Read in an 1897 edition. [These notes were made in 1982:]. This novel should have been a hundred pages longer. It starts and proceeds at Scott's leisurely pace, and about half the main action - the return of Ravenswood, Lucy's attempted murder of Bucklaw, her madness and death, and Ravenswood's death, are crammed into the last 15 pages. That rather glaring fault aside, there is much to like here, and some particularly impressive scenes - one can see how it captured the European imagination enough to be turned into an opera. Having taken Jay [Macpherson:]'s course, I am now fully aware of two contrasting elements in Scott's work - the generalized "romantic", with its ladies beside fountains, its proud young hero, and domineering mother-in-law figure. These characters could as easily be English, or French, or Spanish, or anything, provided they were surrounded by appropriately stunning scenery. Then there are the highly localized, dialect-speaking lower and middle class, who certainly fit into the scheme Walpole identified - the "comic relief" - but are also the transmitters of the Scottish tradition, the Scottish language, and the Scottish (as opposed to merely general) supersititon. With a curious double vision, we can see the three old hags of this novel not only as direct descendants of Macbeth's trio, but as aged Scottish crones - in which latter light they are consistently characterized by the narrative voice. Scott is playing games with us here, although it is a game common to the Romantic period - the game of relating in a very rational, almost sceptical fashion, things which bear only supernatural explanations, prophecies which irresistibly come true. "Here it is for your consideration," we are challenged, "something which shouldn't be, but is - and I, your author, have no opinion on the matter." The plot of Lammermoor is, of course, familiar through the opera Lucia, but where the brother is the chief "heavy" in the opera, it is the shrewd but rather weak father that Scott concentrates on. Caleb Balderston, with his single-minded pursuit of outward respectability for the Ravenswoods at any cost, is a fine creation. Not Scott at his best, but definitely and most enjoyably Scott.
