Lay of the Last Minstrel' was the immediate result. Scott felt the responsibility of his position. He was now the head of a family, having a wife and three children of whom he might well be proud, and he felt impelled to make a financial as well as literary success of his chosen profession. He had previously tried his hand at original composition. Inspired perhaps by his familiarity with the old Scottish ballads, he had essayed something of the same character. The first of these productions was 'Glenfinlas,' growing out of his early visits to the Highlands. Glenfinlas is a forest in Perthshire, north of the Trossachs and east of Loch Katrine. Next came 'The Eve of St. John,' in which Scott rebuilt and repeopled the old tower of Smailholm which had so fascinated his boyish fancy. In 'The Gray Brother,' an incomplete ballad of this period, the poet sang the praises of the vale of the Esk, then the scene of his almost daily walks. The fourth of these early poems was 'Cadyow Castle,' a ballad on the assassination of the Regent Murray. Cadyow Castle is a very dilapidated old ruin in a park of wondrous beauty near Hamilton, southeast of Glasgow. There is a deep glen, through which runs a little river, the Avon, and on the banks are many tall and beautiful trees. The park was once a part of the old Caledonian forest, a few of the ancient oaks of which still remain standing. It was the habitation of the fierce wild cattle which furnished the liveliest and most dangerous sport whenever a hunt was arranged. Something of the spirit and fire of Scott's later work is seen in these lines:—
Mightiest of all the beasts of chase
That roam in woody Caledon,
Crashing the forest in his race,
The Mountain Bull comes thundering on.
Fierce on the hunter's quivered band
He rolls his eyes of swarthy glow,
Spurns, with black hoof and horn, the sand
And tosses high his mane of snow.
The man who could write such lines as these must have felt an instinct for poetry which no amount of reasoning could ever set aside. It was, therefore, well that Scott did not attempt to resist his natural inclinations.
We find him, then, deliberately turning to poetry, and carefully surveying the field to choose his first subject. Three influences, widely different in character, combined to solve this problem. The first was his interest in the stories of Border warfare aroused by the tales of his childhood and immensely stimulated by his thorough search for ballads to make up the 'Border Minstrelsy.' The second was his membership in the Edinburgh Volunteers which gave a military trend to his thoughts. The third was his desire to oblige a lady. The young Countess of Dalkeith, afterward Duchess of Buccleuch, was an intellectual woman of extreme beauty and lovely character. She was, moreover, the wife of the chief of the clan of Scott, and therefore entitled, in the poet's view at least, to the fealty of her kinsmen. Having heard the legend of Gilpin Horner, a goblin dwarf in whom most of the people implicitly believed, the Countess, much delighted with the story, enjoined upon Scott the task of composing a ballad on the subject. The slightest wish of one so beloved was a command.
The poet soon realized that the goblin was likely to prove a veritable imp of mischief, threatening to ruin his ballad, and before the poem was finished, relegated him to the kitchen where he properly belonged. With the goblin story reduced to a mere incident, the poem expanded to a tale of Border warfare in which all of Scott's military spirit and knowledge of history and legend came to the front. He wrote it, as he declared in a letter to Wordsworth, to discharge his mind of the ideas which from infancy had rushed upon it. In a letter to George Ellis in 1802, he refers to it as a 'kind of romance of Border chivalry in a light-horseman sort of stanza.' In the autumn of that year, while on duty with his troop at Musselburgh, during a charge on Portobello sands, he received a kick from his horse which confined him to his rooms for three days. This accident gave an unexpected opportunity, and in these three days the actual writing of the poem was started and the whole of the first canto completed except the introductory framework. It is easy to recognize the 'light-horseman' stanza. Indeed, the clatter of horses' hoofs is heard distinctly as Sir William of Deloraine sets forth upon his night ride to Melrose:—
'O swiftly can speed my dapple-grey steed
Which drinks of the Teviot clear;
Ere break of day,' the warrior 'gan say,
'Again will I be here:
And safer by none may thy errand be done
Than, noble dame, by me!'
*****
Soon in his saddle sate he fast,
And soon the steep descent he passed,
Soon crossed the sounding barbican,
And soon the Teviot side he won.
*****
And soon he spurred his courser keen
Beneath the tower of Hazeldean.
The clattering hoofs the watchmen mark:
'Stand ho! thou courier of the dark!'
'For Branksome, ho!' the knight rejoined,
And left the friendly tower behind.
The spirited ride to Melrose; the opening of the wizard's grave; the delightful picture of the ruined abbey; the meeting of Lady Margaret and Lord Cranstoun; the telling encounter of the latter with the Knight of Deloraine; the manly spirit of the young heir of Branksome; the tales of Watt Tinlinn and the Scotts of Thirlstane, of Harden and of Eskdale, the coming of the Englishmen, Belted Will Howard and Lord Dacre, the duel resulting in the death of Richard of Musgrave, and the triumph of Cranstoun's love for the fair Margaret, all combine to produce a vivid impression of the stirring events, the conditions of life, and the ideals of the Border country in the days of chivalry.
The framework of this picture, from which it takes its name, is generally considered the most beautiful part of the poem. The old minstrel is supposed to relate the tale, with the accompaniment of his harp, to the noble Duchess of Buccleuch. The minstrel, with his reverence and enthusiasm for the old ballad poetry, now in its decadence, is of course the poet himself and the Duchess is his patron, who first suggested the poem. In no more beautiful and delicate way could the poet have shown his devotion to the lord and lady who had so greatly inspired him. Moreover, it gave him the method of showing, as he said, that he had no intention of setting up a new school of poetry, but was only making 'a feeble attempt to imitate the old.' The historical basis of the poem is told in a letter to Lady Dalkeith:—
Dame Janet Beatoun, Lady Buccleuch, who flourished in Queen Mary's time, was a woman of high spirit and great talents. According to the superstition of the times, the vulgar imputed her extraordinary abilities to supernatural knowledge. If Lady Dalkeith will look into the Introduction to the 'Border Ballads,' pages xv and xxix, she will find some accounts of a deadly feud betwixt the clans of Scott and Kerr, which, among other outrages, occasioned the death of Sir Walter Scott of Buccleuch, the husband of Janet Beatoun, who was slain by the Kerrs in the streets of Edinburgh. The lady resented the death of her husband by many exploits against the Kerrs and their allies. In particular the Laird of Cranstoun fell under her displeasure, and she herself headed a party of three hundred horse with the intention of surprising and killing that baron in the chapel of St. Mary, beside St. Mary's Loch at the head of Yarrow. The Baron escaped, but the lady burned the chapel and slew many of the attendants. … The feud was finally ended by Cranstoun marrying the lady's daughter.
