The Scott monument is one of the famous landmarks in Edinburgh and Scotland. Towering over 200 feet above Prince’s Street Gardens, this iconic construction is so well known that often locals who need a meeting place when shopping on the bustling Princes St will say, ‘Meet you at the Scott monument’. Tourists are often surprised that this writer is given such prominence in our capital city. But then he was more than a writer: he is the Pied Piper of tourism to Scotland and, as with Robert Burns, he is the defender and promoter of what it means to be Scottish. When King George IV came on his stately visit to Scotland in 1822, he insisted on wearing a kilt. Sir Walter Scott was rowed out to the King’s ship, the Royal George, and when he came aboard the King exclaimed, ‘What! Sir Walter Scott! The man in Scotland I most wish to see!’
Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832) was a lawyer by training, but he was one of those multi-talented men of this period. His love of Scotland, history and books, inspired him to write his famous Waverley Novels, among them being Ivanhoe, Rob Roy, Old Mortality and others. Poems, such as The Lady of the Lake, wooed multitudes of tourists to Scotland. Indeed, his writings became the magnet which drew so many visitors to this land to share in the romance of its mystery and rugged, beautiful landscape, which is steeped in tales of heroism and intrigue.
His passion as an antiquarian drove him on a quest to seek and find the lost Honours of Scotland, or Crown Jewels. These are the oldest Crown Jewels in Britain, dating back to James V in 1540, along with the sceptre (c.1494) and sword (c.1507). Today, they sit with the Stone of Scone on proud display in Edinburgh Castle’s Crown Room. The English Crown Jewels had been melted down and converted into coins for Cromwell’s Commonwealth, so fears were high that the same fate would befall The Honours of Scotland. In haste, the Scots took them for safe-keeping at Dunnottar Castle, but when Cromwell’s army arrived there in 1651, they were smuggled out and buried under the floor of the Old Kirk at Kinneff. Later they were transferred to a secret room in Edinburgh Castle, where Sir Walter Scott and others recovered them with great celebrations.
Whenever you read the works of Scott you do not have to peruse too far before you come across Scriptures, or influences from the Bible. So much of his life revolved around this book. He began as a Presbyterian, being an elder at the picturesque village of Duddingston in Edinburgh, but then joined the Episcopalian Church. Although he was also a Freemason, it was the Christian faith which was close to his heart. As he lay dying, Sir Walter Scott called out to John Lockhart, his son-in-law, ‘Read to me out of the Book.’Lockhart, knowing Scott’s passion for his extensive library at Abbotsford House, asked, ‘Which book?’‘There is only one Book’, came the response, ‘the Bible! The Bible is the Book to live by and the Book to die by. Therefore, read it to be wise, believe it to be safe, practice it to be holy. As another has said: “Know it in the head, store it in the heart, show it in the life, sow it in the world.”’
‘The entrance of Your words gives light; it gives understanding to the simple’ (Psalm 119:130, NKJV).
Image: Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832), by Thomas Lawrence, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons