The Fair Maid of Perth (1828)

The Fair Maid of Perth (or St. Valentine's Day) is an 1828 novel by Sir Walter Scott, one of the Waverley novels. Inspired by the strange, but historically true, story of the Battle of the North Inch, it is set in Perth (known at the time as Saint John's Toun, i.e. John's Town) and other parts of Scotland around 1400.

Composition and sources

By the time he finished the first series of Chronicles of the Canongate on 16 September 1827 Scott had been discussing his next work of fiction for several weeks. He was originally minded to embark on a successor to Quentin Durward, which was eventually to become Anne of Geierstein (1829), but in the event he settled on a second series of the Chronicles. Like the first, this was envisaged as a collection of short stories, and it seems likely that by mid-November Scott had written a long Croftangry introduction to match the opening chapters of the first series. On 3 December he completed 'My Aunt Margaret's Mirror', and on the 5th he had decided that the next story would concern Harry Wynd; but before the middle of the month, in response to doubts by James Ballantyne and Robert Cadell about the commercial viability of another publication consisting of a long introduction and a set of short stories, he decided to abbreviate the introduction to a single chapter and allow the Wynd tale, now with the title Saint Valentine's Eve, to fill the rest of the three volumes. There was a break in composition over Christmas, but composition resumed in January and the first volume was completed on 5 February 1828, the second on 2 March and the third on the 29th of that month.

Scott's sources for The Fair Maid of Perth are largely cited in the text of the novel or in the 'Magnum' notes. From the 14th and 15th centuries he drew on the two narrative poems, The Brus by John Barbour, and The Wallace by Blind Hary. From the same period he found helpful material in: Chronica gentis scotorum by John of Fordun, and its continuation Scotichronicon by Walter Bower; Orygynale Cronykil of Scotland by Andrew of Wyntoun; and Scotorum historiae by Hector Boece, translated by John Bellenden. From the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries he used The History of the Houses of Douglas and Angus by David Hume of Godscroft (1644; reissued 1648), and (for many details about Perth) The Muses Threnodie by Henry Adamson edited with extensive notes by James Cant (1774), as well as The History of Scotland from the Accession of the House of Stuart to that of Mary by John Pinkerton (1797). This last was a particularly important source for the historical characters and the main events.

Editions

St Valentine's Day; or, The Fair Maid of Perth was published on 15 May 1828, by Cadell and Co. in Edinburgh and Simpkin and Marshall in London, the latter receiving 6000 copies in all. The price was one and a half guineas (£1 11s 6d or £1.57½). In the summer of 1831 Scott revisited the work for the 'Magnum' edition, making some textual changes and providing a few brief notes, but he was in poor health and many more changes and notes were introduced by J. G. Lockhart (with or without authorial input). Lockhart also provided the novel with an antiquarian and source-documenting introduction to replace Scott's original discussion of work's genesis. The work appeared posthumously in November and December 1832 as Volumes 42 and 43.

The standard modern edition of The Fair Maid of Perth, by A. D. Hook and Donald Mackenzie, was published as Volume 21 of the Edinburgh Edition of the Waverley Novels in 1999: this is based on the first edition with emendations mainly from the manuscript; the 'Magnum' material appears in Volume 25b (2012).

Plot introduction

The fair maid of the title is Catharine Glover, daughter of a glovemaker in Perth, who kisses Henry Gow/Smith, the armourer, while he is sleeping, on Valentine's Day. But Catharine has caught the eye of the Duke of Rothesay, and when Gow interrupts an attempted abduction, the armourer is drawn simultaneously into royal intrigue and highland feud.

Plot summary

The armourer Henry Gow had excited the jealousy of the apprentice Conachar by spending the evening with the glover and his daughter and was returning to their house at dawn, that he might be the first person she saw on St Valentine's morning, when he encountered a party of courtiers in the act of placing a ladder against her window. Having cut off the hand of one, and seized another, who, however, managed to escape, he left the neighbours to pursue the rest, and was saluted by Catharine as her lover. The citizens waited on the provost, who, having heard their grievance, issued a challenge of defiance to the offenders.

Meanwhile, the King who occupied apartments in the convent, having confessed to the prior, was consulting with his brother, when the Earl of March arrived to intimate his withdrawal to the English Border, followed into the courtyard by Louise, and afterwards by the Duke of Rothesay, whose dalliance with the maiden was interrupted by the Earl of Douglas ordering his followers to seize and scourge her. Henry Gow, however, was at hand, and the prince, having committed her to his protection, attended his father's council, at which it was determined that the hostile Clans Chattan and Quhele ("Kay") should be invited to settle their feud by a combat between an equal number of their bravest men in the royal presence, and a commission was issued for the suppression of heresy. The old monarch, having learnt that his son was one of those who had attempted to force their way into the glover's house, insisted that he should dismiss his Master of the Horse, who encouraged all his follies; and while Catharine, who had listened to the Lollard teaching of Father Clement, was being urged by him to favour the secret suit of the Prince, her other lover, Conachar, who had rejoined his clan, appeared to carry off her councillor from arrest as an apostate reformer.