Abstract
Walter Scott conceived of his first major publication, the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, in the early 1790s. Throughout that decade and into the first 3 years of the nineteenth century, he worked with a number of collaborators at accumulating a substantial range of ballad versions and archival material. These he used in what was intended to be an authoritative and definitive print version of oral and traditional Borders ballad culture. For the remainder of his life Scott continued to write and speak with affection of his ‘Liddesdale Raids’ and ‘forays’, the ballad collecting and research trips that he made into the Borders country mainly during the years 1792–1799.1 J. G. Lockhart, his son-in-law and biographer, describes the compilation of the Minstrelsy as ‘a labour of love truly, if ever there was’, noting that the degree of devotion was such that the project formed ‘the editor’s chief occupation’ during the years 1800 and 1801.2 At the same time, Lockhart takes care to state that the ballad project did not prevent Scott from attending the Bar in Edinburgh or from fulfilling his responsibilities as Sheriff Depute of Selkirkshire, a post he was appointed to on 16 December 1799.3 An affinity between literary production and legal administration endured throughout Scott’s life, and the two are constantly interrelated within his work in ways which emphasize his belief in civic responsibility.
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Notes
J. G. Lockhart, Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Bart, 2nd edn, 10 vols, vol. 1 (Edinburgh: R. Cadell; London: J. Murray and Whittaker & Co., 1839), pp. 326–7.
John Barrell, Imagining the King’s Death: Figurative Treason, Fantasies of Regicide 1793–1796 (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2000), pp. 252–84. See also pp. 162–9, 256, for accounts of Braxfield’s sentencing of radicals, and of opinions within the judiciary that he was excessively harsh.
Tobias Smollett, The Expedition of Humphry Clinker, 2 vols, vol. 2 (London: W. Johnston; Salisbury: B. Collins, 1771), pp. 76–7.
Dugald Stewart, ‘Dissertation: Exhibiting the Progress of Metaphysical, Ethical and Political Philosophy, since the Revival of Letters in Europe’, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Supplement to the Fourth-Sixth Editions, vol. 1 (London, 1824).
See Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, General editors R. H. Campbell and A. S. Skinner, textual editor W. B. Todd. Based on third edition, 1784 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1976). Book three considers the issues of differing wealth levels during the progression of the third stadial phase, and explores the effects of increased expenditure on luxury goods.
James Steuart, An Inquiry into the Principles of Political Oeconomy: Being an essay on the science of domestic policy in free nations, in which are particularly considered population, agriculture, trade, industry, money,… 2 vols, vol. 1, book II (London: A. Millar & T. Cadell, 1767), pp. 306–11.
There are many studies and archival sources documenting these social conditions and changes. My sources include Smout, particularly Part Two in ‘The Age of Transformation’, pp. 223–484. T. M. Devine, The Scottish Nation 1700–2000 (London: Penguin, 1999), pp. 105–230;
J. D. MacKie, A History of Scotland, revised and ed. Bruce Lenman and Geoffrey Parker, 2nd edn (London: Penguin, 1978), pp. 282–332; and Scott’s own accounts of Scotland’s economic and social transformation during the eighteenth century in his letters, journal and Tales of a Grandfather, third series, MPW, vol. 3. Other works on specific elements of change are cited in my bibliography. These include Henry Hamilton, The Industrial Revolution in Scotland (1932; London: Routledge/Thoemmes Press, 1996) and An Economic History of Scotland in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963), both regarded as groundbreaking studies;
and Ian Adams, The Making of Urban Scotland (London: Groom Helm, 1978). My aim has been to maintain a balance between more recent scholarship and that which Scott, and the readers of his day, had access to.
Thomas Pennant, Tours in Scotland, and Voyage to the Hebrides, 1769 and 1772. 5th edn, 3 vols, vol. 1 (London: Benjamin White, 1790), pp. 230–4.
See Thomas Crawford, Burns: A Study of the Poems and Songs (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1960), pp. 2–3, 192–216 passim, for a discussion of Burns’s dexterity in Scots and English. Crawford’s Society and the Lyric: A Study of the Song Culture of Eighteenth-century Scotland (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1979), passim, provides a helpful discussion of Burns’ interest in song. See particularly pp. 185–210.
‘Reliques of Robert Burns, consisting chiefly of Original Letters, Poems and Critical Observations on Scottish Songs; collected and published by R. H. Cromeck’, Quarterly Review (February 1809) 19–36. Also, MPW, vol. 1, pp. 847–52 and see also Andrew Noble, ‘Robert Burns’, Oxford Companion to the Romantic Age, pp. 439–40.
Edinburgh Review, XIII (October 1808) 215–34. The Edinburgh maintained a policy of anonymity with respect to its reviewers, but the identities were routinely guessed at. The ‘Don Pedro Cevallos’ review is now understood to have involved collaboration between Jeffrey and Henry Brougham, though Brougham was thought to have been solely responsible at the time. See John Clive, Scotch Reviewers. The Edinburgh Review, 1802–1815 (London: Faber & Faber, 1956), pp. 110–15.
Nick Groom, The Making of Percy’s Reliques (Oxford: Clarendon, 1999), p. 62.
Marilyn Butler, Romantics, Rebels and Reactionaries; English Literature and Its Background 1760–1830 (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1981), p. 16.
Leith Davis, Acts of Union. Scotland and the Literary Negotiation of the British Nation 1707–1830 (Stanford: Stanford UP, 1998), p. 164.
Fiona Robertson, Legitimate Histories: Scott, Gothic, and the Authorities of Fiction (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994), p. 103.
David Buchan, The Ballad and the Folk (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972), p. 82.
John Leyden, Scenes of Infancy: Descriptive of Teviotdale (Edinburgh: T. N. Longman, & O. Rees, 1803). I discuss Leyden’s collaborations with Scott later in the chapter.
See Richard Lomas, ‘The Impact of Border Warfare: The Scots and South Tweedside, C.1290-C.1520’, The Scottish Historical Review, LXXV, 2, no. 200 (October 1996) 147–67.
Jeffrey, Edinburgh Review (January 1803) 396.
Ibid., pp. 352–8 and Joseph Ritson, A Select Collection of English Songs (London: J. Johnson, 1783), pp. 322–6. Scott owned a copy of this and other anthologies by Ritson as part of his extensive collection of ballad literature.
See J. G. Cochrane, ed., Catalogue of the Library at Abbotsford (Edinburgh: Bannatyne Club, 1838).
David Herd, Ancient and Modern Scottish Songs, Heroic Ballads, &c, 2 vols, vol. 1 (Glasgow: Kerr & Richardson, 1869), pp. 13–17.
For details of the life and politics of Ritson, see J. Ritson, The Letters of Joseph Ritson, ed. Sir Harris Nicolas (London: W. Pickering, 1833);
J. Haslewood, Some Account of the Life and Publications of the Late Joseph Ritson (London: printed for R. Triphook, 1824);
and B. H. Bronson, Joseph Ritson, 2 vols (Berkeley: Berkely UP, 1938).
Walter Scott, The Antiquary, ed. David Hewitt (Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 1995), pp. 20–1.
Robert Jamieson, Popular Ballads and Songs, from Tradition, Manuscripts, and Scarce Editions (Edinburgh: 1806), pp. vi-x.
Dave Harker, Fakesong: The Manufacture of British Folksong, 1700 to the Present Day (Milton Keynes: Open University P, 1985), pp. 36–7.
Anna Seward, The Poetical Works of Anna Seward with Extracts from her Correspondence, ed. W. Scott, 3 vols (Edinburgh: J. Ballantyne & Co., 1810).
Colin Manlove, Scottish Fantasy Literature, a Critical Survey (Edinburgh: Canongate, 1994), pp. 13–15.
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© 2005 Susan Oliver
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Oliver, S. (2005). Collecting Ballads and Resisting Radical Energies: Scott’s Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. In: Scott, Byron and the Poetics of Cultural Encounter. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230555006_2
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