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The Ancestors of Jonathan Oldbuck*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Stuart Piggott*
Affiliation:
Prehistoric Archaeology Edinbrugh University

Extract

Sir Walter Scott ’, Andrew Lang once remarked, ‘ entered literature through the ruined gateway of archaeology ’. The influence of Scott’s poetry, and of the Waverley Novels, upon the growing antiquarian and romantic taste of the early 19th century is a commonplace which needs no enlargement here, but it should have a particular interest to us as Fellows of a Society founded for the study of Scottish antiquities when young Walter was nine years old, and to which he was elected in 1796. That one of his novels should be called The Antiquary is no mere chance, and in Jonathan Oldbuck of Monkbarns, who plays the title-r6le, Scott produced a character whom he acknowledged as in part a humorous caricature of himself. As a crumbling pilaster, or mouldering gargoyle, of Lang's ruined gateway, I should like tonight to direct your attention to The Antiquary’s, and The Shirra’s, archaeological ancestors : what was the climate of antiquarian thought in which Scott had been brought up and how is it reflected in his work ? I do not promise anything new in this brief enquiry, but there are points of interest which may not have been brought together before.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 1955

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References

1 For Sir John Clerk, see his Memoirs (ed. Scottish History Soc, Vol. XIII (1892)) ; Piggott, William Stukeley (1950), passim ; John Fleming, Scottish Country Houses and Gardens (1954), 13, 82, for his architectural interests though with some confusion as to the designing of Penicuik, the extant drawings for which are by Sir James Clerk. For Gordon Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot., X (1872–4) 363.

2 The discussion of the Scottish primitivists which follows is based largely on Arthur Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being (1933) ; ‘Monboddo and Rousseau’, Mod. Philology, XXX (1933), 275, and ‘The Supposed Primitivism of Rousseau’s Discourse on Inequality’, ibid, XXI, 165 ; and Lois Whitney, ‘English Primitivistic Theories of Epic Origins’, ibid, 337.