The Antiquary

Chapter 4

The supposed “originals” of certain persons in the tale have been topics of discussion. The character of Oldbuck, like most characters in fiction, is a combination of traits observed in various persons. Scott says, in a note to the Ashiestiel fragment of Autobiography, that Mr. George Constable, an old friend of his father’s, “had many of those peculiarities of character which long afterwards I tried to develop in the character of Jonathan Oldbuck.” Sir Walter, when a child, made Mr. Constable’s acquaintance at Prestonpans in 1777, where he explored the battle-field “under the learned guidance of Dalgetty.” Mr. Constable first introduced him to Shakspeare’s plays, and gave him his first German dictionary. Other traits may have been suggested by John Clerk of Eldin, whose grandfather was the hero of the story “Praetorian here, Praetorian there, I made it wi’ a flaughter spade.” Lockhart is no doubt right in thinking that Oldbuck is partly a caricature of Oldbuck’s creator,—Sir Walter indeed frankly accepted the kinship; and the book which he began on his own collection he proposed to style “Reliquim Trotcosienses; or, the Gabions of Jonathan Oldbuck.”

Another person who added a few points to Oldbuck was “Sandy Gordon,” author of the “Itinerarium Septentrionale” (1726), the very folio which Monkbarns carried in the dilatory coach to Queensferry. Gordon had been a student in the University of Aberdeen; he was an amateur in many arts, but antiquarianism was his favourite hobby. He was an acquaintance of Sir John Clerk of Eldin, the hero of the Praetorium. The words of Gordon in his “Itinerarium,” where he describes the battle of the Grampians, have supplied, or suggested, the speech of Monkbarns at the Kaim of Kinprunes. The great question was, Where is the Mons Grampius of Tacitus? Dismissing Camden’s Grantsbain, because he does not know where it is, Gordon says, “As for our Scotch Antiquaries, they are so divided that some will have it to be in the shire of Angus, or in the Mearns, some at the Blair of Athol in Perthshire, or Ardoch in Strathallan, and others at Inverpeffery.” Gordon votes for Strathern, “half a mile short of the Kirk of Comrie.” This spot is both at the foot of the Montes Grampii, “and boasts a Roman camp capable of holding an army fit to encounter so formidable a number as thirty thousand Caledonians. . . . Here is the Porta Decumana, opposite the Prcetoria, together with the dextra and sinistra gates,” all discovered by Sandy Gordon. “Moreover, the situation of the ground is so very exact with the description given by Tacitus, that in all my travels through Britain I never beheld anything with more pleasure. . . . Nor is it difficult, in viewing this ground, to say where the Covinarii, or Charioteers, stood. In fine, to an Antiquary, this is a ravishing scene.” He adds the argument “that Galgacus’s name still remains on this ground, for the moor on which the camp stood is called to this day Galdachan, or Galgachan Rosmoor.” All this lore Gordon illustrates by an immense chart of a camp, and a picture of very small Montes Grampii, about the size and shape of buns. The plate is dedicated to his excellency General Wade.

In another point Monkbapns borrows from Gordon. Sandy has a plate (page 20) of “The Roman Sacellum of Mars Signifer, vulgarly called ‘Arthur’s Oon.’ With regard to its shape, it is not unlike the famous Pantheon at Rome before the noble Portico was added to it by Marcus Agrippa.” Gordon agrees with Stukeley in attributing Arthur’s Oon to Agricola, and here Monkbarns and l***l adopt almost his words. “Time has left Julius Agricola’s very name on the place; . . . and if ever those initial letters J. A. M. P. M. P. T., mentioned by Sir Robert Sibbald, were engraven on a stone in this building, it may not be reckoned altogether absurd that they should bear this reading, JULIUS AGRICOLA MAGNUS PIETATIS MONUMENTUM POSUIT TEMPLUM; but this my reader may either accept or reject as he pleases. However, I think it may be as probably received as that inscription on Caligula’s Pharos in Holland, which having these following letters, C. C. P. F., is read Caius Caligula Pharum Fecit.” “This,” Monkbarns adds, “has ever been recorded as a sound exposition.”

The character of Edie Ochiltree, Scott himself avers to have been suggested by Andrew Gemmells, pleasantly described in the Introduction. Mr. Chambers, in “Illustrations of the Author of ‘Waverley,” clears up a point doubtful in Scott’s memory, by saying that Geimells really was a Blue-Gown. He rode a horse of his own, and at races was a bookmaker. He once dropped at Rutherford, in Teviotdale, a clue of yarn containing twenty guineas. Like Edie Ochiltree, he had served at Fontenoy. He died at Roxburgh Newton in 1793, at the age of one hundred and five, according to his own reckoning. “His wealth was the means of enriching a nephew in Ayrshire, who is now (1825) a considerable landholder there, and belongs to a respectable class of society.”

An old Irus of similar character patrolled Teviotdale, while Andrew Gemmells was attached to Ettrick and Yarrow. This was Blind Willie Craw. Willie was the Society Journal of Hawick, and levied blackmail on the inhabitants. He is thus described by Mr. Grieve, in the Diary already quoted: “He lived at Branxholme Town, in a free house set apart for the gamekeeper, and for many a year carried all the bread from Hawick used in my father’s family. He came in that way at breakfast-time, and got a wallet which he put it in, and returned at dinner-time with the ‘bawbee rows’ and two loaves. He laid the town of Hawick under contribution for bawbees, and he knew the history of every individual, and went rhyming through the town from door to door; and as he knew something against every one which they would rather wish should not be rehearsed, a bawbee put a stop to the paragraph which they wished suppressed. Willie Craw was the son of a gamekeeper of the duke’s, and enjoyed a free house at Branxholme Town as long as he lived.”

Had Burns ever betaken himself to the gaberlunzie’s life, which he speaks of in one of his poems as “the last o’t, the worst o’t,” he would have proved a much more formidable satirist than poor Willie Craw, the last of the “blind crowders.” Burns wrote, of course, in a spirit of reckless humour; but he could not, even in sport, have alluded to the life as “suited to his habits and powers,” had gaberlunzies been mere mendicants. In Herd’s collection of Ballads is one on the ancient Scottish beggar:—

In Scotland there lived a humble beggar,

He had nor house, nor hald, nor hame;

But he was well liked by ilk a body,

And they gave him sunkets to rax his wame.

A sieve fu’ o’ meal, a handfu’ o’ groats,

A dad o’ a bannock, or pudding bree,

Cauld porridge, or the lickings o’ plates,

Wad make him as blythe as a body could be.

The dress and trade of the beggar are said to have been adopted by James V. in his adventures, and tradition attributes to him a song, “The Gaberlunzie Man.”

One of Edie’s most charming traits is his readiness to “fight for his dish, like the laird for his land,” when a French invasion was expected. Scott places the date of “The False Alarm,” when he himself rode a hundred miles to join his regiment, on Feb. 2, 1804.

Lockhart gives it as an event of 1805 (vol. ii. p. 275). The occasion gave great pleasure to Scott, on account of the patriotism and courage displayed by all classes. “Me no muckle to fight for?” says Edie. “Isna there the country to fight for, and the burns I gang dandering beside, and the hearths o’ the gudewives that gie me my bit bread, and the bits o’ weans that come toddling to play wi’ me when I come about a landward town?” Edie had fought at Fontenoy, and was of the old school. Scott would have been less pleased with a recruit from St. Boswells, on the Tweed. This man was a shoemaker, John Younger, a very intelligent and worthy person, famous as an angler and writer on angling, who has left an account of the “False Alarm” in his memoirs. His view was that the people, unlike Edie, had nothing to fight for, that only the rich had any reason to be patriotic, that the French had no quarrel with the poor. In fact, Mr. Younger was a cosmopolitan democrat, and sneered at the old Border glories of the warlike days. Probably, however, he would have done his duty, had the enemy landed, and, like Edie, might have remembered the “burns he dandered beside,” always with a fishingrod in his hand.

The Editor cannot resist the temptation to add that the patriotic

lady mentioned in Scott’s note, who “would rather have seen her son

dead on that hearth than hear that he had been a horse’s length

behind his companions,” was his paternal great-grandmother, Mrs.

John Lang. Her husband, who died shortly afterwards, so that she was

a widow when Scott conversed with her, chanced to be chief

magistrate of Selkirk. His family was aroused late one night by the

sound of a carriage hurrying down the steep and narrow street. Lord

Napier was bringing, probably from Hawick, the tidings that the

beacons were ablaze. The town-bell was instantly rung, the

inhabitants met in the marketplace, where Scott’s statue now stands,

and the whole force, with one solitary exception, armed and marched

to Dalkeith. According to the gentleman whose horse and arms were

sent on to meet him, it was intended, if the French proved

victorious, that the population of the Border towns should abandon

their homes and retire to the hills.

No characters in the “Antiquary,” except Monkbarns and Edie Ochiltree, seem to have been borrowed from notable originals. The frauds of Dousterswivel, Scott says, are rendered plausible by “very late instances of the force of superstitious credulity to a much greater extent.” He can hardly be referring to the career of Cagliostro, but he may have had in his memory some unsuccessful mining speculations by Charles Earl of Traquair, who sought for lead and found little or none in Traquair hills. The old “Statistical Account of Scotland” (vol. xii. p. 370) says nothing about imposture, and merely remarks that “the noble family of Traquair have made several attempts to discover lead mines, and have found quantities of the ore of that metal, though not adequate to indemnify the expenses of working, and have therefore given up the attempt.” This was published in 1794, so twenty years had passed when “The Antiquary” was written. If there was here an “instance of superstitious credulity,” it was not “a very late instance.” The divining, or “dowsing,” rod of Dousterswivel still keeps its place in mining superstition and in the search for wells.

With “The Antiquary” most contemporary reviews of the novels lose their

interest. Their author had firmly established his position, at least till

“The Monastery” caused some murmurings. Even the “Quarterly Review” was

infinitely more genial in its reception of “The Antiquary” than of “Guy

Mannering.” The critic only grumbled at l***l’s feverish dreams, which,

he thought, showed an intention to introduce the marvellous. He

complained of “the dark dialect of Anglified Erse,” but found comfort in

the glossary appended. The “Edinburgh Review” pronounced the chapter on

the escape from the tide to be “I the very best description we have ever

met, inverse or in prose, in ancient or in modern writing.” No reviewer

seems to have noticed that the sun is made to set in the sea, on the east

coast of Scotland. The “Edinburgh,” however, declared that the Antiquary,

“at least in so far as he is an Antiquary,” was the chief blemish on the