#guy mannering

[tevian-art]

Terrier #10 is fittingly my favourite breed, the Dandie Dinmont Terrier. This year, the offical breed club turns 150 years old! Though the Dandie existed for at least a century before it was established. In their heyday these dogs were master fox, badger, and otter hunters, though they are now known as the Gentlemen of Terriers. They remain the only breed named after a fictional character.

[quotation--marks]

Mannering, who had travelled, as usual, on horseback, entered with his daughter hanging upon his arm. She was of the middle size, or rather less, but formed with much elegance; piercing dark eyes, and jet black hair of great length, corresponded with the vivacity and intelligence of features, in which were blended a little haughtiness and a little bashfulness, a great deal of shrewdness, and some power of humorous sarcasm. ‘I shall not like her,’ was the result of Lucy Bertram’s first glance; ‘and yet I rather think I shall,’ was the thought excited by the second.

Walter Scott, Guy Mannering; or, The Astrologer

[pargery]

'But what do you mean, good woman?'

'I am nae good woman; a' the country kens I am bad eneugh, and baith they and I may be sorry eneugh that I am nae better. But I can do what good women canna, and daurna do...'

-- Meg Merrilies, in Guy Mannering by Sir Walter Scott

[pargery]

' ...I love the coena, the supper of the ancients, the pleasant meal and social glass that wash out of one's mind the cobwebs that business or gloom have been spinning in our brains all day.'

--Mr Pleydell quoting "Burnett" who was based on Lord Monboddo, in Guy Mannering by Sir Walter Scott

[pargery]

Twist ye, twine ye! even so

Mingle shades of joy and woe,

Hope, and fear, and peace, and strife,

In the thread of human life

While the mystic thread is spinning,

And the infant's life beginning,

Dimly seen through twilight bending,

Lo, what varied shapes attending!

Passions wild, and Follies vain,

Pleasures soon exchanged for pain

Doubt, and Jealousy, and Fear

In the magic dance appear.

Now they wax, and now they dwindle,

Whirling with the whirling spindle.

Twist ye, twine ye! even so

Mingle human bliss and woe.

-- (Sung by Meg Merrilies while she was spinning thread drawn from black, white, and grey wool in) Guy Mannering by Sir Walter Scott

[pargery]

Inscription on Edinburgh Tollbooth

A prison is a house of care,

A place where none can thrive,

A touchstone true to try a friend,

A grave for one alive

Sometimes a place of right,

Sometimes a place of wrong,

Sometimes a place of rogues and thieves,

And honest men among

-- Chapter XV, Guy Mannering by Sir Walter Scott

[pargery]

They had made war, raised rebellions, been defeated, beheaded, and hanged, as became a family of great importance, for many centuries.

-- From Guy Mannering by Sir Walter Scott

[solwaycoastwise]

Fiction becomes reality

In the early 1800s the novelist Sir Walter Scott was the J K Rowling of his day and the Solway provided an ideal setting for a tale of scheming lawyers and ruthless smugglers in a lawless Galloway. ‘Guy Mannering’ was a work of fiction set in south west Scotland and the popularity of his book led to local people naming landscape features after fictional events described in the book. 

Gauger's Loup near Torrs Point at the mouth of Kirkcudbright Bay is still marked on Ordnance Survey maps. A customs man was often called a Gauger because he tested and measured the contents of casks and Loup is Scots for leap. In ‘Guy Mannering’ smugglers kidnap a boy after he witnesses them murdering a customs officer by pushing him off a cliff. In later editions of ‘Guy Mannering’ Sir Walter Scott notes; ‘strangers who visit this place, the scenery which is highly romantic, are also shown, under the name of Gauger’s Loup, a tremendous precipice, being the same, it is asserted, from which Kennedy is precipitated.’

Torrs Cave is located nearby and for a time was rechristened Dirk Hatteraick’s Cove after the fictional character of a smuggler who is considered to be based on the infamous Jack Yawkins. There is no doubt that in times past the indented shoreline was attractive to smugglers although caves are probably not the best hiding place for smuggled goods.  Archaeological excavations have shown that Torrs Cave was used by people as a shelter for thousands of years.