The Lady of the Lake

Overview

Author

Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832), Edinburgh lawyer, antiquary and editor of the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, already famous for The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805) and Marmion (1808)

Published

Edinburgh, May 1810, by John Ballantyne and Co., first as a costly quarto, then reprinted again and again in cheaper formats

Sales

Among the fastest-selling poems of the age: some 25,000 copies within about eight months, by the usual estimate, an unheard-of figure for a long poem

Form

A verse romance in six cantos, mostly in rhyming octosyllabic couplets; each canto opens with Spenserian stanzas, and the narrative is broken by songs in other metres

Setting

Loch Katrine, the Trossachs and Stirling, in the reign of James V of Scotland (the 1530s); the action takes six days

Main characters

James Fitz-James, the Knight of Snowdoun (James V in disguise); Ellen Douglas; her banished father James of Douglas; Roderick Dhu of Clan Alpine; Malcolm Graeme; the minstrel Allan-bane

Famous songs

'Soldier, rest! thy warfare o'er', the boat song 'Hail to the Chief', the 'Coronach', and Ellen's hymn 'Ave Maria', set by Schubert in 1825 as Ellens dritter Gesang

Afterlives

Rossini's opera La donna del lago (Naples, 1819); 'Hail to the Chief' became the musical salute of the President of the United States; a tourist rush to Loch Katrine that never stopped

Central conflict

Highland clan against Lowland crown, worked out through a love triangle, a feud and a single combat that ends in royal mercy

Context

Walter Scott was the most successful poet in Britain when he published The Lady of the Lake in May 1810. Trained as an advocate and serving as a clerk of the Court of Session in Edinburgh, he had spent his youth collecting ballads in the Borders, published them as the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (1802–03), and turned that learning into the verse romances The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805) and Marmion (1808). The new poem was issued by John Ballantyne, whose firm Scott himself secretly backed. It sold faster than any poem before it: contemporaries spoke of 20,000 to 25,000 copies within the first year, and modern book historians confirm that no long poem of the period reached so many buyers so quickly (Lockhart 1837) (St Clair 2004) (Sutherland 1995).

Scott set the story in country he had known since boyhood: Loch Katrine and the wooded pass of the Trossachs, on the edge between the Lowland plain of Stirling and the Highlands of Perthshire. He revisited the district in 1809 to check his topography, and is said to have tested whether a rider could cover the distance from Loch Vennachar to Stirling in the time the plot allows. The accuracy and beauty of the descriptions turned the region into a destination. Visitors arrived with the poem in hand, boatmen showed them 'Ellen's Isle', and the Trossachs became one of the first great sites of literary tourism in Britain (Durie 2003) (Gold 1995) (Rigney 2012).

The historical frame is the reign of James V (1513–1542), who in 1528 escaped from the control of his stepfather Archibald Douglas, Earl of Angus, and banished the house of Douglas. Scott invents a member of that family, James of Douglas, once lord of Bothwell, who lives in hiding with his daughter Ellen under the protection of the outlawed Highland chief Roderick Dhu. Scott also drew on the popular tradition that James V liked to wander his kingdom in disguise, the 'Gudeman of Ballengeich' of folk tales. In his notes he explains the Highland customs used in the plot: the fiery cross that summoned a clan to arms, the divination called the Taghairm, and the coronach or funeral lament (Johnson 1970) (Robertson 2012).

The poem belongs to the long Romantic reimagining of the Scottish Highlands that began with James Macpherson's Ossian poems in the 1760s. After the defeat of the Jacobite rising in 1746 the clans had been disarmed and their society broken up; by 1810 Highland regiments were fighting for Britain against Napoleon, and the Highlands could be presented as a land of heroic, picturesque and safely past violence. Scott offers a Highland chief of real grandeur, but his story ends with the chief dead and the king's peace restored. Readers have argued ever since about whether this is an elegy for a lost culture or a story that makes its loss look natural (Womack 1989) (Trumpener 1997) (Davis 1998).

The Lady of the Lake marked the height of Scott's fame as a poet. Rokeby (1813) and The Lord of the Isles (1815) sold well but less spectacularly, and from 1812 Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage drew away the public's excitement. Scott turned to prose fiction with Waverley (1814), where many of the poem's concerns, especially Highland and Lowland, loyalty and rebellion, return on a larger scale. The poem itself lived on in music, opera, painting and school anthologies throughout the nineteenth century, and its songs travelled further than its story (Hayden 1970) (Rigney 2012) (Pittock 2007).

Plot overview

A stag hunted from Glenartney leads a lone huntsman deep into the Trossachs, where his horse dies under him. Lost on the shore of Loch Katrine, he blows his horn and is answered by a girl in a skiff, Ellen, who takes him to a hidden lodge on an island. He calls himself James Fitz-James, Knight of Snowdoun. Next day he leaves, and we learn that Ellen's father is the banished James of Douglas, sheltering with his kinsman Roderick Dhu, chief of Clan Alpine. Roderick wants to marry Ellen and to bind Douglas to a Highland rising against the king; Douglas refuses, and Ellen loves the young Malcolm Graeme. Roderick and Malcolm quarrel, and Malcolm leaves the island as an enemy of the clan.

Roderick sends the fiery cross through his country to summon his men. Brian, a half-mad hermit, consecrates it and later performs a divination which declares that the side which spills the first enemy blood will win. Douglas leaves for Stirling to give himself up and so save his friends, while Ellen and the minstrel Allan-bane hide in a cave. Fitz-James returns to ask Ellen to fly with him; she tells him that she loves another, and he gives her a ring that will win any favour from the king. On his way back he is betrayed by his guide, sees the mad Lowland captive Blanche of Devan killed by an arrow meant for him, and spends the night by the fire of a Highlander who promises to lead him safely out of the clan's land.

At dawn the Highlander leads him towards the edge of Clan Alpine's territory, revealing on the way that he is Roderick Dhu and that his warriors are hidden in every bush. At Coilantogle ford the two fight. Fitz-James wins and has the wounded chief carried to Stirling. Douglas, meanwhile, wins the prizes at the Stirling games and then gives himself up to the guards. A royal army marches against Clan Alpine in the Trossachs.

Ellen comes to Stirling Castle with the ring. In prison Roderick dies listening to Allan-bane's account of the battle of Beal' an Duine. Ellen is led into the royal presence by Fitz-James, and finds that he alone keeps his cap on: the Knight of Snowdoun is the King of Scotland. James pardons Douglas, restores him to favour, frees Malcolm and gives Ellen to him. The poem closes with a farewell to the minstrel's harp.

Part by part

Characters

The Douglases and their friends

Ellen Douglas

The 'Lady of the Lake', daughter of the banished James of Douglas, living in hiding on an island in Loch Katrine. She is graceful, loyal and quick, gentle in her songs but firm in her choices: she refuses Roderick, tells Fitz-James honestly that she loves Malcolm, and goes to Stirling to plead for her father. Her journey from the island to the court links the Highland and Lowland halves of the poem.

James of Douglas

Ellen's father, once lord of Bothwell, exiled with the rest of the house of Douglas by James V. Of great strength and dignity, he shelters with Roderick but will not join his rebellion or force his daughter to marry him. He gives himself up at Stirling to protect his friends, and is pardoned and restored at the end. He embodies the poem's ideal of loyal suffering.

Malcolm Graeme

A young nobleman of the Graemes, Ellen's beloved and a protégé of Douglas. His quarrel with Roderick in Canto II makes him an enemy of Clan Alpine; he swims from the island rather than accept the chief's safe-conduct. Held prisoner at Stirling, he is freed by the king and given Ellen's hand. He is the least developed of the three suitors.

Allan-bane

The old minstrel of the Douglas family, white-haired and devoted. He tells the family's history, warns Ellen about Roderick, sings ballads and lays, and witnesses Roderick's death, for which he sings the lament. He is Scott's figure of the bard, the voice of tradition and memory within the poem.

Clan Alpine

Roderick Dhu

Black Roderick, chief of Clan Alpine, outlawed for killing a knight at the royal court and famous for raids on the Lowlands. Proud, passionate and brave, he loves Ellen jealously and hopes to unite the clans against the king. He keeps his word as a host even to an enemy, fights Fitz-James at Coilantogle ford and dies a prisoner at Stirling. Many readers find him the most vivid character in the poem.

Lady Margaret

Roderick's mother and the matron of the island lodge. She receives the guest in Canto I and favours her son's suit for Ellen.

Brian the Hermit

A wild, half-mad monk said to be the child of a mortal woman and a spirit, living in the wilderness. He makes the fiery cross and pronounces the curse on those who ignore it, and performs the Taghairm, whose prophecy misleads Roderick. He mingles Christian rite with pagan superstition.

Malise

Roderick's henchman, who carries the fiery cross on the first stage of its journey and later exchanges news with Norman in the gathered army.

Angus, Norman and Mary

Clansfolk who receive the fiery cross. Angus leaves his father Duncan's funeral to carry it; Norman of Armandave leaves his bride Mary at the church door. Their sacrifices show what the summons demands of ordinary lives.

Red Murdoch

Roderick's man, who serves as Fitz-James's guide and tries to lead him to his death. His arrow kills Blanche of Devan; he is killed by Fitz-James, and so becomes the 'foremost foeman' of the prophecy.

The King and the Lowlands

James Fitz-James, Knight of Snowdoun

The lost huntsman of Canto I, really James V of Scotland travelling in disguise; Snowdoun is an old poetic name for Stirling. Courteous, brave, impulsive and drawn to Ellen, he accepts her refusal generously, defeats Roderick in single combat, and at the end reveals himself and uses his power to forgive and reconcile. He is Scott's portrait of the ideal king.

Blanche of Devan

A Lowland girl carried off in Roderick's raid on her wedding day, when her bridegroom was killed. Driven mad, she wanders the Highlands singing. She warns Fitz-James of Murdoch's treachery and is killed by the arrow meant for him; the knight vows to avenge her.

John of Brent

A rough soldier in the guard-room at Stirling who sings a drinking song and, moved by Ellen's distress, treats her with kindness. He represents the mercenary world of the royal army.

Themes

Highland and Lowland

The poem is built on the contrast between two Scotlands, divided by the line of hills at the edge of the Trossachs. The Highlands are wild, beautiful, poor and governed by clan loyalty; the Lowlands are fertile, ordered and governed by the crown. Scott gives each side a voice. Roderick's speech in Canto V presents the Highland raids as the recovery of land seized long ago, while Blanche of Devan stands for the Lowlanders who suffer them.

The plot moves steadily from Highland to Lowland, from the island to Stirling Castle, and resolves the conflict on Lowland terms. The Highland chief dies; the Douglas family returns to court; the Highland world survives only in song and memory. Critics read this structure as Scott's characteristic way of honouring a culture while presenting its absorption into a larger state as inevitable (Womack 1989) (Davis 1998).

Loyalty, honour and the law of hospitality

Almost every important choice in the poem is a test of loyalty. Douglas is loyal to a king who has wronged him; Roderick to his clan and his feud; the clansmen to the summons of the cross; Ellen to her father and her love. The Highland law of hospitality, which protects any guest under one's roof or at one's fire, binds even enemies, so that Roderick guides and protects the man he means to fight.

Scott admires these codes but shows their conflicts. Roderick's honour as a host and his honour as a chief pull in opposite directions, and his refusal to yield to a better swordsman costs him his life. The poem's resolution makes loyalty to the crown the supreme value, but it is a crown that recognises and rewards the honour of its subjects (Lincoln 2007).

Disguise and recognition

The hero spends the poem in disguise, and his true identity is the secret on which the story turns. Fitz-James's courtly manners, the royal ring and his promises of influence at Stirling are clues an attentive reader can follow. The disguise allows the king to see his kingdom from below, to be judged as a man rather than as a monarch, and to win Ellen's trust honestly.

The motif belongs to a long tradition of tales about kings who wander among their people, and Scott connects it to the Scottish legends of James V. The final recognition turns all that has happened into a demonstration of royal benevolence, in which the king's private experience becomes the basis for public mercy (Johnson 1970).

Song, minstrelsy and memory

The poem is framed by an address to the Harp of the North and filled with songs: lullabies, a boat song, laments, a hymn, ballads and a battle piece. Scott had built his career on collecting and imitating ballads, and here he uses song to vary the rhythm of the poem and to voice feelings that the narrative keeps in reserve. Allan-bane, the bard, is both a character and an image of the poet himself.

Song is also the poem's way of remembering a vanished world. The coronach, the boat song and the lament for Roderick preserve Highland life in the very act of mourning it. Katie Trumpener's account of 'bardic nationalism' describes how Romantic writers made the bard a symbol of national memory, and The Lady of the Lake is one of the most successful examples (Trumpener 1997) (Robertson 2012).

Landscape and the picturesque

Scott's descriptions of Loch Katrine, Ben Venue and the Trossachs are exact enough to be followed on the ground, and the landscape is treated almost as a character. The poem teaches its reader to see the scenery in the language of the picturesque and the sublime: crags, torrents, mist and the sudden view of the lake.

That way of seeing had consequences. The poem made the region famous and helped create the Romantic image of the Highlands as a place to be visited and admired, an image on which the Scottish tourist industry was later built (Durie 2003) (Gold 1995).

Motifs

The hunt

The poem begins with a stag hunt and keeps returning to it. The king is a huntsman, Douglas is compared to a stricken deer, his hound Lufra pulls down the stag at the Stirling games, and the captive in the tower sings of his longing to hunt in the green forest. Hunting links royal sport to pursuit and capture, and suggests that the political conflict is itself a kind of chase.

Hospitality

The guest who is asked no name, the meal shared on the island, the plaid shared at the campfire: the code of hospitality recurs at key moments and protects strangers on both sides. It is the Highland virtue the poem praises most consistently, even in Roderick.

Interpolated songs

Nearly every canto contains songs in metres different from the narrative couplets. They slow the action, vary the music of the verse and often foreshadow events, as Ellen's lullaby for the soldier anticipates the rest that Roderick finds only in death.

Horns and calls

The hunter's horn on the shore of Loch Katrine, the pipes of Roderick's galleys, the whistle that raises the clan from the heather, and the bugle-horn whose silence decides the battle: sounds summon, reveal and decide the action throughout the poem.

Symbols

The Harp of the North

The harp hanging on the witch-elm in the introduction stands for Scottish minstrelsy and the poetry of the past, silent until the poet wakes it. The poem's final stanzas send it back to its tree, framing the whole story as a song from a vanished world.

The fiery cross

A cross of yew, scorched and dipped in blood, carried from hand to hand to summon the clan. It stands for the absolute claim of the chief on his people and the fusion of religion, kinship and war in Highland society.

The ring

Fitz-James's gift to Ellen, a pledge from the king that grants one request. It is a token of the giver's hidden identity and the means by which the Lowland court and the Highland refugee are finally brought together.

The pine of Clan Alpine

The evergreen pine on Roderick's banner, praised in 'Hail to the Chief', stands for the endurance and pride of the clan; the song's hope that it will flourish is cut short by the outcome of the poem.

Critical debates

Romanticising the Highlands

Scott's poem is a central text in the making of the Romantic Highlands, a process that began with Macpherson's Ossian and continued through the tartan pageantry of George IV's visit to Edinburgh in 1822, which Scott himself stage-managed. Hugh Trevor-Roper's essay in The Invention of Tradition, and his posthumous book The Invention of Scotland, argued that much of what passes for ancient Highland culture, from the kilt to the clan tartans, was invented or embellished in this period (Hobsbawm 1983) (Trevor-Roper 2008) (Stafford 1988).

Peter Womack showed how eighteenth-century ideas of 'improvement' and 'romance' combined to make the Highlands appear at once backward and picturesque, a land whose violence could be enjoyed once it was safely past. Critics of 'tartanry' blame Scott for turning a real society into scenery; others reply that he took Highland grievances seriously and gave them memorable expression (Womack 1989) (McCracken-Flesher 2005).

Union, loyalty and Jacobite memory

The poem is set in the sixteenth century, but it was written a century after the Union of 1707 and two generations after the last Jacobite rising. A plot in which a rebellious Highland chief is defeated, a wronged noble refuses to rebel, and a king forgives his enemies can be read as a parable of reconciliation within Britain. Leith Davis reads Scott's work as one of many literary 'negotiations' of the Union, in which Scottish difference is preserved within a British identity (Davis 1998).

Written during the Napoleonic wars, the poem also belongs to a moment when Highland soldiers were celebrated as defenders of Britain. Simon Bainbridge places Scott's martial romances in the context of the war, as poems that made historical combat thrilling and patriotic for readers at home (Bainbridge 2003).

The songs and the ballad revival

Scott came to verse romance through ballad collecting, and the interpolated songs are a large part of the poem's appeal. Some critics have seen them as the best poetry in it, free of the occasional slackness of the narrative couplets. They also travelled on their own: set by Schubert, sung in drawing rooms and adapted for the stage, they made the poem known to people who never read it through (Pittock 2007).

Katie Trumpener argues that the Romantic bard, the remembering singer of a defeated nation, became a key figure in British and Irish writing of the period. Allan-bane's role, and the many laments in the poem, fit this pattern: the poem presents itself as the last song of a dying tradition, sung for a modern audience (Trumpener 1997).

The disguised king and benevolent monarchy

The ending makes the king the poem's real hero. Some readers have found this politically comfortable to the point of complacency: a Tory poet's fantasy of a monarch who personally repairs every injustice. Others point out that Scott shows James as impulsive and fallible, and that the court and the Stirling crowd are criticised as sharply as the Highlanders (Sutherland 1995) (Lincoln 2007).

Ian Duncan's study of Scott and Romantic Edinburgh shows how his fiction imagines the modern state as a framework within which older loyalties can be preserved as sentiment. The Lady of the Lake already displays this pattern, in which history's losers receive pardon and a place in the story rather than power (Duncan 2007).

Popularity, reputation and Byron

The poem's success was a phenomenon of the book trade. William St Clair's study of reading in the Romantic period shows how exceptional Scott's sales were and how they shaped the market for long narrative poems. Reviewers such as Francis Jeffrey in the Edinburgh Review praised its vividness and energy while finding fault with its looseness of style; the range of contemporary responses is gathered in John O. Hayden's Critical Heritage volume (St Clair 2004) (Hayden 1970).

Scott's fame as a poet was eclipsed by Byron after 1812, and later critics have tended to treat his verse as a prelude to the novels. Edgar Johnson and John Sutherland describe this turn in his career, and more recent criticism has begun to reconsider the poems on their own terms, as experiments in popular historical narrative (Johnson 1970) (Sutherland 1995) (Robertson 2012).

Ellen as heroine

Ellen can be read as a conventional romance heroine, beautiful, musical and passive, whose fate is decided by the men who desire her. But she also makes some of the most consequential choices in the plot: she refuses Roderick and Fitz-James, keeps faith with Malcolm, and makes the journey to Stirling that leads to the resolution.

Ina Ferris has shown how Scott's literary authority was shaped by the gendered terms of contemporary reviewing, which associated romance with women readers and history with masculine seriousness. Ellen's place at the centre of a poem about war and politics, and the poem's large female readership, make it a useful test case for that argument (Ferris 1991).

Afterlives: tourism, music and memory

Ann Rigney's study of Scott's afterlives traces how his works lived on in places, objects, performances and commemorations. The Lady of the Lake is a striking case: the Trossachs became a tourist route, Loch Katrine acquired its 'Ellen's Isle', and a steamer named after the author still sails the lake. Historians of Scottish tourism treat the poem as a turning point (Rigney 2012) (Durie 2003) (Gold 1995).

Its music travelled even further. Rossini's La donna del lago (1819) was among the first operas based on Scott; Schubert's songs of 1825 made the 'Ave Maria' world-famous; and 'Hail to the Chief', set by James Sanderson for a London stage version, crossed to the United States and became the official salute to the President (Pittock 2007) (Kirk 1986).

Key passages

Questions for study

1. How does the opening stag hunt prepare for the rest of the poem?

   Consider the crossing from Lowland to Highland, the comparison of Douglas to a stricken deer, and the hunting images in Cantos V and VI.

2. Compare Ellen's three suitors. What does each represent for Scotland?

   Think of Roderick's clan, Malcolm's Lowland nobility and Fitz-James's crown, and why the poem gives Ellen to Malcolm with the king's blessing.

3. Is Roderick Dhu a villain, a tragic hero or both?

   Weigh the Holyrood killing and the raid on Devan against his hospitality, his speech about the 'fertile plains' and his death in Canto VI.

4. What part do the songs play in the poem?

   Look at what each song expresses that the narrative does not, and at how the songs vary the metre and pace.

5. How does the fiery cross sequence in Canto III show both the strength and the cost of the clan system?

   Follow the cross from Brian's curse through Duncan's funeral and Norman's wedding.

6. Why does Scott keep the king's identity secret until Canto VI, and what clues does he give?

   Look at the ring, Fitz-James's promises about Stirling, and the way the final recognition is staged.

7. How does the prophecy of the Taghairm work in the plot?

   Ask who is the 'foremost foeman' to die, and what the misunderstanding says about Roderick and his clan.

8. What is the function of Blanche of Devan?

   Consider her as a Lowland victim of Highland raiding, as a figure of madness and truth, and as the motive for Fitz-James's vow.

9. Does the poem mourn the Highland world or justify its end?

   Think about the laments, the fate of Roderick, the king's mercy, and the critical debate about 'tartanry' and the Union.

10. Why do you think the poem drew so many tourists to the Trossachs?

    Consider the precision of the descriptions, the use of real place names, and the Romantic taste for picturesque scenery.

Further reading

• Bainbridge, Simon. British Poetry and the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars: Visions of Conflict. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.
• Davis, Leith. Acts of Union: Scotland and the Literary Negotiation of the British Nation, 1707–1830. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998.
• Duncan, Ian. Scott's Shadow: The Novel in Romantic Edinburgh. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007.
• Durie, Alastair J. Scotland for the Holidays: Tourism in Scotland c. 1780–1939. East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 2003.
• Ferris, Ina. The Achievement of Literary Authority: Gender, History, and the Waverley Novels. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991.
• Gold, John R., and Margaret M. Gold. Imagining Scotland: Tradition, Representation and Promotion in Scottish Tourism since 1750. Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1995.
• Hayden, John O., ed. Scott: The Critical Heritage. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1970.
• Hobsbawm, Eric, and Terence Ranger, eds. The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
• Johnson, Edgar. Sir Walter Scott: The Great Unknown. 2 vols. New York: Macmillan; London: Hamish Hamilton, 1970.
• Kirk, Elise K. Music at the White House: A History of the American Spirit. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986.
• Lincoln, Andrew. Walter Scott and Modernity. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007.
• Lockhart, John Gibson. Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Bart. 7 vols. Edinburgh: Robert Cadell; London: John Murray and Whittaker, 1837–38.
• McCracken-Flesher, Caroline. Possible Scotlands: Walter Scott and the Story of Tomorrow. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.
• Pittock, Murray, ed. The Reception of Sir Walter Scott in Europe. London: Continuum, 2007.
• Rigney, Ann. The Afterlives of Walter Scott: Memory on the Move. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.
• Robertson, Fiona, ed. The Edinburgh Companion to Sir Walter Scott. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012.
• Stafford, Fiona J. The Sublime Savage: A Study of James Macpherson and the Poems of Ossian. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1988.
• St Clair, William. The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
• Sutherland, John. The Life of Walter Scott: A Critical Biography. Oxford: Blackwell, 1995.
• Trevor-Roper, Hugh. The Invention of Scotland: Myth and History. Edited by Jeremy J. Cater. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008.
• Trumpener, Katie. Bardic Nationalism: The Romantic Novel and the British Empire. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997.
• Womack, Peter. Improvement and Romance: Constructing the Myth of the Highlands. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1989.