PREFATORY NOTE

It would be difficult to find more wholesome poetry for boys and girls than that of Sir Walter Scott.

There

is a contagious purity and a manliness of tone about it that fit it especially for young readers. Scott never perplexes one with subtle problems, but is always cheerfully objective. He is fond of outdoor things and of vigorous men and women. If he never touches us very deeply, neither does he depress us by pessimistic views of life. He is like a sturdy, sane, yet sprightly friend, who, if he ever has doubts and discouragements, never troubles us about them, and who stimulates us always to sound, hopeful thought and manly, upright action.

Young people cannot have too many friends of this kind, nor can they have too much of such a friend. If this little book is the means of extending among boys and girls a knowledge of Scott, or of opening to them. a new field of enjoyment, I shall feel that my labors have been more than repaid.

I am indebted for assistance in preparing this work to the editions of the Lay by J. H. Flather, and by Moody and Willard; and am under especial obligation to Dr. W. J. Rolfe for generous permission to use the text of his own edition, the result of the most scholarly collation.

RALPH HARTT BOWLES.

THE PHILLIPS EXETER ACADEMY,

EXETER, N. H., May, 1904.

INTRODUCTION

I. THE LIFE OF SCOTT

SCOTT modestly says of himself that his "birth was neither distinguished nor sordid," and then adds that it was gentle, because of remote connections with ancient families, both on his father's and his mother's side. These connections were so numerous and distinguished that, as Lockhart says in his Life, "There are few in Scotland under the titled nobility who could trace their blood to so many stocks of historical distinction." his father's side he was descended from Wat of Harden, a stern old Border chief, of whom he says in The Lay of the Last Minstrel :·

"Marauding chief! his sole delight

The moonlight raid, the morning fight;
Not even the Flower of Yarrow's charms,
In youth, might tame his rage for arms;
And still, in age, he spurned at rest,
And still his brows the helmet pressed,
Albeit the blanched locks below

Were white as Dinlay's spotless snow." 1

On

On his mother's side he was related to the Rutherfords and the Swintons, well-known families of the Border. It

1 Canto IV.