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."