Old Mortality

Product Information

In Old Morality, Porter centers Miranda in this fog. We first meet Miranda as an 8-year-old, listening to stories of the past, hearing a romantic version of the life of her Aunt Amy, a beautiful heartbreaker who died young of tuberculosis (such a romantic disease!). Miranda (and her sister Maria) enjoy their vision of Aunt Amy, a picture of who they think she was. Of course, as children, they are missing a number of the facts, partly because the facts surrounding Amy have been purposely obscured by her family. Ui.: És hadd gratuláljak Ungvári Tamásnak, aki előszavában sikeresen húzta rá a hegelianizmust Walter Scottra – mindezt úgy, hogy ki sem mondta Hegel nevét. Viszont Lukács Györgyét kimondta. Hatszor.) This Thomas Paterson married Jane Murray, a grand-niece of the famous Dr. Alexander Murray, the linguist, and has issue a son Robert and a daughter. Scott was steeped in 17th-century literature, but among the printed sources drawn on for The Tale of Old Mortality the following may be singled out for special mention:

As a tribute of affection, gratitude, and respect by their two sons Nathaniel and Walter, ministers of the Free Church of Scotland." Protagonist: Henry Morton. Morton fights for liberty of conscience. That’s what drives him, even more than love. Which makes sense--he's trying to get two extremes to be moderate, and they don't wanna, either one. But something seemed to happen to their father's memory when he thought of the girls he had known in the family of his youth, and he declared steadfastly they had all been, in every generation without exception, as slim as reeds and graceful as sylphs.

by Sir Walter Scott

Robert's son Walter Paterson was also a stonemason, and was father to Nathaniel Paterson who became Moderator of the General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland in 1850. [4] Ritchie, Lionel Alexander (2004). "Paterson, Nathaniel". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (onlineed.). Oxford University Press. doi: 10.1093/ref:odnb/21534. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.) Sir Walter Scott goes nasty -- beyond knights and damsels -- into a world of religious hatred and sectarian violence that remains more relevant than ever today!

Rogers, Charles (1871). Monuments and monumental inscriptions in Scotland. Vol.1. London: Grampian Club. pp. 298, 328.

Tombs

The scenery of ‘Old Mortality’ required us to explore the course of the river Clyde for almost its entire length. This picturesque stream rises in the high country near Moffat.(…)

Old Mortality takes place in 1679 when the Royalist forces led by John Graham of Claverhouse engage with the Covenanting army. The Covenanters oppose the reintroduction of Episcopalian church government or Erastianism by Charles II. It led to 270 ministers without work and hence poverty as they refused to take an oath of allegiance. However, the ministers still had the loyalty of their parishioners and conducted worship in remote places. The assaissination of the Archbishop led to a rebellion between the Covenanters and Royalists. Loudon Hill (LOWD-en). Scene of the Covenanter victory over the Royalist forces of Claverhouse. This battle represents the finest qualities of the Covenanter rebels, in part because their knowledge of and military skill in using the landscape, their sense of fighting for their own country, and the contrasting failure of the Royalist forces to understand either the place of battle or the country in which they are fighting, dramatize the Covenanter rebellion as a nationalist struggle.

by Sir Walter Scott

Scott főhőse, Henry Morton tipikus scott-i főhős: becsületes, mérsékelt, alapvetően apolitikus elme, aki a körülmények szerencsétlen összejátszása folytán kerül a lázadók közé, de ha már ott van, igyekszik ott is becsülettel megállni a helyét. Az író módszereit jól jellemzi, hogy Morton tükörképét megteremti a királypárti oldalon Lord Evandale figurájában: ketten egyazon nőbe szerelmesek, kölcsönösen megmentik egymás életét, kölcsönösen respektálják a másik elveit és erkölcseit, és igyekeznek mérsékelni pártjuk radikalizmusát. Scott univerzumában a szélsőségesek is jelen vannak mindkét táborban, ám őket sem matt feketére festi a szerző: a presbiteriánus oldalon Burnley ugyan démoni figura, mégis kénytelenek vagyunk bátorságát és elvhűségét bámulni, a királypárti Lord Claverhouse hidegen célszerű kegyetlensége pedig elrettent minket, de erényei pont ugyanazok, mint engesztelhetetlen ellenfelének. Nem gonoszok ��k sem – egyszerűen csak fanatikusok. Nem is értik, miért bélyegezné valaki gonosznak őket. Mégis: ők azok, akik kellemetlen hellyé teszik a világot. Ch. 3: At the wappen-schaw Henry Morton wins the contest of shooting at the popinjay (parrot), defeating Lord Evandale and a young plebeian [later identified as Cuddie Headrigg]. Lady Margaret's half-witted servant Goose Gibbie takes a tumble.