In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill;
Ne’er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!
(Castelnuovo-Tedesco)
SIR WALTER SCOTT
(1771–1832)
Rooted though [Scott] was in the Scottish Borders, whose every valley and stream, castle and peel-tower he knew so well, he was a cosmopolitan, a European too. We should not forget that long before he became known in Europe, years before he decided to abandon the law for literature, Scott had studied not only Ossian (whom he had the taste to despise) and Percy (whom he revered), but the romantic literature of Europe; that he learned Italian to read, every year, Ariosto and Boiardo; that he pored over Bartholin and studied Old Norse in order to read the Scandinavian Sagas; and that as a young lawyer in Edinburgh he learned German in order to enjoy the poets of the Sturm und Drang; that his earliest published works were translations of Bürger’s poems and Goethe’s Götz von Berlichingen.
HUGH TREVOR-ROPER: The Romantic Movement and the Study of History (1969)
Scott, the son of an Edinburgh lawyer, attended Edinburgh University, and practised as an advocate in the city from 1792 to 1806. He suffered as a child from infantile paralysis, was lame for his entire life and spent many months convalescing at Kelso, where he absorbed the oral tradition and also met, as schoolmates, the Ballantyne brothers, who later managed an important printing and publishing business, which Scott supported financially. From 1799 to his death in 1832 he was Sheriff of Selkirkshire and simultaneously, from 1806 to 1830, Clerk to the Court of Session. When Ballantyne and other firms in which Scott had invested suffered extreme financial hardship, he lost much of his wealth and was compelled at the end of his life to work at a prodigious pace to repay his creditors.
He married Margaret Charlotte Carpenter (Charpentier) on Christmas Day 1795 and they remained together until her death in 1826. His first publication dates from 1797, anonymous translations of G. A. Bürger’s ‘Der wilde Jäger’ and ‘Lenore’ – the latter set by César Franck as a symphonic poem (Le Chasseur maudit) in 1882. It was at this time that he translated Goethe’s Götz von Berlichingen and other German plays. But it was with The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805) that his career was truly launched. John Ballantyne & Co., of which he was a partner, now published a sequence of his long poems: Marmion (1808), The Lady of the Lake (1810), Rokeby and The Bridal of Triermain (1813), The Lord of the Isles (1815) and Harold the Dauntless (1817). It was on the strength of these lyrical romances that he was offered the laureateship – which he declined, recommending Southey in his stead. When Archibald Constable took him under his wing after John Ballantyne & Co. had got into financial difficulties, Scott turned his attention to the novel, partly, perhaps, to excel in a genre that Byron – who eclipsed him as a poet – had not mastered. Historical romances now flowed from his pen in astonishing profusion – and as a matter of necessity after 1826, when James Ballantyne & Co. became involved in the bankruptcy of Constable & Co., thus saddling Scott with a debt of well over £100,000, which he now strove to repay: Waverley (1814), Guy Mannering (1815), The Antiquary (1816), The Black Dwarf and Old Mortality (1816), Rob Roy (1817), The Heart of Midlothian (1818), The Bride of Lammermoor (1819), Ivanhoe (1819), Kenilworth (1821), The Pirate (1821), The Fortunes of Nigel (1822), Peveril of the Peak (1823), Quentin Durward (1823), Redgauntlet (1824), The Betrothed and The Talisman (1825), Woodstock (1826), Chronicles of the Canongate (second series): Saint Valentine’s Day, or The Fair Maid of Perth (1828), Anne of Geierstein (1829), Count Robert of Paris and Castle Dangerous (1831).
Scott’s poems and historical romances enjoyed enormous popularity across Europe in the early years of the nineteenth century and were frequently adapted as songs and operas. Fascination for Scotland was in the air: Goethe had been bowled over by Herder’s translations of Border Ballads (from Percy’s Reliques) and would often recite ‘Edward’ at parties; and James Macpherson hoodwinked the literary establishment in 1760 with the publication of his Fragments of Ancient Poetry Collected in the Highlands of Scotland and Translated from the Gaelic or Erse Language, claiming that they were based on the authentic writings of the Celtic harpist Ossian. Depictions of Scotland, which was then regarded as a far-flung country on the very edge of Europe, exercised a major influence on the Romantic Movement, and the symphonic poems and operas inspired by Scott’s historical novels are legion. Ivanhoe was especially popular as a model for libretti, and Scott himself saw Ivanhoé, a pastiche to a medley of Rossini’s music, when he visited Paris in 1826. ‘It was superbly got up’, he wrote, ‘but it was an opera, and, of course, the story sadly mangled, and the dialogue, in part, nonsense.’ Other Scott novels to inspire operas include Waverley (G. Rodwell), Guy Mannering (Henry Bishop, Boieldieu’s La Dame blanche), The Antiquary (Bishop), Old Mortality (Bellini’s I Puritani), Rob Roy (Flotow’s Rob-Roy), The Heart of Midlothian (Bishop and MacCunn’s Jeanie Deans), The Bride of Lammermoor (Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor), The Legend of Montrose (Bishop), Ivanhoe (Marschner’s Der Templer und die Jüdin, Nicolai’s Il Templario and Sullivan), Kenilworth (Auber’s Leicester, Donizetti’s Elisabetta al Castello di Kenilworth), The Fortunes of Nigel (Bishop), The Talisman (Bishop) and The Fair Maid of Perth (Bizet’s La Jolie Fille de Perth).
Scott’s lyrical romances also inspired composers as diverse as Max Bruch, Glinka, MacCunn, Rossini, Schubert, Sullivan and Haydn Wood. Rossini’s La donna del lago was adapted by Rossini from The Lady of the Lake in 1819; and Schubert became interested in the same work in early 1825. How much Schubert struggled in his lifetime to win public acceptance for his Lieder is illustrated by the recital tour he made of Upper Austria in 1825 with Johann Michael Vogl. They often performed Ellens Gesänge (translated by Adam Storck from The Lady of the Lake (1810)), composed that spring, but though the songs represented a great triumph, the success was only parochial, and in a letter to his parents of late July 1825 Schubert wrote that he intended to have the songs printed with Scott’s original words, so that he might ‘become better known in England’. Schubert composed eight solo songs from Scott’s works: ‘Gesang der Norna’ (The Pirate); ‘Lied der Anna Lyle’ (A Legend of Montrose); ‘Raste Krieger, Krieg ist aus’, ‘Jäger, ruhe von der Jagd’, ‘Ave Maria’, ‘Lied des gefangenen Jägers’, ‘Normans Gesang’ (The Lady of the Lake), and ‘Romanze des Richard Löwenherz’ (Ivanhoe). Also from The Lady of the Lake are ‘Bootgesang’, D835, for two tenors and two basses, and ‘Coronach’, D836, for three-part women’s chorus. Schubert described to his brother Ferdinand the impact made by the performances of the Scott-Lieder on the audience: ‘Die Art und Weise, wie Vogl singt und ich accompagniere, wie wir in einem solchen Augenblicke Eins zu sein scheinen, ist diesen Leuten etwas ganz Neues, Unerhörtes’ (‘The way in which Vogl sings and I accompany, and how we seem in such a moment to be one, is for these people something quite new, quite unheard of’). The Liederabend had been born.
FRANZ SCHUBERT: Songs from Scott’s The Lady of the Lake
[translated as Das Fräulein vom See by Adam Storck]
ELLENS GESÄNGE (1825/1826)
‘Soldier rest! thy warfare o’er’ is sung by Ellen Douglas to deflect King James V (disguised as James Fitz-James) from enquiring about the whereabouts of her father, whom the King has banished, along with the entire Douglas clan, in an attempt to suppress the powerful Border chiefs. ‘Huntsman, rest! thy chase is done’ is simply a continuation of the first song, which Ellen sings after a pause for breath. ‘Ave Maria!’ is sung by Ellen, who joins her father in his rocky mountain retreat to hide from King James’s soldiers.
Song (Canto 1, XXXI)
[translated as ‘Raste Krieger, Krieg ist aus’, D837, by Adam Storck]
‘Soldier rest! thy warfare o’er,
Sleep the sleep that knows not breaking;
Dream of battled
fields no more,
Days of danger, nights of waking.
In our isle’s enchanted hall,
Hands unseen thy couch are strewing,
Fairy strains of music fall,
Every sense in slumber dewing.
Soldier rest! thy warfare o’er,
Dream of fighting fields no more:
Sleep the sleep that knows not breaking,
Morn of toil, nor night of waking.
‘No rude sound shall reach thine ear,
Armour’s clang, or war-steed champing,
Trump nor pibroch1 summon here
Mustering clan, or squadron tramping.
Yet the lark’s shrill fife may come
At the day-break from the fallow,
And the bittern sound his drum,
Booming from the sedgy shallow.
Ruder sounds shall none be near,
Guards nor warders challenge here,
Here’s no war-steed’s neigh and champing,
Shouting clans, or squadrons stamping.’
(MacCunn, Somervell)
Song continued (Canto 1, XXXII)
[translated as ‘Jäger, ruhe von der Jagd’, D838, by Adam Storck]
‘Huntsman, rest! thy chase is done;
While our slumbrous spells assail ye,
Dream not, with the rising sun,
Bugles here shall sound reveillé.
Sleep! the deer is in his den;
Sleep! thy hounds are by thee lying;
Sleep! nor dream in yonder glen,
How thy gallant steed lay dying.
Huntsman, rest! thy chase is done,
Think not of the rising sun,
For at dawning to assail ye,
Here no bugles sound reveillé.’
Hymn to the Virgin (Canto III, XXIX)
[translated as ‘Ave Maria’, D839, by Adam Storck]
Ave Maria! maiden mild!
Listen to a maiden’s prayer!
Thou canst hear though from the wild,
Thou canst save amid despair.
Safe may we sleep beneath thy care,
Though banish’d, outcast, and reviled –
Maiden! hear a maiden’s prayer;
Mother, hear a suppliant child!
Ave Maria!
Ave Maria! undefiled!
The flinty couch we now must share
Shall seem with down of eider piled,
If thy protection hover there.
The murky cavern’s heavy air
Shall breathe of balm if thou hast smiled;
Then, Maiden! hear a maiden’s prayer;
Mother, list a suppliant child!
Ave Maria!
Ave Maria! stainless styled!
Foul demons of the earth and air,
From this their wonted haunt exiled,
Shall flee before thy presence fair.
We bow us to our lot of care,
Beneath thy guidance reconciled;
Hear for a maid a maiden’s prayer,
And for a father hear a child!
Ave Maria!
(Bishop, Holst, MacCunn, Fanny Mendelssohn)
FRANZ SCHUBERT: Songs from Scott’s The Lady of the Lake
Lay of the imprisoned huntsman (Canto VI, XXIV)
[translated as ‘Lied des gefangenen Jägers’, D843, by Adam Storck] (1825/1826)
‘My hawk is tired of perch and hood,
My idle greyhound loathes his food,
My horse is weary of his stall,
And I am sick of captive thrall.1
I wish I were, as I have been,
Hunting the hart in forest green,
With bended bow and bloodhound free,
For that’s the life is meet for me.
I hate to learn the ebb of time
From yon dull steeple’s drowsy chime,
Or mark it as the sunbeams crawl,
Inch after inch, along the wall.
The lark was wont my matins ring,
The sable rook my vespers sing;
These towers, although a king’s they be,
Have not a hall of joy for me.
No more at dawning morn I rise,
And sun myself in Ellen’s eyes,
Drive the fleet deer the forest through,
And homeward wend with evening dew;
A blithesome welcome blithely meet,
And lay my trophies at her feet,
While fled the eve on wing of glee:
That life is lost to love and me!’
Song (Canto III, XXIII)
[translated as ‘Normans Gesang’, D846, by Adam Storck] (1825/1826)1
The heath this night must be my bed,
The bracken curtain for my head,
My lullaby the warder’s tread,
Far, far from love and thee, Mary;
To-morrow eve, more stilly laid,
My couch may be my bloody plaid,
My vesper song, thy wail, sweet maid!
It will not waken me, Mary!
I may not, dare not, fancy now
The grief that clouds thy lovely brow,
I dare not think upon thy vow,
And all it promised me, Mary,
No fond regret must Norman know;
When bursts Clan-Alpine on the foe
His heart must be like bended bow,
His foot like arrow free, Mary.
A time will come with feeling fraught,
For, if I fall in battle fought,
Thy hapless lover’s dying thought
Shall be a thought on thee, Mary.
And if return’d from conquer’d foes,
How blithely will the evening close,
How sweet the linnet sing repose,
To my young bride and me, Mary.
(MacCunn)
Boat song (Canto II, XIX–XX)
[translated as ‘Bootgesang’, D835, by Adam Storck] (1825/1826)1
‘Hail to the Chief who in triumph advances!
Honour’d and bless’d be the ever-green Pine!
Long may the tree, in his banner that glances,
Flourish, the shelter and grace of our line!
Heaven send it happy dew,
Earth lend it sap anew,
Gayly to bourgeon, and broadly to grow,
While every Highland glen
Sends our shout back agen,
Roderigh Vich Alpine dhu, ho! ieroe!2
‘Ours is no sapling, chance-sown by the fountain,
Blooming at Beltane, in winter to fade;
When the whirlwind has stripp’d every leaf on the mountain,
The more shall Clan-Alpine exult in her shade.
Moor’d in the rifted rock,
Proof to the tempest’s shock,
Firmer he roots him the ruder it blow;
Menteith and Breadalbane, then,
Echo his praise agen,
Roderigh Vich Alpine dhu, ho! ieroe!
‘Proudly our pibroch has thrill’d in Glen Fruin,
And Bannochar’s groans to our slogan replied;
Glen Luss and Ross-dhu, they are smoking in ruin,
And the best of Loch Lomond lie dead on her side.
Widow and Saxon maid
Long shall lament our raid,
Think of Clan-Alpine with fear and with woe;
Lennox and Leven-glen
Shake when they hear agen,
Roderigh Vich Alpine dhu, ho! ieroe!
‘Row, vassals, row, for the pride of the Highlands!
Stretch to your oars, for the ever-green Pine!
O that the rose-bud that graces yon islands,
Were wreathed in a garland around him to twine!
O that some seedling gem,
Worthy such noble stem,
Honour’d and bless’d in their shadow might grow!
Loud should Clan-Alpine then
Ring from their deepmost glen,
Roderigh Vich Alpine dhu, ho! ieroe!’
Coronach (Canto III, XVI)
‘He is gone on the mountain,
He is lost to the forest,
Like a summer-dried fountain,
When our need was the sorest.
The font, reappearing,
From the rain-drops shall borrow,
But to us comes no cheering,
To Duncan no morrow!2
The hand of the reaper
Takes the ears that are hoary,
But the voice of the weeper
Wails manhood in glory.
The autumn winds rushing
Waft the leaves that are searest,
But our flower was in flushing,
When blighting was nearest.
Fleet foot on the correi3,
Sage counsel in cumber4,
Red hand in the foray,
How sound is thy slumber!
Like the dew on the mountain,
Like the foam on the river,
Like the bubble on the fountain,
Thou art gone, and for ever!’
(Bantock, Bishop, Castelnuovo-Tedesco)
FRANZ SCHUBERT: Song from Scott’s The Pirate1
Norna2 sings
[translated as ‘Gesang der Norna’, D831, by Samuel Heinrich Spiker] (1825/1828)
For leagues along the watery way,
Through gulf and stream my course has been;
The billows know my Runic lay,
And smooth their crests to silent green.
The billows know my Runic lay, –
The gulf grows smooth, the stream is still;
But human hearts, more wild than they,
Know but the rule of wayward will.
One hour is mine, in all the year,3
To tell my woes, – and one alone;
When gleams this magic lamp, ’tis here, –
When dies the mystic light, ’tis gone.
The Penguin Book of English Song Page 28