Scott and the supernatural
This year marks the 250th anniversary of the birth of Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832), and we may look forward to a year of events and celebrations of the great writer and all his works – at least in some quarters.
A glorious multi-spired memorial to Scott stands proudly a short distance from Edinburgh Waverley railway station, like a ‘Shape of Things to Come’ style rocket. Begun in 1844, it was completed in August 1846 with a formal dedication ceremony attended by great numbers. It is the second largest memorial erected to any writer extant anywhere in the world (the largest is in Cuba), reflecting just how revered Scott once was in the eyes of earlier generations. The current visitor information plaque displayed at the monument pays tribute to him as the originator of “a new genre – the historical novel” and as the man who “almost single-handedly rehabilitated the image of Scotland”. A voluminous and indefatigable writer with an astonishing breadth of vision, Scott revived and invented many elements which are accepted as part of traditional Scottish identity and culture. It is a vision that has been happily adopted by much of the world ever since, though not without increasing controversy lately in both the UK and the United States.
Scott was a prime recorder and promoter of folklore before the term was coined
Scott was a prime recorder and promoter of folklore before the word was coined, retrieving the stories, ballads, and legends of the Borders from loss as oral traditions. In particular, he powerfully employed the topography of the landscape: “Narrow valleys… moors and crags – confined, desolate spots,” as a Professor Parsons put it in his Witchcraft and Demonology in Scott’s Fiction (1964), creating a seductive vision of a mysterious, haunted land.
Therefore, it may come as a surprise and disappointment to examine Scott’s own published in 1830, conceived as a series of letters addressed
