Galt's 'The Spaewife' 1823

 

First edition - 1823

I must admit, this was the first Galt novel I struggled a little with. I missed his humour and he was clearly not as comfortable in the 15th century as in the late 17th or nearer his own times. As soon as Galt had finished Ringan Gilhaize - a much better book - he started on two new projects, one of which was this Scottish historical novel. It came out in December 1823, in an edition of 3,000. Here is Ian A. Gordon, a well-known writer on Galt:

Writing on the {earlier) centuries, his realistic historical sense deserts him and he is blindly unaware that the genre he has chosen is fancy-dress fiction, sentimental and romantic evocation of history, intrinsically worthless. The error is compounded by dialogue in the language of melodrama...'I do' (says the Countess of Atholl to the Earl) 'by our long cohabitation and faithful love, implore you not to embark on this business'. 

So, what didn't 'click' for me?

• Biblical phraseology - all things being again ordered... Now it came to pass... when they came nigh to... thus it was determined... now it had so chanced... among other events that came to pass, about the epoch of these things whereof recital has been made... Was Galt aiming at a Chronicle in language terms?
• Often bewildering number of characters (too many Stuarts!), not helped by the jumping around of locations in chapters. There's the Duke Robert of Albany; the Regent Murdoch; the Earl of Atholl; Isabella, Duchess of Albany; the Earl of Ross; the Earl of Lennox; Lord Walter, Lord Alexander and Lord James Stuart; Lord Robert Stuart and several others. 
• No character really likeable. In fact, the one who stands out in my memory, who was the bitter, vengeful (successful) pursuer of James I, Sir Robert Graeme, is the most unpleasant of the lot. Lady Sibilla is simply uninteresting. I did like Father Mungo deservedly getting stoned (literally!). King James was a not very convincing figure.
• Purple patches about the scenery and diversions about what an individual was wearing or what a room contained - touches of both John Wilson and Walter Scott.                                                                                                         viz.: It was then the green and pleasant month of May, when the leaves are bright and the waters clear, and the birds, and bees, and blossoms, and butterflies, are all fluttering in the blitheness of the sunshine. Cheerfulness shone on the foreheads of the mountains, and the valley of Strathearn smiled to the gracious Heavens, that were shedding, with a bountiful hand, the treasures of summer into her broad and flowery apron. Or - the hills and woody skirts of the lake were darkened with their own shadows, and hung over the clear depths of the stillness of the sleeping waters below, wherein the glories of the evening sky lay reflected, as if they had been clouds enviously drawn between the world and some marvellous apocalypse of brightness and beauty... the mountain-ash, that holds up his ruby berries amidst the fading woods and fallen leaves, like a young hero who has dyed his sword for the first time in the blood of some renowned warrior...; again - the twice-visiting primrose was seen among the cliffy rocks peeping from her mossy nook, like some pale and timid spinster... Ugh!
• the very irritating 'language'/speaking of Glenfruin - with his repetitive "Sowlls and powdies!" - which was on a par with Scott's Dirk Hatterick in Guy Mannering and Dousterswivel in The Antiquary. At least they were meant to be foreign. Eventually, I skipped over any speech of his longer than a couple of sentences.
• Above all, the nonsense of the Spaewife, Anniple o'Dunblane, a young woman of a wild and uncouth appearance... long matted locks... with her loud and shrill raving of malaisons... who laughs in an eldrich manner. Like an adolescent's pimple, she pops up everywhere - cried a voice at his feet from amidst the bushes on the steep. Totally unbelievable. If Galt was trying to create a similar figure to Scott's gallery of female wierdoes, who were usually much older (Meg Merrilees, Meg and Madge 'Wildfire' Murdockson and Norna of the Fitful Head), then he did not succeed. The stabs at poetry/verse did not help, either. The extracts were as bad as Scott's in so many of his novels.

I am still glad I read the novel, not least because it was next on my long list. However, I much preferred Evan John's portrayal of James I and the other major characters, in his Crippled Splendour (Nicholson & Watson, 1938). They all seemed realistic individuals and more 'alive' - until dead, of course.