THE  PIRATE (1821) by Sir Walter Scott Reviewed by Patrick Killough   I. REVIEW for http://www.barnesandnoble.com   Here is how your review will appear on the title page: REVIEWER: Patrick Killough (patrickkillough@charter.net), who is soon to visit the Orkney Islands, DATE OF REVIEW: June 15, 2006, REVIEWER'S RATING OF THE PIRATE:  * * * *  (FOUR STARS) TITLE OF THIS REVIEW: THE PIRATE should star John Wayne (as Magnus), Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Jodie Foster (as Norna) and Hilary Swank. RECOMMENDATION:  Approach THE PIRATE as if it were a modern detective story. That is, expect puzzles needing unraveling. Keep a close watch for clues. Know that a character once named and described is going to interact. Be certain that one event will reasonably lead to another. But also look out for traps, masks, assumed identities and other deviations and distractions. There are perhaps twenty characters especially worth paying attention to. Their mysteries and personal pasts create the novel's present and future. Why, around 1690, did 40-something Basil Mertoun bring his 14 year old son Mordaunt to the isolated Jetland (Shetland) Islands? Why is Basil so ostentatiously ignorant of anything to do with ships and seafaring? Why will he drink only water? Why is he so cold toward his happy, outgoing son? What makes Basil Mertoun so despise the female sex? And there is 'auld Norna of Fitful Head, the most fearful woman in all the isles!' (Ch. V) Whence her powers to still the winds and forecast the future? Born Ulla Troil, Norna is of ancient Norse nobility, near kin of the powerful island magnate Magnus Troil and his two daughters, dark-haired mystical Minna and blond unsuperstitious Brenda. Much that moves the novel forward comes from Norna's past, an illicit amour, an infant son snatched from her when she was thought to lie dying, a father whose death she thinks she caused. And 'the pirate' himself: Captain Clement Cleveland of the sunken West Indies privateer GOOD HOPE. Young Mordaunt Mertoun pulled the not much older Cleveland from the surf. Later Cleveland saved Mordaunt from drowning while whaling. Why do they instinctively dislike each other? Why does old Norna hate the one and love the other? More than a detective story, THE PIRATE also introduces the wild late 17th century Shetland and Orkney Isles of Scotland to worldwide readership. The novel probes history, superstitions, seamanship, piracy, justice, romance and adventure. It also parades unforgettable buffoons with redeeming characteristics, the classically educated agriculturalist Triptolemus Yellowley and his stingy sister Margaret, the poet Claud Halero and his endlessly retold tale of being introduced to John Dryden. There is also Jack Bunce who once trod the boards as an actor and now as a buccaneer. There are light comic overtones of Gilbert and Sullivan, too. By tale's end, mystery there is no more; all is made clear.  Also recommended: Stuart Mirsky, THE KING OF VINLAND'S SAGA. Thornton Wilder, THE BRIDGE OF SAN LUIS REY. Sinclair Lewis, THE MAN WHO KNEW COOLIDGE. -OOO- =-=-=-=-=-=-  II. Review for Amazon.com Reviewer's rating of THE PIRATE:  * * * * *   FIVE STARS Title of this review: "My lover must be a Sea-King." Walter Scott's 1821 novel builds relentlessly to its mystery-unraveling climax in a few weeks of the summer of 1689. Most of  THE PIRATE plays out on the "Mainland" of Scotland's Shetland (Scott's Jetland) Islands. The scene shifts in August at novel's climax 60 miles south to Kirkwall and Scapa Floe in the Orkneys. In the prequel, a vague five or ten years before 1689, a dark, morose, woman-hating disguised pirate, Basil Mertoun, with his neglected young son Mordaunt, had retired from the sunny Caribbean. Mertoun Senior did not lack funds and rented Jarlshof, a ruined stone dwelling on Sumburgh Head, southernmost promontory of the Jetland mainland, hundreds of feet above the tempestuous sea. Genial landlord of Basil and Mordaunt Mertoun is wealthy  shipping magnate and whale hunter Magnus Troil, descendant of ancient Norwegian Earls. Magnus lives twenty trackless miles north of Sumburgh Head at Burgh Westra. He has two beautiful, innocent daughters, Minna and Brenda. They were orphaned when their mother died a dozen or so years earlier. Minna is a natural leader, dark, fearless, mystical and immersed in the lore of the old Vikings. Brenda is younger, blonde, timid, but thoroughly sceptical of Jetland's pre-Christian Nordic beliefs. "Minna believed them without trembling and ... Brenda trembled without believing them" (Ch. 19). The girls have a first cousin once removed, dear to their father, born Ulla Troil, better known for the past 25 years as the witch or prophetess "Auld Norna of Fitful Head" (the latter being the place of her lofty Jetland abode). Norna embodies and preaches the old Norwegian language and ways. She claims to rule winds and waves and is treated with respect and awe by the islanders. Norna appears wherever and whenever she pleases and regularly and successfully predicts the future. In the spring of 1689 Mordaunt is 20, Minna 18 and Brenda 17. Mordaunt's father is inexplicably cold to him. So young Mordaunt is on his own. When he is not out climbing cliffs, shooting birds or learning to be a fisherman, he spends many, many happy weeks visiting Burgh Westra and the Troils. He loves both Minna and Brenda equally well, as his sisters. He is the best dancer in the islands and the light of every party. One April afternoon he sets out for home after a stay at Burgh Westra. Halfway to Jarlshof a terrible storm forces Mordaunt to seek shelter at the only nearby house, called, indifferently, Stourburgh or Harfra. There lives the English agricultural pioneer Triptolemus Yellowley and his sister Barbara, commonly called Mistress Baby. Yellowley is official representative of the Scottish overlord of the Orkneys and Shetlands and is there to improve agricultural and livestock practices. Auld Norna arrives and abates the storm. Also there seeking shelter is an ostensibly comic character, the devious merchant Bryce Snailsfoot. By this point almost all the novel's principal movers have been introduced and the plot becomes henceforth thicker and even more mysterious. The final major player appears shortly after Mordaunt's return to Jarlshof. A dismasted ship is cast on the rocks below. Mordaunt rescues a drowning man, the ship's captain, Clement Cleveland, very likely a pirate, who is perhaps 25 years of age. Mordaunt saved Cleveland in the teeth of the ancient Jetland belief that a man drowning in the sea must under no circumstances be rescued, lest the rescuer surely suffer dreadfully at the hand of invisible powers. Cleveland makes himself a welcome house guest of Magnus Troil. Weeks pass without the usual invitations from Magnus or his daughters to Mordaunt to visit Burgh Westra and enjoy himself. This is unprecedented coolness. Is Captain Cleveland to blame? Did Mordaunt provoke the powers by saving a drowning man? Mordaunt does not receive the expected invitation to Magnus's annual June celebrations commencing the eve of Saint John the Baptist. But he goes to Burgh Westra any way, accompanying Triptolemus and Mistress Baby. Not wishing to spoil the story for new readers, let me skirt some of the subsequent happenings. Minna falls madly in love with Captain Cleveland. Brenda does the same with Mordaunt Mertoun. Auld Norna of Fitful Head, however, is determined that Mordaunt will be heir of her ample estates and will marry Minna. Bluff old Magnus Troil will marry his daughters only to a Norseman of island aristocracy, which prima facie neither Clement nor Mordaunt is. The two young men instinctively dislike each other. At the close of the Saint John's celebrations, the Captain stabs an unarmed Mordaunt who has annoyed him as he serenaded Minna. Norna nurses Mordaunt back to health and commands all parties to assemble in the Orkneys capital of Kirkwall in August for the Lammas or Saint Olla's Fair. Basil Mertoun, father of Mordaunt, goes to Kirkwall to meet Norna at Saint Magnus's Cahedral to learn the whereabouts of his missing son. Captain Cleveland sails to the Orkneys to link up with mates from a second pirate vessel which survived the great storm. A British warship seeks and finds the pirate ship. And all mysteries of blood and superstition are unraveled. Walter Scott places his novel during the heyday of British pirates at the time of the Glorious Revolution when Queen Mary Stuart and her Dutch Prince William of Orange replaced on the throne the decamped King James II. It will not be long before rich men from the Scottish mainland take over the Orkneys and Shetlands and submerge what is left of the old Viking language and culture. We are therefore treated to a last hurrah in Scotland of the Viking spirit. Young Minna longs for the Islands to regain independence and then rejoin Norway or Denmark. She sees Captain Cleveland not as a blood-stained pirate but as a latter-day Viking who can liberate Jetland from Scottish tyranny. Her sister Brenda is suspicious of Cleveland. But Minna tells her: "I am a daughter of the old dames of Norway, who could send their lovers to battle with a smile, and slay them with their own hands, if they returned with dishonour. ... my lover must be a Sea-king" (Ch. 20). Feminists are fascinated by Auld Norna. When young she falls passionately in love with an Englishman and bears his child, which is taken from her. Falling in and out of madness, she achieves greatness through natural means (spreading money about, an intelligence network, knowing every secret passage in the islands and cannily reading the signs of nature) combined with credible claims to supernatural powers flowing from her claimed union with old Norse deities. What else was an embittered, ambitious girl to do in late 17th Century Jetland? THE PIRATE is one of my two or three personal favorites among Walter Scott novels. I love it for its landscapes and seascapes and such minor characters as a Jetland poet who once dipped snuff with John Dryden and for a former actor turned buccaneer. Thanks to the current popularity of pirates and vikings, I suspect that Sir Walter Scott's PIRATES will also bring you much reading pleasure.  -OOO- 07/02/2007 =-=-=-=-=-=-=-= III. Review for epinions.com Title of this Review: "Two rifles and sixty yards of sea-beach." Jul 03 '07 (Updated Jul 03 '07) Author's Product Rating  * * * * *  FIVE STARS Pros Scotland's wild northern Orkney and Shetland Islands about to lose Viking language and beliefs. Cons Some "broad lowland Scots" language. A weak glossary. Prissy language by girls in conversations. The Bottom Line Walter Scott wrote 27 novels. Although not well known today, THE PIRATE is one of my three favorites. Read it for pirates, Vikings, magic, cultural imperialism and strong women. Full Review There is something of ROMEO AND JULIET about Sir Walter Scott's 1821 novel, THE PIRATE. Two families collide but after tragedies eventually come to terms. There is a property feud within the ancient Norwegian Troil family of Scotland's Jetland (Shetland) and Orkney islands. Two members of the English Vaughan (initially in disguise as Mertoun) family had moved in the 1680s to a forbidding stone pile, Jarlshof, at Sumburgh Head, a promontory high above the sea at the southern end of the main Jetland island. One branch of the not very numerous Troils is led by Magnus, wealthy shipowner and whaler, descendant of Vikings and earls. His happy marriage had ended in its fifth year with the death of the mother of his two daughters Minna and Brenda. His cousin Ulla, who went mad and renamed herself Norna 25 years before the novel's main events, represents the other branch of the Troils. Ulla never married but had an affair with an English rover named Vaughan. Their child was spirited away from her after a birthing that all presumed would kill the mother. Most of Magnus's extensive holdings are in the Shetlands and Norna's in the more southerly Orkneys. Magnus, Minna and Brenda live in the ancient pile of Burgh Westra, a 20-mile walk or pony ride north of the Mertouns, their renters, at Jarlshof. Norna's Jetland holding is a few hours away at Fitful Head. Basil Mertoun is a mysterious, dark, brooding, woman-despising, anti-social recluse given to melancholy. His son Mordaunt was entering his teens when Mertoun Senior retired (as a pirate, it slowly comes out) to the windswept Shetlands. Left to his own devices Mertoun Junior (Mordaunt) becomes an outdoorsman. He climbs cliffs in search of birds' eggs. He shoots. He tames ponies. He goes to sea with island fishermen. He spends many, many happy weeks at Burgh Westra with the hospitable magnate and his two daughters. The three youngsters go through their teens together, regarding one another affectionately as siblings. Mordaunt shares with them the good education he had started in Jamaica. Although his father seems to dislike him intensely for no apparent reason, young Mordaunt is content growing up on Jetland. "Auld Norna of Fitful Head" quickly recognizes that Basil Mertoun is really Basil Vaughan, her onetime lover. But he does not see in disheveled Norna his mistress, Ulla Troil. She takes it as given that Mordaunt is her son as well as Basil's. She therefore secretly watches over Mordaunt, casts spells to protect him from wind and wave, intends him for her heir and wants to reunite the Troil holdings in Orkney and Shetland through Mordaunt's marrying her disciple and cousin, Minna. None of this information she shares with Mordaunt. And "old" Magnus Troil (everyone in this generation of principals is called old at about 50 when the novel gets really rolling in the summer of 1689) would not dream of letting his daughters marry someone not of high Norse nobility. Magnus has no reason to believe that Mordaunt qualifies as son-in-law through his island Norse mother Ulla (Norna). The interaction of Troils and Vaughans quickens in the spring of 1689 when Mordaunt, now about 20, saves a 24-year old shipwrecked sea captain from a wreck just below Jarlshof. According to cruel Jetland doctrine it is forbidden by the Norse gods to save a drowning man. And Mordaunt's good deed does seem to make his star decline within the Troil family. Captain Clement Cleveland shortly takes up residence with the Troils and the rumor spreads that Mordaunt is boasting that he can have either Minna (18) or Brenda (17) whenever he wants a wife. He is said to be waiting only to see to which daughter old Magnus leaves his manor at Burgh Westra. This rumor is untrue and Mordaunt is last to hear it. He blames Captain Cleveland for his never being invited again to see the Troils. The rest of the novel plays out between June and August 1689. Mordaunt goes uninvited to St John's ball at Burgh Westra. There he is knifed by Captain Clement and nursed back to health by auld Norna. Evidence grows that the Captain is indeed a pirate and may even be an older son of onetime Captain Basil Mertoun/Vaughan. Norna causes all parties to assemble in August at Kirkwall, the Orkney capital for the great annual fair of Saint Olla. She causes an English man o' war to descend on Scapa Floe and attack a pirate ship now co-commanded by Captain Cleveland. At Kirkwall there is a preliminary hearing of captured pirates. After this they are sent to London for final judgment (in which some may benefit from a recent general amnesty for repenting buccaneers). In Kirkwall Basil Mertoun reveals that he is the dread Captain Basil Vaughan. And by then all other mysteries of the Vaughans and Troils have also been unraveled, clue by clue. Those clues are as faint and challenging as anything in FATHER BROWN or SHERLOCK HOLMES. There are also three-dimensional, memorable minor characters in the PIRATE, starting with the English agricultural advisor Triptolemus Yellowley and his penny-pinching sister Barbara, known as "Mistress Baby." Culture-intruder Triptolemus gives the first inkling of the coming mainland Scottish economic takeover of the Islands. An ostensibly comic but quietly vicious merchant, Bryce Snailsfoot, wanders about causing problems for Mordaunt and others. Also unforgettable are actor-pirate Jack Bunce, stage name Altamont, and the island poet Claud Halcro who never tires telling one and all of the day when the great John Dryden shared snuff with him in a London coffee house. Feminists read THE PIRATE for four women: auld Norna, her adept disciple in Norse lore Minna, and the more practical Brenda and Mistress Baby. Each woman coped as best she could with the limited opportunities for self-expression permitted by a notably patriarchal age and place. Students of the occult focus on Norna and the superstitious awe in which islanders acknowledge the old Norse powers she claims. Scott gives her credit for a naturally sharp mind, a shrewd spreading about of her wealth, for creating a superb intelligence network and for knowing every secret passage in every important building in Orkney and Shetland. And she is a born showman. But is Auld Norna also supernaturally empowered? Sir Walter reminds us that like Greenland, Iceland and the Faroes, the Shetlands, Orkneys and Hebrides of Scotland were once ruled by Vikings. Cultures come and cultures go, he tells us, and usually the more modern is the more rational and humane. Still, pre-Christian Norse culture had its values of derring-do, courage, minstrelsy and honor. THE PIRATE salutes a dying Viking way of life on Scottish territory. Heroes of THE PIRATE have either successfully retired from buccaneering or would like to give it up. Dark, mystical Minna Troil sees what she fantasizes pirates to be as reincarnations of the old Norse Sea-kings. She hopes that Captain Cleveland will help her lead an insurrection of island Norsemen against Scottish overlordship. Fans of Vikings and buccaneers will find plenty of pirate atmospherics in this novel. Finally, there are the sea and its terrors and blessings, the winds and the waves, the treeless Orkneys and Shetlands, the spunky island ponies and the almost barren soils. This is a world of grinding poverty enriched by the spoils from shipwrecks. Small wonder that local superstition forbade saving drowning strangers. They would be more mouths to feed and might dispute the traditional despoiling of their flotsam and jetsam. Good talk and strong rhetoric abound. When Mordaunt realizes that he loves Brenda as more than a sister, he leaves "The dubious neutral ground between love and friendship" (Ch. 16). Captain Cleveland threatens Mordaunt Mertoun with "Two rifles and sixty yards of sea-beach" (Ch. 17). Preferring a romanticized pirate captain to a hyper-athletic cliff climber, dark Minna tells blond Brenda, "my lover must be a Sea-king" (Ch. 20). Captain Cleveland eventually comes to terms with the fact that while Minna might love a Sea-king, he himself leads "a gang of pirates ... not ... a choir of saints" (Ch. 22). In a moment of semi-lucidity, mad Norna realizes that being normal has no appeal to her. "I must remain the dreaded -- the mystical -- the Reimkennar -- the controller of the elements, or I must be no more!" (Ch. 33) -OOO- Recommended: Yes REFERENCES to THE PIRATE: ---  Jerome MITCHELL. MORE SCOTT OPERAS. 1996. APPENDIX I: THE PIRATE. pp. 298 - 300. (298) Thomas J. Dibden, THE PIRATE (1/7/1822). J. Robinson Planche, THE PIRATE (1/14/1822). Music by George W. Reeve. William Dimond's THE PIRATE 1/15/1822. Music by Thomas S. Cooke. Three Scott operas in London simultaneously! -- Fiona ROBERTSON, LEGITIMATE HISTORIES: SCOTT, GOTHIC, AND THE AUTHORITIES OF FICTION. 1994. pp. 13, 65, 135, 143, 168, 169 - 177 --- 13 S. T. Coleridge complains of THE PIRATE that Sir Walter relates ghost stories that come true. But narrator shows he disbelieves them. ---174 The novel contrasts the power of silence and communication Brenda is the heroine of communication. (175) A novel inter-relating language, imagination and desire. In most Waverley novels characters threaten society by silence or non-conforming speech. (177) In Norna, WS creates "an alternative, extra-rational, highly charged world of the imagination." http://www.walterscott.lib.ed.ac.uk/works/novels/pirate.html "Scott had  heard the tale of the 'Orkney Pirate' John Gow. Pursued by the  authorities and running low on supplies, Gow had returned home  to Orkney to lie low for a period. There he had assumed the part  of 'Mr Smith', a respectable, prosperous trader, and, in that  capacity, courted a Miss Gordon. Eventually, however, Gow  was recognised  by the captain of a visiting merchant vessel, and the alarm was  raised. His cover blown, Gow attacked the house of a local landowner,  carrying off valuables, and abducting two maidservants. An unsuccessful  attack on a second Orkney mansion led to Gow's arrest and subsequent  execution. Many elements of Gow's story appear, transformed,  in Scott's The Pirate." SNIP Sources The Pirate is set at the end of the seventeenth century, a few  decades earlier than the real-life events (the exploits of John  Gow), on which they are loosely based. The editors of the recent  Edinburgh Edition of the novel, Mark Weinstein and Alison Lumsden,  convincingly argue that the plot unfurls between July and August  1689, against the back-drop of the Glorious Revolution. By moving  events further into the past, Scott was able to portray tension  between the native Norse stock of the Northern Isles and the incoming  Scots lairds (who had thoroughly imposed their language and customs  by the days of John Gow). He is thus able to portray the old order  succumbing to the new both locally and nationally. SNIP Cleveland himself is essentially a Byronic  anti-hero.  Scott also learned from his re-reading of Smollett's novels while  working on the biography for Ballantyne's Novelists' Library.  The depiction of life at sea in The Pirate draws, in  particular, on Smollett's  The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle. =-==-=-=-= 07/03/2007