Published in Scotland Magazine Issue 22 on 10/08/2005.

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Epic tales & Border ballads

John Hannavycontinues his series tracing the footsteps of Sir Walter Scott

Any writer will tell you that writing about what you know is easier than making it all up! Using locations with strong personal ties draws on your own memories, and helps you weave your own emotional responses into the narrative. Sir Walter Scott was no exception.

Scott’s family associations with the Scottish borders go back a long long way. Numerous properties in the area were owned or tenanted by his ancestors, and as a child and as a young man he visited several of them.

The nearby castles, abbeys and priories would also all have been regular childhood haunts.

Their dramatic locations and mystical beauty were to inspire several of his works – both famous and less well known – throughout his literary career.

One of the most evocative, Smailholm Tower, was a ruin visited frequently by Scott in his childhood, for he lived for a time at nearby Sandyknowe Farm, in turn owned by both his grandfather and his uncle – having been purchased by Sir William Scott as early as 1645.

In his grandfather’s day, the young Walter was a frequent visitor to this dramatic landscape, and images of the ruined tower would have been etched into his mind from an early age.

Indeed, in the introduction to The Eve of St John, a poem full of Gothic mystery and drama, it is described as the ‘scene of the author’s infancy’.

Some accounts say that The Eve of St John, dedicated as it was to the Duke of Buccleuch, was part of Scott’s ‘payment’ to the Duke for putting up some of the money for the tower.....

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By John Hannavy

Section : Scottish Landscapes

Page number : 18