48 Fun Facts About Walter Scott

Which name did Scott apparently invent for a Saxon in Ivanhoe?

Cedric apparently began as Scott's slip for Cerdic, an early king of Wessex, given to the hero's father; Frances Hodgson Burnett later passed the name on to her Little Lord Fauntleroy.

Which childhood illness in 1773 left Scott with a lifelong limp?

The illness was polio, which struck in infancy; he was sent to recover on his grandparents' Borders farm, where his aunt's old songs and his grandmother's tales of feuds and raids gave him his lifelong subject.

Which Scottish poet did the 15-year-old Scott meet, just once, at an Edinburgh literary salon?

Robert Burns was moved to tears by a print and asked who wrote the lines beneath it; only young Scott knew, and Burns rewarded him with a look and a word that he remembered with pleasure all his life.

What was Scott's profession alongside writing?

Scott was a lawyer, called to the bar as an advocate in 1792; his later posts as Sheriff-Depute of Selkirkshire and Clerk of Session paid a steady salary without court pleading, which left him time to write.

Scott's wife Charlotte Charpentier was born in which country?

Charlotte Charpentier, who anglicised her name to Carpenter, was born in France; Scott met her on a trip to Cumberland in 1797, proposed after three weeks and married her in Carlisle that Christmas Eve.

Scott's two-volume 1802 collection of traditional ballads was titled what?

Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border sold out its first edition in six months; Scott gathered the ballads on 'raids' into the Border hills but mended and merged the texts, a liberty editors have criticised since.

Scott's first publication, in 1796, was a pair of ballads translated from which language?

German: Scott studied the language to read its new poets and dramatists, and his 1796 debut, The Chase, and William and Helen, rendered two supernatural ballads by Gottfried August Bürger.

Scott's first long narrative poem, published in 1805, was called what?

The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805) took its irregular four-beat metre from Coleridge's then-unpublished Christabel, which Scott had heard recited, and it made his name as a poet.

Scott's 1808 poem Marmion builds to which battle?

Flodden, the 1513 defeat where James IV fell, ends Marmion; Scott's publisher agreed 1,000 guineas for the poem a year before it was finished.

Scott's 1813 poem Rokeby is set in northern England just after which Civil War battle?

Marston Moor, the Parliamentarian victory of 1644, sets the plot moving; the poem is named after Rokeby Park, home of Scott's friend John Morritt, whose Velázquez nude is known as the Rokeby Venus.

On which body of water does Ellen Douglas row out to rescue the lost huntsman in The Lady of the Lake?

Ellen Douglas rows her skiff from Ellen's Isle on Loch Katrine, in the Trossachs, to the stranger James Fitz-James, who proves to be the king himself.

Which poet's 1812 bestseller ended Scott's reign as Britain's most popular poet?

Lord Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1812) made Byron the sensation of the day; Scott, sensing he had been outshone in verse, turned increasingly to prose fiction.

What was Scott's first novel, published anonymously in 1814?

Waverley came out anonymously in July 1814; by Scott's own account he had abandoned the manuscript years before and found it again in a drawer while hunting for fishing tackle.

Which historical event forms the backdrop of Scott's first novel?

The Jacobite rising of 1745 is the backdrop: the subtitle, ''Tis Sixty Years Since', counts the years between the rebellion and Scott's own day, and the hero is an English officer who goes over to Charles Edward Stuart.

The word freelance is traced to Ivanhoe, where the Free Lances were what?

Mercenary soldiers: in Ivanhoe their captain says he offered the king 'the service of my Free Lances', men who fought for whoever paid, and the term later spread to anyone working without a fixed employer.

Which folk hero appears in Ivanhoe as Locksley?

Robin Hood leads the outlaws who help storm the castle in Ivanhoe; an old manuscript had named Locksley as his birthplace, and after Scott many retellings call the outlaw Robin of Locksley.

Which Scott novel is set in 1715 and narrated by Frank Osbaldistone?

Rob Roy gives the novel its title but not its hero: the narrator, Frank Osbaldistone, is an English merchant's son who chases stolen papers into the Highlands, where the outlaw keeps crossing his path.

The Heart of Mid-Lothian takes its title from which building?

The Old Tolbooth prison in Edinburgh was nicknamed the Heart of Midlothian; the novel opens with the 1736 Porteous Riots there and follows Jeanie Deans's walk to London to save her sister.

In The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Jeanie Deans's sister has been condemned for what?

Effie Deans is condemned for murdering her newborn baby under a statute that presumed guilt from a concealed pregnancy; Scott based Jeanie on Helen Walker, whose story reached him in an anonymous letter.

Which Scott novel became Donizetti's most famous tragic opera in 1835?

The Bride of Lammermoor became Lucia di Lammermoor; Scott took the plot from a family tale of 1669, in which Janet Dalrymple, forced to give up her lover, is said to have wounded her bridegroom on their wedding night.

Which proverbial line comes from Scott's 1808 poem Marmion?

'Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practise to deceive' comes from the poem's last canto; the couplet is quoted so widely that it is often credited to Shakespeare by mistake.

Ivanhoe broke with Scott's earlier novels by being set where and when?

Ivanhoe is set in 12th-century England, in 1194; its opening has a jester point out that swine and ox keep their Saxon names in the field but turn into Norman pork and beef on the lord's table.

Who is the Norman king that Wilfred of Ivanhoe supports, to his Saxon father's fury?

Richard the Lionheart is the king Wilfred followed on crusade; his Saxon father disinherits him for that loyalty and for loving the Lady Rowena, a ward he meant for a Saxon prince.

In Ivanhoe, Isaac of York equips the disguised hero for a tournament held where?

Ashby-de-la-Zouch hosts the tournament where the 'Disinherited Knight' triumphs in armour lent by Isaac of York; made to unmask to receive his prize, he is revealed as Ivanhoe and found to be badly wounded.

Which Templar knight is the villain who pursues Rebecca in Ivanhoe?

Brian de Bois-Guilbert carries Rebecca off to Templestowe, then must fight as the Templars' champion at her trial; he falls dead in the saddle, untouched by his opponent's lance, a victim of his own warring passions.

Kenilworth (1821) builds up to a lavish reception of Elizabeth I by which nobleman?

The Earl of Leicester, Robert Dudley, did entertain the queen at Kenilworth in 1575; Scott ties the revels to the death of his hidden wife Amy Robsart, who had in fact died fifteen years earlier, in 1560.

Which monarch's 1822 visit to Scotland did Scott stage-manage as a tartan pageant?

George IV landed at Leith in August 1822, the first reigning monarch to visit Scotland in nearly two centuries; Scott had three weeks to stage the welcome and put the king himself into tartan, once a banned Highland dress.

What happened to Scott's baronetcy after his elder son's death in 1847?

It became extinct: Scott's elder son, the second baronet, died in 1847 leaving no heir to the title, and Abbotsford passed to the novelist's grandchildren.

What was the muddy nickname of the farm Scott bought in 1811 and renamed Abbotsford?

Clarty Hole, 'clarty' being Scots for dirty or muddy, was the local nickname of Cartley Hole farm; Scott bought it in 1811, when the lease on his previous home ran out, and gave it the grander name Abbotsford.

On which river does Abbotsford stand?

The Tweed flows past Abbotsford near Melrose; Scott began with a riverside farm of about a hundred acres and kept buying out his neighbours until the estate was many times that size.

What was the name of Scott's favourite dog, a large staghound?

Maida was a gift from the Highland chief Glengarry, who named the dog after the 1806 battle in which his brother led the 78th Highlanders to victory.

Scott's 1826 'Malachi Malagrowther' letters stopped a government plan to ban what in Scotland?

Banknotes under £5 were to be outlawed after a run of English bank failures; Scott's letters raised such a storm that the plan was dropped for Scotland, and Bank of Scotland notes later carried his portrait.

Which emperor was the subject of Scott's nine-volume 1827 biography?

Napoleon's life ran to nine volumes in 1827; Scott went to London to read the government's papers on the exile at St Helena and to Paris to question the emperor's old associates, and finished within a year.

In a last search for health in 1831, Scott sailed to the Mediterranean for a long stay in which Italian city?

Naples was Scott's base that winter, but the warm south did not mend him; a stroke on the journey home left him helpless, and he was carried back to Abbotsford to die in September 1832.

Where was Walter Scott buried in 1832?

Scott was buried at Dryburgh Abbey beside his wife; the right to lie there came through his father's mother, a Haliburton, whose family had once owned the abbey ruins.

Which American ceremonial tune takes its title from a boat song in Scott's The Lady of the Lake?

Hail to the Chief opens the boat song that greets the Highland chieftain Roderick Dhu in Canto II; set to music around 1812, it became the march that announces the president of the United States.

Which self-taught architect entered the Scott Monument design competition under a medieval Melrose Abbey mason's name?

George Meikle Kemp, a joiner with no formal training, entered as 'John Morvo' and won; he drowned in Edinburgh's Union Canal in March 1844, months before his monument was finished.

Which novelist grumbled in 1814 that Scott 'has no business to write novels, especially good ones'?

Jane Austen made the complaint in a letter that September, saying he had fame and profit enough as a poet; she vowed not to like his new novel if she could help it, then added, 'but fear I must'.

Which American author joked that Scott's romances were 'in great measure responsible' for the Civil War?

Mark Twain made the charge in Life on the Mississippi (1883), blaming a 'Sir Walter disease' of rank, duels and romantic make-believe for the character of the Old South.

Which composer's opera La donna del lago (1819) is based on Scott's The Lady of the Lake?

Rossini's La donna del lago dates from 1819; Schubert's famous Ave Maria began as a setting of Ellen's song from the same poem, and the Latin prayer was fitted to his tune later.

Which son-in-law of Scott published the Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott in 1837?

John Gibson Lockhart, husband of Scott's daughter Sophia, was attacked when it appeared for his candour about his father-in-law, yet his Memoirs is ranked among the great biographies in English.

Which Scottish duke and duchess, distant kin of the novelist, founded the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction?

Buccleuch: the 10th Duke and his wife set up the prize, first won by Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall in 2010; entries must be set at least sixty years in the past, echoing the subtitle of Scott's first novel.

Which Kelso schoolfriend became Scott's printer and secret partner, and fell with him in 1826?

James Ballantyne met Scott at Kelso's grammar school in 1783 and printed his first ballad collection there; Scott urged him to move the press to Edinburgh and lent him money to do it.

Which Tory periodical did Scott help establish in 1809 as a rival to the Whig Edinburgh journal?

The Quarterly Review was launched by John Murray in 1809 with Scott's backing; he had fallen out with the Whig Edinburgh Review, which had mauled his Marmion and argued for peace in the middle of the war.

Which is the only Scott novel set in his own nineteenth century?

Saint Ronan's Well, a tale of a Borders spa in Scott's own day, is the only one; his printer objected to a hint that the heroine had lost her virtue, and Scott, after long resistance, gave way.

Which sultan enters the Crusaders' camp disguised as a physician in Scott's novel The Talisman?

Saladin first meets a Scottish knight as an unnamed emir and befriends him after a drawn fight, then slips into the camp as a doctor and cures the fevered English king with the talisman of the title.

Which architectural style did Scott pioneer with his 'Conundrum Castle', Abbotsford?

Scottish Baronial towers and gables at Abbotsford started a craze for the style that country houses across Scotland copied, most famously Queen Victoria's Balmoral in the 1850s.

Where did Scott spend his summers from 1804 before buying the farm that became Abbotsford?

Ashestiel, a rented house about six miles from Selkirk, let Scott meet the rule that the county's sheriff live there part of the year; he wrote his best-known poems in it and left when the lease ran out in 1811.