Rob Roy
I’m reading Rob Roy, by Sir Walter Scott, while assembling my writing snippets into a book. And while it’s a rip-roaring tale and interesting, to be sure, it’s also the sort o’ book that brings out the Gaelic accent in ye, and meks ye want t’ sharten yer words and enunciate differ’ntly, wi’ a dram o’ somethin’ stronger as water. I’m enjoyin’ readin’ it aloud to mesell, while harkenin’ back to those Scots and Irishmen I’ve heerd elsewhere. Onc’t I visited a Sunday School class in Salt Lake City, a young lass I were then. The teacher were speakin’ in brogue, as I thot, and I ast ‘im was he Scottish. He said not; he was Irish, but pleased I had come that near to placin’ ‘is accent. He had taken a liking to me, as I was one of those that spoke up intelligently in class, where most of the youths sat in silence, their minds wanderin’ or afeerd to speak up.
Once I’ve come to the end of Rob Roy, no doubt I’ll rehome the book, to the Little Free Library near me. It’s good enough, and a fair adventure indeed, but wordy, and longer than need be, with circumlocutions enow to make one dizzy. Plus I’m sensitive now, as maybe I wouldn’t have been so up in arms before, at how the main character looks at Diana Vernon, nicknamed “Die”, which, not immediately picking up that her given name is Diana, and not wanting to say “die”, I’ve been pronouncing “dee”, until at last her full name became fixed in my mind.
Our hero, Frank Osbaldistone, takes the place of her previous tutor, since she’s eager to learn, and while her grasp of languages foreign to the north of England, where they meet, is considerable, he mislikes her lack of practical knowledge. She is both suspicious, having been taken advantage of, and innocent, not having experience outside the household of men she is part of. Frank Osbaldistone is himself imperfectly educated, but sees that he cannot teach her traditional womanly arts; no doubt, he thinks to himself, this is why she’s so manly and direct in her manners and speech. Frank is at first made fun of by the other Osbaldistone men, his cousins. But one of them designs to supplant Frank entirely and steal his father’s fortune. This is not a surprise to Diana. She sees that Frank is being undermined, and does something to the purpose of savin’ him, while Frank protests that she should not hazard her feminine self in such a way. He may have to duel someone, even. She is not diverted from her course, and he is saved. Or rather, she is diverted, that is, she is amused. Nonetheless, she will not stop trying to help him, even allowing him at the last moment to embrace her, be it so that he will go the faster in getting away.
This book puts me in mind of the plot of Kidnapped, also set in Scotland. I havna been there mysell, and don’t know the lay of the land nor the character of the people, though I’m descended from two or three lines of Scots, them that came to America sometime after Rob Roy. Sir Walter Scott’s description of Glasgow fits what I imagine of it, in the days after Union with Britain and before heavy industry. His telling of Frank’s bewilderment matches how I think I would feel, were I following an elderly gardener on horseback at a breakneck pace over steep rocky slopes in the middle of the night, only to discover that the gardener were a smuggler beforetime, and knows these hills by heart, and wilna be caught travelin’ so in the dark; ‘tis his duty, he says, to carry liquid cheer to them that could use it, in his home land of the Scots.
