Waverley

I love photographing thistles.

A few weeks ago I mentioned that I was reading Waverley and really enjoying it. It is subtitled "sixty years since" and is about events in 1745 so it should, have perhaps occurred to me sooner but this news story on the BBC highlighted that it is 200 years since Waverley was released. It mentions the old "shortbread tin" criticism which I have often heard, and I have only read one book but if the others are anything alike, I can agree that it is undeserved. Waverley, if anything, is a warning against getting caught up in romanticism. Possibly the critics just don't like the thought of Highlanders being given a voice when they were in fact just a bunch of illiterate savages who deserved to die? History being traditionally written by the victors after all.

I think the thing I liked about it most is the richness of the characters. A lot of the verbosity and seeming slowness of the plot is in fact just character development, so much so that towards the end of the book, I didn't need to know who was speaking because I recognised the speaker immediately in the way that I recognise the voice of someone I know well without having to see their face. By the end I was moved to tears and I am not sure that has ever happened before with any book! I am now torn over wanting to read some of his other work and just wanting to read Waverley again straight away.

Interestingly, the most one dimensional character is Charles Edward Stewart and there is a fairly long footnote from Scott about the controversy over what sort of person he really was with opinion being divided over whether he was cowardly or not etc. Scott flatters him in the book with the caveat that it is fiction after all and there was little dispute over his manners and education!

Awake on your hills, on your islands awake,
Brave sons of the mountain, the frith, and the lake!
'T is the bugle-but not for the chase is the call;
'T is the pibroch's shrill summons-but not to the hall
'T is the summons of heroes for conquest or death,
When the banners are blazing on mountain and heath:
They call to the dirk, the claymore, and the targe,
To the march and the muster, the line and the charge.
Be the brand of each chieftain like Fin's in his ire!
May the blood through his veins flow like currents of fire!
Burst the base foreign yoke as your sires did of yore,
Or die like your sires, and endure it no more!