Sir Walter Scott

THE LORD OF THE ISLES  (1815)

Reviewed by Patrick Killough

  I. Review for barnesandnoble.com

Here is how your review will appear on the title page:

    Patrick Killough (killswan@earthlink.net), fond of narrative poetry, March 8, 2007,

 RATING OF THE LORD OF THE ISLES: (FOUR STARS: RECOMMENDED)
   
Title of this review: Ships of Destiny Are Sometimes Slowed by Barnacles

Two Scots were heroic contemporaries around the year 1300. William Wallace was recently portrayed by Mel Gibson in the film BRAVEHEART. Many of us remember from school days the discouraged King Robert the Bruce. He took heart watching a spider try and fail six times till it wove the next strand in its web. This generated the schoolboy maxim, 'If at first you don't succeed, try, try again.'

Sir Walter Scott linked these two heroes in his narrative poem, THE LORD OF THE ISLES. Scott excerpted and compressed events from 'THE BRUCE,' by the 14th century Scottish historian Archdeacon of Aberdeen, John Barbour. Scott also demonstrated here as elsewhere that history is far more than the swift movement by impersonal vessels toward gigantic destinations. The ships of national history are also weighted down by barnacles: the lives, loves, hatreds and jealousies of lesser beings who move willy-nilly about in the great events.

THE LORD OF THE ISLES covers seven crucial years in the life of Robert the Bruce. Crowned King of Scotland in 1306, he was driven to Ireland by the English led by the imperialistic King Edward I. But in the spring of 1307 Bruce sailed with his sister Isabel and brother Edward back to his native Ayrshire on the rugged western coast of Scotland. He won growing support from the clans and seven years later, June 24, 1314 destroyed a vast English army at Bannockburn near Stirling.

The subplots of the story involve the initially thwarted marriage between Ronald (real name Angus Og), the Lord of the Isles, and Edith, the Maid of Lorn housed with her Bruce-hating kinsman in the Lord of the Isles' mainland castle of Atornish. Ronald would really like to marry Bruce's sister Isabel. But she becomes a nun and persuades Edith to take Ronald back. This becomes easier to do after The Lord of the Isles distinguishes himself at the battle of Bannockburn.

Someone reading Sir Walter Scott for the first time might find too much Scottish history, explained in too many notes. But reading this long poem is altogether other for someone enamored of all things Scottish, including intricate genealogies of bygone clan leaders. That said, for any reader the story moves briskly, abounds in cameos of mighty figures of medieval Scotland and England, is lyrical in descriptions of the landscapes of some of the 200 islands (Skye, Mull, etc.) of the West of Scotland and tells a love story of a maid disguised as a mute minstrel (making us recall a similar character in another long poem by Scott, HAROLD THE DAUNTLESS).
   

Also recommended: Sir Walter Scott, THE LADY OF THE LAKE, CASTLE DANGEROUS, IVANHOE. Arthur Herman, HOW THE SCOTS INVENTED THE MODERN WORLD. -OOO-

Black Mountain, NC 3/7/7

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 II. Review for amazon.com

Here is your review the way it will appear:


 REVIEW TITLE:   A lover torn between two women gives decisive aid to King Robert the Bruce of Scotland, March 8, 2007

Reviewer:    T. Patrick Killough (Black Mountain, NC United States)

Reviewer's Rating of THE LORD OF THE ISLES: * * * * (FOUR STARS)


Scotland boasts two contemporary medieval mega-heroes of the endless wars to remain independent of imperialistic England. The elder man was a commoner, William Wallace. The younger, Robert the Bruce, subject of Walter Scott's poem THE LORD OF THE ISLES, was born noble, and  later clawed and cajoled his way to kingship.
"His was the patriot's burning thought,
Of Freedom's battle bravely fought,

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Of rout and rally, war and truce, --
As heroes think, so thought the Bruce" (Canto III, xxvii)
The Plot:

Canto One: King Robert the Bruce has sailed from Ireland to reclaim the throne of Scotland. Accompanied by his sister Isabel and brother Edward, the King is in a boat heading to rendezvous with loyal supporters. Adverse winds and tides blow him ashore at mainland Atornish Castle. There a pre-nuptial feast is being celebrated for Ronald, Lord of the Isles, and Edith, sister of the Lord of Lorn. Atornish is a mainland residence of the Lord of the Isles.

Canto Two: As knightly shelter-seekers, unidentified Bruce and party are given places of honor as the banqueters await the arrival of a holy abbot from Iona to officiate at the wedding. But King Robert is recognized by the hostile Lord of Lorn. Lorn demands instant vengeance for Bruce's murder of a kinsman. The Abbot compels forces both for and against Bruce to sheathe arms. The men of Lorn appeal to the Abbot to add his condemnation to the Pope's excommunication of Bruce. The holy mystic foresees Bruce's greatness and will not condemn the king. Meanwhile the bridegroom Ronald clearly loves Bruce's sister Isabel, not his intended Edith, although Edith is smitten by him. Edith's enraged brother breaks off the engagement after Edith joins Isabel in pleading for Bruce. The Lord of Lorn impetuously promises that his sister Edith will wed an English lord, Clifford, who now occupies Bruce's ancestral castle. The abbot's party sets sail back to Iona.

Canto Three: Sentiment among the remaining wedding guests then shifts powerfully against the English and in the king's favor. The Lord of Lorn sends for his sister to depart Atornish castle with her and his followers. But she and her old nurse have sought sanctuary and fled with the Abbot's ships. Lorn launches a pursuit, led by piratical Cormac Doil. During the night key Scottish nobles kneel to Bruce and urge him to re-conquer Scotland from the English. Bruce will draw off towards the isle of Skye while his new allies rally more support. Bruce's brother Edward will take their sister back to Ireland for safety. Before Bruce and Ronald, Lord of the Isles, reach Skye, a storm makes them take shelter on a desolate island. Bruce, Ronald and Ronald's young page while away the day hunting a deer. There they encounter five retainers of Lorn led by Cormac Doil who seek to assassinate the royal party during the night when both groups share a makeshift shelter. The men of Lorn are defeated because of a strangled warning cry given by a young boy, a mute minstrel whom they had captured on the sea with his mother the day before. At dawn Bruce, Ronald and the nameless minstrel boy trek out of the wilderness to rejoin their followers on the rugged island shore.


Canto Four: Returned early from recruiting, Bruce's brother Edward brings good news. The clans are rising! Better yet: Scotland's greatest foe, England's King Edward I, has breathed his last, cursing Scotland to the end. Bruce's small but growing armada sails for the isle of Arran opposite his ancestral castle on Scotland's west coast. Ronald of the Isles persuades Bruce to say a good word of his suit to his sister, now in the little convent of St. Bride on the same island. Bruce brings the mute minstrel boy to St. Bride's to be his sister's servant. The king dutifully conveys Ronald's suit, which Isabel, briefly tempted, rejects out of respect for the scorned Edith of Lorn. The young minstrel then leaves behind his/her engagement ring out of gratitude to Isabel and slips away to rejoin Bruce's fleet.

Canto Five: Isabel guesses the boy is really Edith Lorn. She sends old Father Augustine hobbling across the island to Brodick bay and the fleet to ask Bruce to send the boy back. But Edward Bruce has already sent the boy, now renamed Amadine, on a dangerous mission across to the mainland Carrick shore to tell an old retainer to light a signal fire after dark, should Baron Clifford and the English appear to be off guard at Bruce's old castle. Bruce rebukes Edward, gives the minstrel boy Amadine to Ronald Lord of the Isles as his  page. A fire leaps up across the strait. The tiny invasion fleet sails. On arrival they learn that no one knows who set the supernatural signal fire. The host advances on the castle by night. Amadine is hidden for safety in a hollow tree. Captured, he is condemned by Baron Clifford and his guest, the visiting Lord of Lorn, to be hanged as a spy. Bruce's men overpower the execution squad. Ronald of the Isles personally rescues his new page. The attackers successfully storm the castle. Clifford falls. Lorn flees in a skiff. The victorious forces briefly celebrate the return of Robert the Bruce to his birthplace.

Canto Six: A heady seven years of victory upon victory ensue. At St Bride's Convent Isabel is now a vowed nun and Edith her faithful lay companion. Meanwhile a late June 1314 deadline is set for the occupying English garrison of Stirling Castle either to be relieved by an army from England or to surrender to the Scots. The day before the deadline, a huge relieving force arrives, led by King Edward II in person. Sister Isabel sends Edith, re-disguised as the page Amadine, to join the Scottish forces assembling at Bannockburn near Stirling. Edith/Almadine still loves the Lord of the Isles but says she will not have him. The disguised Edith is sent by Robert the Bruce (who knows her true identity) to a hill above the battle to safety with clergy and the other non-combatants. After many hours of combat, Bruce sees that the English are even more weary than the Scots. He urges his forces to redoubled effort. The English break. Yet Ronald's Men of the Isles are surrounded in a pocket. Edith, hitherto thought to be a mute, shouts and spurs the civilians to join the attack to save her onetime fiance. On the won field of battle Ronald, Lord of the Isles, recognizes the Maid of Lorn and renews his suit. Robert the Bruce summons the Abbot chaplaining his forces to prepare both a victory Mass and nuptials for the reconciled couple. He ends the tale:
"Ourself will grace, with early morn,
The bridal of the Maid of Lorn." (Canto VI, xxxvii)

The ship of state rolls on like a juggernaut weighted by innumberable barnacles, albeit very fair human barnacles like Isabel and Edith.

Read this long poem aloud for the sheer joy of its music. Savor its descriptions of some of the most treacherous seas and gorgeous landscapes on the planet. -OOO-

Black Mountain
03/09/2007

III. Review for epinions.com

TITLE OF THIS REVIEW: Enjoy HARRY POTTER? Then Maybe THE LORD OF THE ISLES is worth a look.
Mar 09 '07 (Updated Mar 09 '07)

Author's Product Rating * * * *  (FOUR STARS)

Pros
A rounded picture of Scotland's savior, Robert Bruce. Color. Rhythm. Nature. An epic battle scene.

Cons
Requires knowledge of Scotland: geography and history. Not always easy to keep the names straight.

The Bottom Line
If you are an imaginative boy or girl who loves HARRY POTTER, read and relish THE LORD OF THE ISLES. Or if you know and love Scotland, take it up.

Full Review

From 1815 until 1865 Sir Walter Scott was the most read novelist and narrative poet in Europe, the United States and possibly the world. Young John Henry Newman, the future Cardinal, read every Scott book as soon as it was published. In 1821 George Gordon, Lord Byron, Scott's younger rival as a poet, wrote in his diary, "I have read all W Scott's novels at least fifty times ... wonderful man! I long to get drunk with him."�

Now segue to American readers today. Many have never read a word by Scotland's greatest novelist. This review is not the place to answer the broad question: why should I read Scott? For that please look over a talk on the subject in November 2006: http://www.patrickkillough.com/history/sirws_present.html

Some readers ask, "If I have not read a word of Walter Scott and want to sample him, is THE LORD OF THE ISLES where I should begin?"

Probably not.

Walter Scott put Scotland front and center in world consciousness. If you already know a lot about and love Scotland, then by all means plunge in to THE LORD OF THE ISLES. You would do well to have on hand some good maps of the western islands and the area around Stirling Castle where the battle of Bannockburn was won by King Robert the Bruce in 1314. But any standard edition of this poem in six cantos will provide notes to help you know and understand the real historical giants scattered among the cast of characters.

But are there also American readers with plenty of imagination but perhaps prone to the Henry Ford mindset that "history is bunk" who could pick up THE LORD OF THE ISLES and read it just for fun?

Yes, I believe there are.

Several such groups come to mind. But one that I single out is made up of avid young readers of Scotland's first billionaire novelist, J. K. Rowling and her HARRY POTTER series. Walter Scott's poems and novels will please, I think, imaginative boys and girls who like adventure stories. Their fingers will tap out Scott's simple music, his rollicking rhythms, fast paced narrative and his sketches of famous heroes of history. There is even a hint of magic in THE LORD OF THE ISLES. To this day it is not clear who ignited the mysterious signal fire that caused King Robert to launch his small armada against the Scottish mainland.

Somewhere among those millions of boys and girls there may be 100,000 or so who have it in them to learn to compose their own tales in good simple verse, an ancient and honorable tradition. Their English teachers or their parents may find themselves urging gifted youngsters to imitate Scott and bring back to America in the 21st century the art of narrative poetry writing. In the 20th Century America produced Stephen Vincent Benet and his Civil War epic, JOHN BROWN'S BODY. Why not the boy or girl next door as well?

THE PLOT.

Around the years 1306 - 1314 when King Robert the Bruce was taking back Scotland from the English Kings Henry I and his son Henry II, the then real life Lord of the Isles was named Angus Og. In Scott's version he is given the more euphonious name Ronald. Ronald worships with knightly ardor Isabel, King Robert's sister. But he is pledged to marry young Edith of Lorn, whose brother, the unnamed Lord of Lorn, hates Bruce for having slain a kinsman to gain the crown of Scotland.

During a banquet at Lorn's castle the evening before the nuptials, are present by chance King Robert the Bruce, his younger brother Edward and their sister Isabel, seeking knightly refuge from a stormy sea. The abbot from Iona who is to wed the couple arrives in time to prevent bloodshed. But the Lord of Lorn angrily breaks off his sister's engagement to the Lord of the Isles after the Abbot in an almost mystical experience foresees and accepts the future glory of Bruce as Scotland's savior and Edith intercedes for the King.

Those nobles who do not depart the banquet with the Lord of Lorn to prepare for war with the King soon rally to the Bruce and for the next seven years they steadily take back Scotland from the English. Edith, disguised as a mute minstrel boy, has run away from her brother to prevent his marrying her off to the English Lord occupying Bruce's family home. For years Edith lies low as the lay companion of Bruce's sister Isabel, who has become a nun on the island of Arran, opposite the Bruce home country on the mainland. Edith is present, once more in disguise, with other non-combatants at the June 1314 battle of Bannockburn near Stirling, when Bruce and his allies devastate a huge English army under King Edward II. The mute "boy" cries out when she sees her former fiance, the Lord of the Isles, surrounded by the English and inspires the non-combatants to rush down from their sanctuary and save him. The poem ends as King Robert asks the abbot to celebrate a Mass of Thanksgiving in addition to presiding over the nuptials of Lady Edith and Lord Ronald.

Here are samples of that simple, traditional, colorful language of THE LORD OF THE ISLES which fans of HARRY POTTER might enjoy learning from:

--(As the earliest followers of Bruce sail south to do battle:)

"Merrily, merrily bounds the bark,
She bounds before the gale,
The mountain breeze from Ben-na-darch
Is joyous to her sail!" (Canto IV, vii)

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"Merrily, merrily goes the bark,
Before the gale she bounds;
So darts the dolphin from the shark,
Or the deer before the hounds." (Canto IV, xi)

--(Bruce's sister Isabel tells her brother when he visits her convent before she takes vows that she definitively rejects the suit of the Lord of the Isles. He has pledged himself to Edith. But there was a time ...)

"This answer be to Ronald given --
The heart he asks is fix'd on heaven.
My love was like a summer flower,
That wither'd in the wintry hour,
Born but of vanity and pride,
And with these sunny visions died." (Canto IV, xxvii)

Was it verses like these, old-fashioned, glorying in the feats of nobles and kings, that led Mark Twain to blame the American Civil War on Sir Walter Scott? Certainly Scott loved old times and his nation's heroes and often sang of "lost causes" as history moved sometimes cruelly into new governments, religions and economies. -OOO-

Recommended:
Yes
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Black Mountain, North Carolina
03/09/2007



http://www.patrickkillough.com/books/sirws_isles.html