The Bride of Lammermoor  

Read by Professor Penny Fielding

This is the end of both The Bride of Lammermoor and of the Master of Ravenswood, in fulfilment of the prophecy:

 
“He shall stable his steed in the Kelpie's flow,
And his name shall be lost for evermoe!"

 
I have chosen it because it such an evocative and mysterious piece.  Scott does not try to wrap up all the strands and, or present us with an ending that looks forward to a progressive future.  Instead of fighting his duel with Sholto Ashton—a more traditionally exciting Romance ending that Scott resists-- Edgar simply disappears as if into thin air.  The purse of gold that he flings to Caleb is a bitterly ironic reward for Caleb’s dogged refusal to let go of the past  and Edgar finally vanishes from history altogether.  Sometimes the historical novel is about what is lost to history, as well as what is discovered in the novel’s pages.

November 2009

Professor Penny Fielding is Grierson Chair of English Literature at the University of Edinburgh and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Her research spans Scottish and nineteenth-century literature, space and place studies, and espionage fiction, and she co-edits major editions of Stevenson’s works.

Text used with permission of Edinburgh University Press [The Edinburgh Edition of the Waverley Novels]