delight with which Erskine watched the
progress of the tale has left a deep impression on my memory: and
indeed I heard so many of its chapters first read from the MS. by
him, that I can never open the book now without thinking I hear
his voice. Sir Walter used to give him at breakfast the pages he
had written that morning, and very commonly, while he was again at
work in his study, Erskine would walk over to Chiefswood, that he
might have the pleasure of reading them aloud to my wife and me
under our favourite tree.[1]
"The tree is living yet!" This long quotation from a book but too little
read in general may be excused for its interest, as bearing on the
composition of "The Pirate," in the early autumn of 1821. In "The
Pirate" Scott fell back on his recollections of the Orcades, as seen by
him in a tour with the Commissioners of Light Houses, in August 1814,
immediately after the publication of "Waverley." They were accompanied
by Mr. Stevenson, the celebrated engineer, "a most gentlemanlike and
modest man, and well known by his scientific skill."[2] It is understood
that Mr. Stevenson also kept a diary, and that it is to be published by
the care of his distinguished grandson, Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson,
author of "Kidnapped," "The Master of Ballantrae," and other novels in
which Scott would have recognised a not alien genius.
Sir Walter's Diary, read in company with "The Pirate," offers a most
curious study of his art in composition. It may be said that he scarcely
noted a natural feature, a monument, a custom, a superstition, or a
legend in Zetland and Orkney which he did not weave into the magic web
of his romance. In the Diary all those matters appear as very ordinary;
in "The Pirate" they are transfigured in the light of fancy. History
gives Scott the career of Gow and his betrothal to an island lady:
observation gives him a few headlands, Picts' houses, ruined towers, and
old stone monuments, and his characters gather about these, in rhythmic
array, like the dancers in the sword-dance. We may conceive that
Cleveland, like Gow, was originally meant to die, and that Minna, like
Margaret in the ballad of Clerk Saunders, was to recover her troth from
the hand of her dead lover. But, if Scott intended this, he was
good-natured, and relented.
Taking the incidents in the Diary in company with the novel, we find, in
the very first page of "The Pirate," mention of the roost, or rost, of
Sumburgh, the running current of tidal water, which he hated so, because
it made him so sea-sick. "All the landsmen sicker than sick, and our
Viceroy, Stevenson, qualmish. It is proposed to have a light on Sumburgh
Head. Fitful Head is higher, but is to the west, from which quarter few
vessels come." As for Sumburgh Head, Scott climbed it, rolled down a
rock from the summit, and found it "a fine situation to compose an ode
to the Genius of Sumburgh Head, or an Elegy upon a Cormorant--or to have
written or spoken madness of any kind in prose or poetry. But I gave
vent to my excited feelings in a more simple way, and, sitting gently
down on the steep green slope which led to the beach, I e'en slid down a
few hundred feet, and found the exercise quite an adequate vent to my
enthusiasm."
Sir Walter was certainly not what he found Mrs. Hemans, "too poetical."
In the first chapter, his Giffords, Scotts (of Scotstarvet, the
Fifeshire house, not of the Border clan), and Mouats are the very gentry
who entertained him on his tour. His "plantie cruives," in the novel,
had been noted in the Diary (Lockhart, iv. 193). "Pate Stewart," the
oppressive Earl, is chronicled at length in "the Diary." "His huge tower
remains wild and desolate--its chambers filled with sand, and its rifted
walls and dismantled battlements giving unrestrained access to the
roaring sea-blast." So Scott wrote in his last review for the
"Quarterly," a criticism of Pitcairn's "Scotch Criminal Trials" (1831).
The Trows, or Drows, the fairy dwarfs he studied on the spot, and
connects the name with Dwerg, though _Trolls_ seem rather to be their
spiritual and linguistic ancestors. The affair of the clergyman who was
taken for a Pecht, or Pict, actually occurred during the tour, and Mr.
Stevenson, who had met the poor Pecht before, was able to clear his
character.[3] In the same place the Kraken is mentioned: he had been
visible for nearly a fortnight, but no sailor dared go near him.
He lay in the offing a fortnight or more,
But the devil a Zetlander put from the shore.
If your Grace thinks I'm writing the thing that is not,
You may ask at a namesake of ours, Mr. Scott,
Sir Walter wrote to the Duke of Buccleugh. He paid a visit to an old
lady, who, like Norna, and Æolus in the Odyssey, kept the winds in a
bag, and could sell a fair breeze. "She was a miserable figure, upwards
of ninety, she told me, and dried up like a mummy. A sort of
clay-coloured cloak, folded over her head, corresponded in colour to her
corpse-like complexion. Fine light-blue eyes, and nose and chin that
almost met, and a ghastly expression of cunning gave her quite the
effect of Hecate. She told us she remembered _Gow the Pirate_, betrothed
to a Miss Gordon,"--so here are the germs of Norna, Cleveland, and
Minna, all sown in good ground, to bear fruit in seven years
(1814-1821). Triptolemus Yellowley is entirely derived from the Diary,
and is an anachronism. The Lowland Scots factors and ploughs were only
coming in while Scott was in the isles. He himself saw the absurd little
mills (vol. i. ch. xi.), and the one stilted plough which needed two
women to open the furrows, a feebler plough than the Virgilian specimens
which one still remarks in Tuscany. "When this precious machine was in
motion, it was dragged by four little bullocks, yoked abreast, and as
many ponies harnessed, or rather strung, to the plough by ropes and
thongs of raw hide.... An antiquary might be of opinion that this was
the very model of the original plough invented by Triptolemus," son of
the Eleusinian king, who sheltered Demeter in her wanderings. The
sword-dance was not danced for Scott's entertainment, but he heard of
the Pupa dancers, and got a copy of the accompanying chant, and was
presented with examples of the flint and bronze Celts which Norna
treasured. All over the world, as in Zetland, they were regarded as
"thunder stones." (Diary; Lockhart, iv. 220.) The bridal of Norna, by
clasping of hands through Odin's stone ring, was still practised as a
form of betrothal. (Lockhart, iv. 252.) Some island people were
despised, as by Magnus Troil, as "poor sneaks" who ate limpets, "the
last of human meannesses." The "wells," or smooth wave-currents, were
also noted, and the _Garland_ of the whalers often alluded to in the
tale. The Stones of Stennis were visited, and the Dwarfie Stone of Hoy,
where Norna, like some Eskimo Angekok, met her familiar demon. Scott
held that the stone "probably was meant as the temple of some northern
edition of the _dii Manes_. They conceive that the dwarf may be seen
sometimes sitting at the door of his abode, but he vanishes on a nearer
approach." The dwelling of Norna, a Pict's house, with an overhanging
story, "shaped like a dice-box," is the ancient Castle of Mousa.[4] The
strange incantation of Norna, the dropping of molten lead into water, is
also described. Usually the lead was poured through the wards of a key.
In affections of the heart, like Minna's, a triangular stone, probably a
neolithic arrow-head, was usually employed as an amulet. (Lockhart, iv.
208.) Even the story of the pirate's insolent answer to the Provost is
adapted from a recent occurrence. Two whalers were accused of stealing a
sheep. The first denied the charge, but said he had seen the animal
carried off by "a fellow with a red nose and a black wig. Don't you