Sir Walter Scott's "Waverley Novels" take their name from "Waverley" (1814), the first in the series, because Scott did not publicly acknowledge authorship until 1827.
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4.0 out of 5 stars
Customs and Traditions of the Shetland Islands in the 17th Century,
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This review is from: The Waverly Novels: The Pirate (Paperback)
Sir Walter Scott: The Pirate. Illustrated Edition, Wildside Press, no date, being a facsimile reprint of the 19th century edition published by DeWolfe, Fiske & Co., 446 pages (including Scott's Introduction from the 1831 edition, the "Advertisement" to the First Edition of 1821, all of Scott's Notes, a very brief glossary and an index).
For those who may find this book by searching for "pirate", I should probably begin by saying that this is definitely NOT one of those swashbuckling "pirates of the Caribbean" style novels that its title seems perhaps to suggest. Although pirates do occur, the story is set, not on the Spanish Main, but rather in a quiet backwater of the Shetland Islands towards the end of the 17th century. The first two-thirds of the novel contain, more than anything else, a description of the life and customs of these remote islands at a time when the population, of Norse or Norwegian extraction, was still bi-lingual (English and Old Norse), when the feudal system, although officially abolished, was still influential, and when the inhabitants, although nominally converted to Christianity, were still steeped in Nordic legend and superstition. The "hero" of the story, if he can be called such, is Mordaunt Mertoun, a young man, who, although not born on the islands, has grown up there under the tuition of his idiosyncratic father and been accepted into island society, in particular into that of the leading family, of the "Udaller", Magnus Troil. Troil has two beautiful daughters, and I surely need say no more about the romantic developments that this presages. The novel is peopled with interesting characters who are introduced one after another, the most important being Clement Cleveland, whom Mertoun rescues after he is shipwrecked on the nearby coast, Norna of the Fitful Head, a clearly insane devotee of the old superstitions and a kind of prophetess for the islanders, Triptolemus Yellowley, a Yorkshireman sent by the authorities to reform the ever so primitive agricultural affairs of the island, and Claude Halcro, a local bard or poet who has spent time in London and loves to reminisce about his encounter with John Dryden in a London coffee-house. The story-line develops, as is usual with Scott, fairly slowly until about two-thirds of the way through when there is a certain dénouement leading to the last hundred pages or so taking place on the neighbouring Orkney Islands and actually involving some somewhat lamely swashbuckling pirates. On the whole, the plot seems a little far-fetched and did not go down too well with Scott's contemporaries. This it has in common with "The Monastery", one of Scott's earlier historical novels; both also contain considerable chunks of poetry, in the case of "The Pirate" allegedly translated from the Old Norse but presumably Scott's own verse. Scott's descriptions of life on the Shetlands at this remote period appear to be accurate, and he had journeyed there himself and interviewed a number of inhabitants to obtain the necessary real-life colouring. Although the Shetland Islanders do not speak Scots dialect, the novel contains, as is normal for Scott, a plethora of difficult and rare expressions, only a handful of which are contained in the meagre glossary of the Wildside Press edition. The printing quality of the original, of which this edition is a facsimile, was also somewhat lacking: many words have missing letters, not too difficult to guess if you know English really well but at times still annoying. There is no attempt at a modern introduction, no brief Life of Scott and no justification of the printed text such as one would expect to find in a good modern edition. However, this appears to be one of the most affordable editions of "The Pirate" and is well-bound (my copy did not even begin to fall apart despite my habit of bending back the spine at every turn of the page).
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