208 FURTHER NOTES CONCERNING SIR WALTER SCOTT 



much wee-er than you are." Not only was Mrs Aytoun 

 an early acquaintance, and a companion of his sister 

 Anne Scott, but there was so far a connection, that she was a 

 niece of Mr Keith of Ravelston, whose wife was one of 

 the Scott's Swinton grandaunts. But Mr Roger Aytoun was 

 a vehement Whig, as Sir Walter, in a half facetious way, was a 

 vehement Tory. His sister, as far as Miss Aytoun had ever 

 heard about her, does not seem to have been the invalid one 

 would rather suppose from his notices of her. 



Since most of the above was written, I have had the 

 opportunity of examining one of the fragments of the Bride 

 of Lammermoor which exist in Sir Walter's handwriting. 

 It consists of the latter part of the first volume, " and the 

 beginning of the second; and I should suppose that the other 

 fragment consisted of the beginning of the story. 



Apparently he had written more than a volume before 

 his illness, and then started afresh when he began dictating the 

 story from his sick-bed. The MS. looks much the same as 

 the printed version, beginning after the adventure with the 

 bull, and going on through thirty pages of large quarto paper, 

 closely written, to the night when the Keeper and his daughter 

 are detained at Wolf's Crag, which is marked as the end of the 

 first volume, and then there are eight pages more. 



But, though I had not the book at hand, I gather 

 from a note which seems to be in the handwriting of the 

 purchaser, that some of Caleb's feats at least have been 

 developed since this was written. It is a further indication 

 that the Edgars of Wedderlie were in the mind of the writer, 

 that the incident of quitting the family home after dark occurs in 

 the novel ; though it has not the special pathetic significance it 

 has in the real story, as Eavenswood accompanies his father. 

 There is a point about the story of the Baldoon marriage 

 which requires explanation ; Sir Andrew Agnew, in his 

 Hereditary Sheriffs of Galloway, the history of his own family ; 

 which, without being exactly either a family chronicle or 

 a county history, is more of both than is generally possible in 

 Scotland — Q-alloway and Ayrshire lying out of the main road of 

 destructive invasion — says it is quite a mistake to suppose that 

 anything unusual happened. But in the next generation, Agnew 

 of Lochnaw had married the niece of David Dunbar's second 

 wife ; so the Agnews were bound to know nothing about it. 



