Old Mortality [antikvár]

PREFACE The inspirational source of Old Mortality was a picture, and to Scott's friend, Joseph Train, the genesis of the novel is due. When visiting Scott at his Castle Street house in Edinburgh in May 1816, they discussed a portrait of Claverhouse that hung , ' at Abbotsford. Scott, expressing the Cavalier opinions about , Dundee, said:'No character has been so foully traduced." This surprised Train, who had always adhered to the old beliefs. i 'Might he not,' said Train, 'be made, in good hands, the hero of j a national romance as interesting as any about either Wallace or Prince Charlie?' 'He might,' said Scott, 'but your western / zealots would require to be faithfully portrayed in order to bring ' him out with the right effect.' 'And what,' replied Train, 'if the story were to be delivered as from the mouth of Old Mortality ? | / Would he not do as well as the Minstrel did in the Lay?' 'Old [', Mortality,' said Scott, 'who is he?' 'Never shall I forget,' 1' added Train, 'the eager interest with which he listened while I ¦/ related to him what I knew of old Robert Paterson, the wandering ,' inscription-cutter.' ' Accordingly, Train sent Scott all available particulars regarding Paterson and so set Scott's imagination alight with a theme in which the Covenanters would figure prominently. Robert Paterson was a native of Bumflat, or Haggisha', near Hawick. 'When or how,' Dr W. S. Crockett has remarked, ' Robert Paterson blossomed into the Old Mortality immortalized by Scott we have no means of knowing.' According to Train, he was a religious enthusiast who employed most of his life in repairing the tombstones over the graves of Covenanters in the south of Scotland. 'It was that aspect of Paterson's character which was poured into the ear of Scott, and it is that interpretation of Paterson's peregrinations which survives in the popular imagination.^ It so transpired that when Scott visited Donnottar Castle, Angus, in 1793, he had had an interview with Paterson, who was there at the time, renovating a tombstone. That was the only / occasion on which Scott saw the prototype of Old MortaUty. Paterson died in 1801, and in 1855 his name was inscribed on the family tombstone at Balmaclellan, Kirkcudbrightshire. The words are: ' Erected to the Memory of Robert Paterson the Old Mortality of Sir Walter Scott Who was buried here February 1801.' By September 1816 Scott had made good progress with the ' work, and in November there were advance copies, one of which he sent to Daniel Terry, remarking: 'You will receive, in the ^ The Scott Originals, (1932) pp. 172, 173. <: