'While the wolf, in nightly prowl,
Bays the moon with hideous howl!'
One of the best lines in English verse on the wolf--both skilfully
onomatopoeic and suggestively picturesque--is Campbell's, line 66 of
'Pleasures of Hope':--
'The wolf's long howl from Oonalaska's shore.'
line 30. Cp. the movement of this line with line 3 in 'Sang of the
Outlaw Murray':--
'There's hart and hynd, and dae and rae.'
line 31. 'Grene wode' is a phrase of the 'Robyn Hode Ballads.' Cp.:-
-
'She set her on a gode palfray,
To GRENE WODE anon rode she.'
line 32. The ruins of Newark Castle are above the confluence of the
Ettrick and the Yarrow, on the latter river, and a few miles from
Selkirk. Close by is Bowhill, mentioned below, 73. See Prof. Minto's
'Lay of the Last Minstrel' (Clarendon Press), pp. 122-3. In the days
of the 'last minstrel' it was appropriate to describe this 'riven'
relic as 'Newark's stately tower.'
line 33. James II built Newark as a fortress.
line 41. The gazehound or greyhound hunts by sight, not scent. The
Encyclopedic Dictionary quotes Tickell 'On Hunting':--
'See'st thou the GAZEHOUND! how with glance severe
From the close herd he marks the destined deer.'
line 42. 'Bratchet, slowhound.'--SCOTT. The older spelling is
brachet (from BRACH or BRACHE), as:--
'BRACHETES bayed that best, as bidden the maystarez.'
Sir Gaw. and the Green Knyght,
1603.
In contrast with the gazehound the brachet hunts by scent.
line 44. Cp. Julius Caesar, iii. I. 273, 'Let slip the dogs of war.'
line 48. Harquebuss, arquebus, or hagbut, a heavy musket. Cp. below,
V. 54.
line 49. Cp. Dryden's 'Alexander's Feast,' 'The vocal hills reply.'
line 54. Yarrow stream is the ideal scene of Border romance. See the
Border Minstrelsy, and cp. the works of Hamilton of Bangour, John
Leyden, Wordsworth's Yarrow poems, the poems of the Ettrick
Shepherd, Prof. Veitch, and Principal Shairp. John Logan's 'Braes of
Yarrow' also deserves special mention, and many singers of Scottish
song know Scott Riddell's 'Dowie Dens o' Yarrow.'
line 61. Holt, an Anglo-Saxon word for wood or grove, has been a
favourite with poet's since Chaucer's employment of it (Prol. 6):--
'Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breethe
Enspired hath in every HOLTE and heethe
The tendre croppes.'
See Dr. Morris's Glossary to Chaucer's Prologue, &c. (Clarendon
Press).
line 68. Cp. Wordsworth's two Matthew poems, 'The Two April
Mornings' and 'The Fountain'; also Matthew Arnold's 'Thyrsis'--
'Too rare, too rare grow now my visits here!
But once I knew each field, each flower, each stick;
And with the country-folk acquaintance made
By barn in threshing-time, by new-built rick,
Here, too, our shepherd-pipes we first assay'd.'
line 82. Janet in the ballad of 'The Young Tamlane' in the Border
Minstrelsy. The dissertation Scott prefixed to this ballad is most
interesting and valuable.
line 84. See above, note on Rev. J. Marriott.
line 85. Scott was sheriff-substitute of Selkirkshire. As the law
requires residence within the limits of the sheriffdom, Scott dwelt
at Ashestiel at least four months of every year. Prof. Veitch, in
his descriptive poem 'The Tweed,' writes warmly on Ashestiel, as
Scott's residence in his happiest time:--
'Sweet Ashestiel! that peers 'mid woody braes,
And lists the ripple of Glenkinnon's rill--
Fair girdled by Tweed's ampler gleaming wave--
His well loved home of early happy days,
Ere noon of Fame, and ere dark Ruin's eve,
When life lay unrevealed, with hopeful thrill
Of all that might be in the reach of powers
Whose very flow was a continued joy--
Strong-rushing as the dawn, and fresh and fair
In outcome as that morning of the world,
Which gilded all his kindled fancy's dream!'
line 88. Harriet, Countess of Dalkeith, afterwards Duchess of
Buccleuch. A suggestion of hers led to the composition of the 'Lay
of the Last Minstrel.' See Prof. Minto's Introduction to Clarendon
Press edition of the poem, p. 8.
lines 90-93. 'These lines were not in the original MS.'--LOCKHART.
line 106. 'The late Alexander Pringle, Esq., of Whytbank--whose
beautiful seat of the Yair stands on the Tweed, about two miles
below Ashestiel.'--LOCKHART.
line 108. 'The sons of Mr. Pringle of Whytbank.'--LOCKHART.
line 113. Cp. VI. 611, below.
line 115. 'There is, on a high mountainous ridge above the farm of
Ashestiel, a fosse called Wallace's Trench.'--SCOTT.
line 124. Cp. Gray's 'Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College,'
especially lines 6l-2:--
'These shall the fury Passions tear,
The vultures of the mind.'
lines 126-33. Cp. Wordsworth variously, particularly in the Matthew
poems, the Ode on Intimations of Immortality, and Tintern Abbey,
especially in its last twenty-five lines:--
'Therefore let the moon
Shine on thee in thy solitary walk,' &c.
line 143. Cp. I Kings xix. 12.
lines 147-73. 'This beautiful sheet of water forms the reservoir
from which the Yarrow takes its source. It is connected with a
smaller lake, called the Loch of the Lowes, and surrounded by
mountains. In the winter, it is still frequented by flights of wild
swans; hence my friend Mr. Wordsworth's lines:--
"The swan on sweet St. Mary's lake
Floats double, swan and shadow."
Near the lower extremity of the lake are the ruins of Dryhope tower,
the birth-place of Mary Scott, daughter of Philip Scott of Dryhope,
and famous by the traditional name of the Flower of Yarrow. She was
married to Walter Scott of Harden, no less renowned for his
depredations than his bride for her beauty. Her romantic appellation
was, in latter days, with equal justice, conferred on Miss Mary
Lilias Scott, the last of the elder branch of the Harden family. The
author well remembers the talent and spirit of the latter Flower of
Yarrow, though age had then injured the charms which procured her
the name. The words usually sung to the air of "Tweedside,"
beginning "What beauties does Flora disclose," were composed in her
honour.'--SCOTT.
Quoting from memory, Scott gives 'sweet' for STILL in Wordsworth's
lines. Mr. Aubrey de Vere, in 'Essays Chiefly on Poetry,' ii. 277,
reports an interview with Wordsworth, in which the poet, referring
to St. Mary's Lake, says: 'The scene when I saw it, with its still
and dim lake, under the dusky hills, was one of utter loneliness;
there was one swan, and one only, stemming the water, and the
pathetic loneliness of the region gave importance to the one
companion of that swan--its own white image in the water.' For a
criticism, deeply sympathetic and appreciative, of Scott's
description of St. Mary's Loch in calm, see Prof. Veitch's 'Feeling
for Nature in Scottish Poetry,' ii. 196. The scene remains very much
what it was in Scott's time, 'notwithstanding that the hand of the
Philistine,' says Prof. Veitch, 'has set along the north shore of
St. Mary's, as far as his power extended, a strip of planting.'
line 177. 'The chapel of St. Mary of the Lowes {de lacubus} was
situated on the eastern side of the lake, to which it gives name. It
was injured by the clan of Scott, in a feud with the Cranstouns; but
continued to be a place of worship during the seventeenth century.
The vestiges of the building can now scarcely be traced; but the
burial-ground is still used as a cemetery. A funeral, in a spot so
very retired, has an uncommonly striking effect. The vestiges of the
chaplain's house are yet visible. Being in a high situation, it
commanded a full view of the lake, with the opposite mountain of
Bourhope, belonging, with the lake itself, to Lord Napier. On the
left hand is the tower of Dryhope, mentioned in a preceding note.'--
SCOTT.
line 187. See 'Il Penseroso,' line 167.
line 197. Cp. Thomson's 'Winter,' line 66:--
'Along the woods, along the moorish fens,
Sighs the sad genius of the coming storm;
And up among the loose disjointed cliffs,
And fractured mountains wild, the brawling brook
And cave, presageful, send a hollow moan,
Resounding long in listening fancy's ear.'
line 204. 'At one corner of the burial-ground of the demolished
chapel, but without its precincts, is a small mound, called Binrams
Corse, where tradition deposits the remains of a necromantic priest,
the former tenant of the chaplainry. His story much resembles that
of Ambrosio in "The Monk," and has been made the theme of a ballad
by my friend Mr. James Hogg, more poetically designed the Ettrick
Shepherd. To his volume, entitled "The Mountain Bard," which
contains this, and many other legendary stories and ballads of great
merit, I refer the curious reader.'--SCOTT.
line 239. 'Loch-skene is a mountain lake, of considerable size, at
the head of the Moffat-water. The character of the scenery is
uncommonly savage; and the earn, or Scottish eagle, has, for many
ages, built its nest yearly upon an islet in the lake. Loch-skene
discharges itself into a brook, which, after a short and precipitate
course, falls from a cataract of immense height and gloomy grandeur,
called, from its appearance, the "Grey Mare's Tail." The "Giant's
Grave," afterwards mentioned, is a sort of trench, which bears that
name, a little way from the foot of the cataract. It has the
appearance of a battery designed to command the pass.'--SCOTT.
Cp. 'Loch Skene,' a descriptive and meditative poem by Thomas Tod
Stoddart, well known as poet and angler on the Borders during the
third quarter of the nineteenth century:--
'Like a pillar of Parian stone,
That in some old temple shone,
Or a slender shaft of living star,
Gleams that foam-fall from afar;
But the column is melted down below
Into a gulf of seething snow,
And the stream steals away from its whirl of hoar,
As bright and as lovely as before.'