'Who makes the bridal bed, io Birdie, say truly?'? 'The gray-headed sexton That delves the grave duly.
'The glowworm o'er grave and stone Shall light thee steady, 15 The owl from the steeple sing, 'Welcome, proud lady.' '
1818
Wandering Willie's Tale 'Wandering Willie's Tale' forms part of Red- gauntlet (1824), Scott's most formally inventive novel and the last of his major fictions set in the Border Country. It is told by the blind fiddler Willie Steenson to a young gentleman of a romantic temperament, Darsie Latimer, who on a whim has joined him in his cross-country wandering and who subsequently writes down Willie's tale and sends it off in a letter to a friend in Edinburgh. (Redgauntlet begins, though after its first third does not continue, as a novel in letters, the eighteenth- century form that Scott revived for this book he called his 'Tale of the Eighteenth Century.') Like most of Scott's fiction, then, 'Wandering Willie's Tale' juxtaposes oral storytelling against written records, while also moving among several time frames: 1765, when Willie recounts to Darsie the tale he heard from his grandfather, the piper Steenie Steenson; the year?sometime in the early 1690s?when the events Steenie experienced occurred; and also the four decades prior to 1690, in which the central figure in the story, Sir Robert Redgauntlet, committed the wicked deeds for which, in the course of the tale, he will pay at last. The story likewise mixes fiction and history: Steenie's journey to the underworld, where he pursues the fictional Redgauntlet and thereby recovers a lost piece of his own past, gives Scott a device for making his reader acquainted with some central figures of seventeenth-century Scottish history.
We follow the text of the 'Magnum Opus' edition of his works, which Scott prepared in 1832 and in which he officially acknowledged authorship of his novels; we omit, however, the long historical notes he added to that edition.
Scott's simulation of Willie's Scots dialect becomes easier to understand when one
hears rather than reads it, so reading the tale aloud is advised. For tips on pronun
ciation of Scots, consult the recordings of 'Tam O' Shanter,' by Robert Burns, and
'Woo'd and married and a',' by Joanna Baillie, both at Norton Literature Online.
1. The 'fragment' of a song heard by the characters in The Heart of Midlothian who attend the insane gypsy Madge Wildfire on her deathbed (chap. 40).
.
WANDERING WILLIE'S TALE / 411 FROM REDGAUNTLET
Wandering Willie's Tale
Ye maun1 have heard of Sir Robert Redgauntlet of that Ilk, who lived in these parts before the dear years.2 The country will lang mind him; and our fathers used to draw breath thick if ever they heard him named. He was out wi' the Hielandmen in Montrose's time; and again he was in the hills wi' Glencairn in the saxteen hundred and Bfty- twa; and sae when King Charles the Second came in, wha was in sic3 favour as the Laird of Redgauntlet?4 He was knighted at Lonon court, wi' the King's ain sword; and being a redhot prelatist, he came down here, rampauging like a lion, with commissions of lieutenancy (and of lunacy, for what I ken5), to put down a the Whigs and Covenanters in the country. Wild wark they made of it, for the Whigs were as dour as the Cavaliers were fierce, and it was which should first tire the other. Redgauntlet was aye6 for the strong hand; and his name is kend as wide in the country as Claverhouse's or Tam DalyelPs.7 Glen, nor dargle,8 nor mountain, nor cave, could hide the puir hill-folk when Redgauntlet was out with bugle and bloodhound after them, as if they had been sae mony deer. And troth when they fand them, they didna mak muckle9 mair ceremony than a Hielandman wi' a roebuck? It was just, 'Will ye tak the test?'?if not, 'Make ready?present?fire!'?and there lay the recusant.1
Far and wide was Sir Robert hated and feared. Men thought he had a direct compact with Satan?that he was proof against steel?and that bullets happed aff his buff-coat like hailstanes from a hearth?that he had a mear that would turn a hare on the side of Carrifra-gawns2?and muckle to the same purpose, of whilk mair anon. The best blessing they wared3 on him was, 'Deil scowp wi' Redgauntlet!'4 He wasna a bad maister to his ain folk though, and was weel aneugh liked by his tenants; and as for the lackies and troopers that raid out wi' him to the persecutions, as the Whigs caa'd those killing times, they wad hae drunken themsells blind to his health at ony time.
1. Must. 2. Years of famine at the end of the 1690s. 'Of that ilk': from the estate that bears the same name
as the family. Willie's story concerns Redgauntlet
of Redgauntlet.
3. Such. 4. This opening establishes Redgauntlet's past as a 'prelatist'?supporter of what was, for most of
the 17th century, Scotland's established, Episcopal
Church?and a royalist. For four decades he was
the foe of the Covenanters?Presbyterians, often
members of Scotland's middle and lower classes,
who rejected episcopacy, the spiritual authority of
the bishops, and supported 'Covenants' to pre
serve the purity of their worship. The conflict
between the royalists and Covenanters began dur
ing the Civil War of the 1640s, when, on behalf of
Charles I, the earl of Montrose and his Highland
army battled the Presbyterian insurgents?known
as the Whigs?who had sided in the war with
