The Tale of Terror

ty years later, in the self-same city, Catherine Morland is "lost from all worldly concerns of dressing or dinner over the pages of Udolpho," and Isabella Thorpe is collecting in

sses in review the modish novels, which, as it proved, were doomed

arrative of the heroine's fille-de-chambre, when rehearsing the stories of blood and horror which she had heard in the servant's hall? Again, had my title borne 'Waverley, a Romance from the German,' what head so obtuse as not to image forth a profligate abbot, an oppressive duke, a secret and mysterious association of Rosycrucians and Illuminati, with all their properties of black cowls, caverns, daggers, electrical machines, trap-doors and dark lanterns? Or, if I had rather chosen to call my work, 'A Sentimental Tale,' would it not have been a sufficient presage of a heroine with a profusion of auburn hair, and a harp, the soft solace of her solitary hours, which she fortunately always finds m

hcraft, concerning the horn and sword of Thomas of Hercildoune. Cannobie Dick, a jolly horse-cowper, was led by a mysterious stranger through an opening in a hillside into a long range of stables. In every stall stood a coal-black horse, and by every horse lay a knight in coal-black armour, with a drawn sword in his hand. All were as still and silent as if hewn out of marble. At the far end of a gloomy hall, illuminated, like the halls of Eblis, only by torches, there lay, upon an ancient table, a horn and a sword. A voice bade Dick try his courage, warning him that much depen

ents of Mrs. Barbauld and Dr. Nathan Drake. Such a story as that of the magic horn and sword might have been told in the simple words that occur naturally to a shephe

have some fearsome anes, that mak the auld carlines shake on the set

Another of Scott's disjecta membra, composed at the end of the eighteenth century, is the opening of a story called The Lord of Ennerdale, in which t

Udolpho, had valorously mounted en croupe behind the horseman of Prague through all hi

hts in the chamber burn blue," and himself contributed to the collection. He wrote "goblin dramas"[112] as terrific in intention, but not in performance, as Lewis's Castle Spectre and Maturin's Bertram. His Latin call-thesis dealt with the kind of subject "Monk" Lewis or Harrison Ainsworth or Poe might have chosen-the disposal of the dead bodies of persons legally executed. Scott continually added to his store of quaint and grisly learning both from popular tradition and from a library of such works as Bovet's Pandemonium, or the Devil's Cloyster Opened, Sinclair's Satan's Invisible World Discovered, whence he borrowed the name of the jackanapes in Wandering Willie's Tale, and the horse-shoe frown for the brow of the Redgauntlets, Heywood's Hierarchy of the Blessed Angels, Joseph Taylor's History of Apparitions, from which he quotes in Woodstock. He was familiar with all the niceties o

e lays down are so

their supernatural character. Perhaps, to be circumstantial and abundant in minute detail and in one word ... to be somewhat prosy, is the secret mode of securing a certai

lack record, but, considered dispassionately as a ghost, her manners and deportment are irreproachable. The ghost-seer's independence of character are so firmly insisted upon that it seems impertinent to doubt the veracity of his story. My Aunt Margaret's Mirror was told to Scott in childhood by an ancient

ale which the narrator, having first expressed his general disbelief of all such legendary lore, selects and produces, as having something in it which he has been always obliged to give up as inexplicable. Another symp

the ribald crew of feasters in the hall are described so faithfully and in such vivid phrases that it is no wonder Willie should remark at one point of the story: "I almost think I was there mysell, though I couldna be born at the same time." The power of the tale, which fascinates us from beginning to end and which can be read again and again with renewed pleasure, depends partly on Wandering Willie's gifts as a narrator, partly on the emotions that stir him as he talks. With unconscious art, he always uses the right word in his descriptions, and chooses those details that help us to fix the rapidly changing imagery of his scenes; and he reproduces exactly the natural dialogue

he Lake there is a note on the ancient legend of the Phantom Sire, in Rokeby there is an allusion to the Demon Frigate wandering under a curse from harbour to harbour. To Scott "bogle-wark" was merely a diversion. He did not choose to make it the mainspring either of his poems or his romances. In The Lay of the Last Minstrel he had, indeed, intended to make the Goblin Page play a

e inclination to do more than inflict terror or create embarrassment, and is

s who warns Fergus M'Ivor of his approaching death in Waverley, or the wraith of a Highlander in a white cockade who is seen on the battlefield in The Legend of Montrose-had appeared in his earlier novels, and others appear again and again later. In The Bride of Lammermoor-the only one of Scott's novels which might fitly be called a "tale of terror"-the atmosphere of horror and the sense of overhanging calamity effectually prepare our minds for the supernatural, and the wraith of old Alice who appears to the master of Ravenswood is strangely solemn and impressi

such fear upon the agents of the story-one a man in sense and firmness, one a man unhinged by re

rd on his upper lip as long as baudrons," who is wont to appear at one's bedside. He falls into an uneasy slumber, and in the middle of the night is startled to see a green huntsman leave the tapestry and turn into the "well-fa'urd auld gentleman" before his very eyes. In Old Mortality, Edith Bellenden mistakes her lover for his apparition, just as one of Mrs. Radcliffe's heroines might have done. In Peveril of the Peak, Fenella's communications with the hero in his prison, when he mistakes her voice for that of a spirit, have an air of Gothic mystery. The awe-inspiring villain, who appea

d upon two occasions in the course of our journey-a threatened attack by banditti, and the overturn of our car

hepherds, outlaws and beggars. The wax-work figures, guaranteed to thrill with nervous suspense or overflow with sensibility at the appropriate moments, are replaced by real folk like "Old Mortality," Andrew Fairservice, Dugald Dalgetty and Peter Peebles, whose humour and pathos are those of our own world. The historical background, faint, misty and unreal in Mrs. Radcliffe's novels, becomes, in those of Scott, arresting and substantial. The grave, artificial dialogue in which Mrs. Radcliffe's characters hab