7. =minstrel grey.= Until well on in the eighteenth century it was
customary for Highland chieftains to keep in their service a bard, whose
chief duty it was to sing the exploits of the ancestors of the line.
69. =Lead forth his fleet.= What kind of figure is contained in the word
_fleet_ as applied to the flock of ducks?
131. =harp, which erst Saint Modan swayed.= St. Modan was not a harper,
as Scott elsewhere ingenuously confesses, adding, however, that "Saint
Dunstan certainly did play upon that instrument."
141. =Wailed loud through Bothwell's bannered hall.= The minstrel tries
to account for the strange way in which his harp gives back mournful
sounds instead of the joyous ones he is trying to evoke, by calling to
Ellen's mind two other occasions when it behaved similarly. One of these
was when it foreboded the death of Ellen's mother; the other when it
foreboded the exile of the Douglasses during the minority of James V.
For particulars, see the introduction on the historical setting of the
poem. Bothwell Castle is on the Clyde, a few miles from Glasgow.
159. =From Tweed to Spey.= The Tweed is in the extreme southern part,
the Spey in the northern part, of Scotland.
200. =Lady of the Bleeding Heart.= The minstrel calls Ellen so because a
bleeding heart was the heraldic emblem of the Douglas family.
206. =strathspey.= A dance, named from the district of Strath Spey, in
the north of Scotland. It resembled the reel, but was slower.
213. =Clan-Alpine's pride.= Clan Alpine was the collective name of the
followers of Roderick Dhu, who figures later in the poem as Ellen's
rejected suitor and the enemy of the mysterious "Knight of Snowdoun" who
has just taken his departure from the island.
216. =Lennox foray.= Lennox is the district south of Menteith, in the
Lowlands. It was the scene of innumerable forays and "cattle-drives."
221. =In Holy-Rood a knight he slew.= Holyrood is the royal castle at
Edinburgh, where the court usually was held. It was deemed a heinous and
desperate offense to commit an act of blood in the royal residence or
its immediate neighborhood, since such an act was an indirect violation
of the majesty of the king, and a breaking of "the king's peace." It was
for this offense that Roderick Dhu was exiled, and compelled to live
like an outlaw in his mountain fastness.
227. =Who else dared give.= Notice how skilfully Scott manages to give
us the relations of the chief characters of the poem to each other, and
to show that Ellen's father, pursued by the hatred of James V, has been
given the island shelter in Loch Katrine by Roderick Dhu who is about to
make his appearance in the story.
236. =Full soon may dispensation sought.= A papal dispensation was
necessary, because Ellen and Roderick Dhu were cousins. See next note.
249. =All that a mother could bestow.= Here again the poet takes the
indirect way of making clear his point, namely that the matron
introduced in the first canto is the mother of Roderick Dhu. The phrase
"an orphan in the wild," is in apposition with the following phrase "her
sister's child"--i.e., Ellen herself. From this it appears that Lady
Margaret is Ellen's aunt, and that Roderick Dhu is, therefore, Ellen's
cousin.
260. =Maronnan's cell.= A chapel at the eastern extremity of Loch
Lomond, dedicated to the rather obscure saint here named.
270. =Bracklinn's thundering wave.= The reference is to a cascade made
by a mountain torrent at the Bridge of Bracklinn, near the village of
Callender in Menteith. Notice how Scott's numerous references to places
in the region where the poem is laid tend gradually to give us an idea
of the richness and diversity of the landscape.