Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832)
Scottish poet and novelist, born at College Wynd, Edinburgh, on 15 August 1771. Educated at Edinburgh University. Scott spent his boyhood at his grandfather's house in Kelso where he heard traditional tales and ballads of the Borders from his relatives, in addition to being much stimulated by Thomas Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1765) when he was thirteen. When he was an apprentice to his father, a writer for the Signet, he devoted much of his leisure time to collecting Border tales and ballads. Influenced by German Romantics, Scott translated Gottfried August Bürger's "The Wild Huntsman", and wrote an imitation ballad, "William and Helen" in 1797. Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (1802-03), the fruition of his exploitation of traditional ballads, contains Border ballads, his imitations, and some articles full of his patriotism. Other longer poems are "The Lay of the Last Minstrel" (1805), "Marmion" (1808), and "The Lady of the Lake" (1810). He published over twenty novels, from Waverly (1814) to Castle Dangerous (1831). (H. N.)