The Lay of the Last Minstrel

Examines Sir Walter Scott's lifelong obsession for the ballads of his native Scottish Borderlands. The book looks not only at Scott's editing and publication of his 'Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border' - a valuable source for musicians and folklorists alike, but also his own composition of songs and ballads. The ballads themselves are examined in proper historical perspective, and their origins traced back in some cases to the same ancient bardic sources from whence medieval minstrels derived their own inspiration. In addition to collecting the ballads themselves, Scott went to considerable effort to investigate much of the folklore surrounding them; as well as researching the legendary transitions of the areas where the ballads were originally composed. This shows that Scott was as much concerned with preserving the essence of the oral culture of which these ballads were a part, as he was with preserving the ballads themselves, portraying him as the true successor to the minstrel tradition, which can be traced right back to the magician Merlin and the Dark Age poets of the Arthurian period. We can thus recognise Scott for what he truly was; the last of the true bards.


Genre: Literary Fiction