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curious Letters from the Highlands, published about 1726, will find instances of such atrocious characters which fell under the writer's own observation, though it would be most unjust to consider such villains as representatives of the Highlanders of that period, any more than the murderers of Marr and Williamson can be supposed to represent the English of the present day. As for the plunder supposed to have been picked up by some of the insurgents in 1745, it must be remembered, that although the way of that unfortunate little army was neither marked by devastation nor bloodshed, but, on the contrary, was orderly and quiet in a most wonderful degree, yet no army marches through a country in a hostile manner without committing some depredations; and several, to the extent, and of the nature, jocularly imputed to them by the Baron, were really laid to the charge of the Highland insurgents; for which many traditions, and particularly one respecting the Knight of the Mirror, may be quoted as good evidence.1

1 A homely metrical narrative of the events of the period which contains some striking particulars, and is still a great favourite with the lower classes, gives a very correct statement of the behaviour of the mountaineers respecting this same military license; and as the verses are little known, and contain some good sense, we venture to insert them.

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I saw a Highlander, 'twas right drole,
With a string of puddings hung on a pole,,
Whip'd o'er his shoulder, skipped like a fole,
Caus'd Maggy bann,

Lap o'er the midden and midden-hole,
And aff he ran.

ye

When check'd for this, they'd often tell
Indeed her nainsell's a tume belly;
You'll no gie't wanting bought, nor sell me;
Hersell will hae't;

Go tell King Shorge and Shordy's Willie,
I'll hae a meat.

I saw the soldiers at Linton-brig,
Because the man was not a Whig,
Of meat an drink leave not a skig,
Within his door;

They burnt his very hat and wig,

And thumped him sore.

And through the Highlands they were so rude
As leave them neither clothes nor food.
Then burnt their houses to conclude;
'Twas tit for tat.

How can her nainsell e'er be good,
To think on that?

And after all, O shame and grief!
To use some worse than murd'ring thief,
Their very gentleman and chief,
Unhumanly!

Like Popish tortures, I believe,
Such cruelty.

Ev'n what was act on open stage
At Carlisle, in the hottest rage,
When mercy was clapt in a cage,
And pity dead,

Such cruelty approv'd by every age,
I shook my head.

So many to curse, so few to pray,
And some aloud huzza did cry;

They cursed the Rebel Scots that day,
As they'd been nowt

Brought up for slaughter, as that way
Too many rowt.

Therefore, alas! dear countrymen,
O never do the like again,

To thirst for vengeance, never ben
Your gun nor pa',

But with the English e'en borrow and len',
Let anger fa'.

Their boasts and bullying, not worth a louse,
As our King's the best about the house,

'Tis ay good to be sober and douce,

To live in peace;

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see,

for being o'er crouse, Gets broken face.

Under which King, Bezonian? speak,

or die !

Henry IV. Part II

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTORY

THE title of this work has not been chosen without the grave and solid deliberation, which matters of importance demand from the prudent. Even its first, or general denomination, was the result of no common research or selection, although, according to the example of my predecessors, I had only to seize upon the most sounding and euphonic surname that English history or topography affords, and elect it at once as the title of my work, and the name of my hero. But, alas! what could my readers have expected from the chivalrous epithets of Howard, Mordaunt, Mortimer, or Stanley, or from the softer and more sentimental sounds of Belmore, Belville, Belfield, and Belgrave, but pages of inanity, similar to those which have been so christened for half a century past? I must modestly admit I am too diffident of my own merit to place it in unnecessary opposition to preconceived associations; I have, therefore, like a maiden knight with his white shield, assumed for my hero, WAVERLEY, an uncontaminated name, bearing with its sound little of good or evil, excepting what the reader shall hereafter be pleased to affix to it. But

my second or supplemental title was a matter of much more difficult election, since that, short as it is, may be held as pledging the author to some special mode of laying his scene, drawing his characters, and managing his adventures. Had I, for example, announced in my frontispiece, "Waverley, a Tale of other Days," must not every novel-reader have anticipated a castle scarce less than that of Udolpho, of which the eastern wing had long been uninhabited, and the keys either lost, or consigned to the care of some aged butler or housekeeper, whose trembling steps, about the middle of the second volume, were doomed to guide the hero, or heroine, to the ruinous precincts? Would not the owl have shrieked and the cricket cried in my very title-page? and could it have been possible for me, with a moderate attention to decorum, to introduce any scene more lively than might be produced by the jocularity of a clownish but faithful valet, or the garrulous narrative of the heroine's fille-de-chambre, when rehearsing the

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stories of blood and horror which she had heard in the servants' hall? Again, had my title borne, "Waverley, a Romance of the German," what head so obtuse as not to image forth a profligate abbot, an oppressive duke, a secret and mysterious association of Rosycrucians and Illuminati, with all their properties of black cowls, caverns, daggers, electrical machines, trap-doors, and dark-lanterns? Or if I had rather chosen to call my work a Sentimental Tale," would it not have been a sufficient presage of a heroine with a profusion of auburn hair, and a harp, the soft solace of her solitary hours, which she fortunately finds always the means of transporting from castle to cottage, although she herself be sometimes obliged to jump out of a two-pair-of-stairs window, and is more thar once bewildered on her journey, alone and on foot, withou any guide but a blowzy peasant girl, whose jargon she hardly can understand? Or again, if my Waverley had been entitled "A Tale of the Times," wouldst thou not, gentle reader, have demanded from me a dashing sketch of the fashionable world a few anecdotes of private scandal thinly veiled, and if lus ciously painted, so much the better? a heroine from Grosveno Square, and a hero from the Barouche Club or the Four-in Hand, with a set of subordinate characters from the elegantes of Queen Anne Street East, or the dashing heroes of the Bow Street Office? I could proceed in proving the importance o a title-page, and displaying at the same time my own intimate knowledge of the particular ingredients necessary to the com position of romances and novels of various descriptions: Bu it is enough, and I scorn to tyrannize longer over the impa tience of my reader, who is doubtless already anxious to know the choice made by an author, so profoundly versed in the different branches of his art.

By fixing, then, the date of my story Sixty Years before this present 1st November 1805, I would have my readers understand, that they will meet in the following pages neither a romance of chivalry, nor a tale of modern manners; that my hero will neither have iron on his shoulders, as of yore, nor on the heels of his boots, as is the present fashion of Bond Street; and that my damsels will neither be clothed "in purple and in pall," like the Lady Alice of an old ballad, nor reduced to the primitive nakedness of a modern fashionable at a rout. From this my choice of an era the understanding critic may farther presage, that the object of my tale is more a description of men than manners. A tale of manners, to

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