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The Fair Maid of Perth

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THE FAIR MAID OF PERTH, or ST VALENTINE'S DAY by Sir Walter Scott has a fiendishly intricate plot. The novel's major elements revolve around Scotland in the very violent 1390s when King Robert III is old, ill and weak and Crown Prince David is an angry young man pouting unhelpfully about being forced by politics into a loveless marriage with the daughter of the Black Douglas. Earl Douglas: no sensible Scot would want to make him an enemy but Prince David does so through scorning his princess, the Douglas's daughter Marjorie.

The Prince and his men are foiled by Henry Smith (or Henry Gow) in a St Valentine's Eve attempt to kidnap Catharine Glover, the Fair Maid of the City of Perth on Scotland's beautiful River Tay. Smith cuts off the sword hand of Sir John Ramorny, the Prince's Master of Horse. Smith also makes an enemy of a young highlander named Conachar who shortly becomes hereditary chief of the Clan Quhele. At novel's end that clan is defeated in an agreed Palm Sunday battle when 30 champions on either side settle a century old feud before weak King Robert III. The clan thus brings upon itself what today we might call genocide. Henry Smith joins the winning clan on the North Inch field of battle outside Perth and then wins the hand of the peace-loving Catharine.

Henry has a good heart despite his love of brawling. After all he is Britain's best maker of swords and armor and likes to try out his wares. Even Catharine concedes early on that "Thy faults are those of this cruel and remorseless age -- thy virtues are thine own" (Ch. 2).

Walter Scott once said that the point of a plot is simply to provide a frame for colorful characters high and low. There are many such people in THE FAIR MAID OF PERTH.

Here are five of them: Clement Blair, Carthusian monk and priest; Oliver Proudfute, bonnet-maker; Conochar, a clumsy young Highlander apprenticed to Simon the Glover; Sir John Ramorny, Prince David's Master of Horse; and Henbane Dwining, apothecary . Each is important to the plot. Each is a mixture of good and bad, with notable variations in how much is bad and whether it outweighs the good.

--Father Clement Blair is the closest thing to a great, prophetic and good man in the novel. He is a Carthusian monk with reform of the Catholic Church on his mind. His Christian pacifism has great influence over Prince David, Catharine Glover and the young highlander Conachar. Yet he tempts Catharine to become the Prince's mistress (possibly even his wife, despite the gulf between their ranks) to develop his good qualities to the point that he will give over his bad practices and grow into a good king. Catharine declines.

--Oliver Proudfute is a bonnet maker, a strutting, boastful bantam who models himself on the huge and mighty warrior Henry Smith. Proudfute discovers the severed hand and identifying glove of Sir John Ramorny and likes to be thought a doughty bully boy. He models himself on Smith to the extent of imitating his walk, his gestures, his whistling and his singing. But he is a coward and pays for it with his life while wearing Smith's armor as protection during revelry on the eve of Ash Wednesday.

--Conochar's mother was fleeing for her life from the clan Chattan that ultimately destroyed the Quheles when she gave birth to Conachar who was then suckled by a white doe, a terrible omen. He was able to rise to the chieftainship only because all his other brothers had been slain and his forester foster father invoked a spirit that indicated that Conachar would survive any final contest with the Chattans. To be a highland chief one had to be brave but Conachar was a coward. He was also a pacifist thanks to the teaching of Father Clement. Was he a coward because a pacifist or vice versa?

--When Prince David's mother died she entrusted his education and moral upbringing to Sir John Ramorny who idolized the Queen. Ramorny taught David many good things but so indulged his weaknesses and foibles as to sink into being the Prince's tool in endless, mindless merry pranks and even the attempted kidnapping of Catharine Glover. He and David fall out and that spells the death of David.

--Henbane Dwining, vastly learned world traveling apothecary and poisoner, is another mixture of good and evil, mainly evil. He loves gold and fancies himself superior to everyone he knows. He behaves nonetheless obsequiously to all and is undervalued as a danger by everyone. He teams up with Sir John to capture and murder Prince David. Yet he is kind to the poor and beloved of the women of Perth for his attention to the sick. He wills his fortune to Catharine Glover, the too-good-for-this-world Fair Maid of Perth (who distributes it to the churches of her city). How is such a morally mixed personality as Dwining's created?

THE FAIR MAID OF PERTH is extraordinarily fine writing. The book bears reading and rereading. It lays bare the structural violence of all sectors of Scotland in the 1390s and suggests the foreseeable likelihood that centuries will pass before all of Britain becomes of necessity a peaceable nation of shopkeepers. The novel also dissects personal courage and cowardice and why one person is brave and another not.