Meg Merrilies is in Galloway considered as having had her origin in the traditions concerning the celebrated Flora Marshal, one of the royal consorts of Willie Marshal, more commonly called the Caird of Barullion, King of the Gipsies of the Western Lowlands. That potentate was himself deserving of notice from the following peculiarities: - He was born in the parish of Kirkmichael about the year 1671; and, as he died at Kirkcudbright 23d November 1792, he must then have been in the one hundred and twentieth year of his age. It cannot be said that this unusually long lease of existence was noted by any peculiar excellence of conduct or habits of life. Willie had been pressed or enlisted in the army seven times, and had deserted as often; besides three times running away from the naval service. He had been seventeen times lawfully married; and, besides, such a reasonably large share of matrimonial comforts, was, after his hundredth year, the avowed father of four children by less legitimate affections. He subsisted in his extreme old age by a pension from the present Earl of Selkirk's grandfather. Will Marshal is buried in Kirkcudbright church, where his monument is still shown, decorated with a scutcheon suitably blazoned with two tups' horns and two cutty spoons.
In his youth he occasionally took an evening walk on the highway, with the purpose of assisting travellers by relieving them of the weight of their purses. On one occasion the Caird of Barullion robbed the Laird of Bargally at a place between Carsphairn and Dalmellington. His purpose was not achieved without a severe struggle, in which the gipsy lost his bonnet, and was obliged to escape, leaving it on the road. A respectable farmer happened to be the next passenger, and, seeing the bonnet, alighted, took it up, and rather imprudently put it on his own head. At this instant Bargally came up with some assistants, and, recognising the bonnet, charged the farmer of Bantoberick with having robbed him, and took him into custody. There being some likeness between the parties, Bargally persisted in his charge, and, though the respectability of the farmer's character was proved or admitted, his trial before the Circuit Court came on accordingly. The fatal bonnet lay on the table of the court. Bargally swore that it was the identical article worn by the man who robbed him; and he and others likewise deponed that they had found the accused on the spot where the crime was committed, with the bonnet on his head. The case looked gloomily for the prisoner, and the opinion of the judge seemed unfavourable. But there was a person in court who knew well both who did and who did not commit the crime. This was the Caird of Barullion, who, thrusting himself up to the bar near the place where Bargally was standing, suddenly seized on the bonnet, put it on his head, and, looking the Laird full in the face, asked him, with a voice which attracted the attention of the court and crowded audience - 'Look at me, sir, and tell me, by the oath you have sworn - Am not I the man who robbed you between Carsphairn and Dalmellington?' Bargally replied, in great astonishment, 'By Heaven! you are the very man.' 'You see what sort of memory this gentleman has,' said the volunteer pleader; 'he swears to the bonnet whatever features are under it. If you yourself, my Lord, will put it on your head, he will be willing to swear that your Lordship was the party who robbed him between Carsphairn and Dalmellington.' The tenant of Bantoberick was unanimously acquitted; and thus Willie Marshal ingeniously contrived to save an innocent man from danger, without incurring any himself, since Bargally's evidence must have seemed to every one too fluctuating to be relied upon.
While the King of the Gipsies was thus laudably occupied, his royal consort, Flora, contrived, it is said, to steal the hood from the judge's gown; for which offence, combined with her presumptive guilt as a gipsy, she was banished to New England, whence she never returned.
Now, I cannot grant that the idea of Meg Merrilies was, in the first concoction of the character, derived from Flora Marshal, seeing I have already said she was identified with Jean Gordon, and as I have not the Laird of Bargally's apology for charging the same fact on two several individuals. Yet I am quite content that Meg should be considered as a representative of her sect and class in general, Flora as well as others.
The other instances in which my Gallovidian readers have obliged me by assigning to
shall also be sanctioned so far as the Author may be entitled to do so. I think the facetious Joe Miller records a case pretty much in point; where the keeper of a museum, while showing, as he said, the very sword with which Balaam was about to kill his ass, was interrupted by one of the visitors, who reminded him that Balaam was not possessed of a sword, but only wished for one. 'True, sir,' replied the ready-witted cicerone; 'but this is the very sword he wished for.' The Author, in application of this story, has only to add that, though ignorant of the coincidence between the fictions of the tale and some real circumstances, he is contented to believe he must unconsciously have thought or dreamed of the last while engaged in the composition of Guy Mannering.
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION
TO
GUY MANNERING
The second essay in fiction of an author who has triumphed in his first romance is a doubtful and perilous adventure. The writer is apt to become self-conscious, to remember the advice of his critics, - a fatal error, - and to tremble before the shadow of his own success. He knows that he will have many enemies, that hundreds of people will be ready to find fault and to vow that he is "written out." Scott was not unacquainted with these apprehensions. After publishing "Marmion" he wrote thus to Lady Abercorn: -
"No one acquires a certain degree of popularity without exciting an equal degree of malevolence among those who, either from rivalship or from the mere wish to pull down what others have set up, are always ready to catch the first occasion to lower the favoured individual to what they call his 'real standard.' Of this I have enough of experience, and my political interferences, however useless to my friends, have not failed to make me more than the usual number of enemies. I am therefore bound, in justice to myself and to those whose good opinion has hitherto protected me, not to peril myself too frequently. The naturalists tell us that if you destroy the web which the spider has just made, the insect must spend many days in inactivity till he has assembled within his person the materials necessary to weave another. Now, after writing a work of imagination one feels in nearly the same exhausted state as the spider. I believe no man now alive writes more rapidly than I do (no great recommendation); but I never think of making verses till I have a sufficient stock of poetical ideas to supply them, - I would as soon join the Israelites in Egypt in their heavy task of making bricks without clay. Besides, I know, as a small farmer, that good husbandry consists in not taking the same crop too frequently from the same soil; and as turnips come after wheat, according to the best rules of agriculture, I take it that an edition of Swift will do well after such a scourging crop as 'Marmiou.'"
[March 13, 1808. Copied from the Collection of Lady Napier and Ettrick.]