"The Pirate" is also the title of novels by Harold Robbins and Frederick Marryat
The Pirate (published at the end of 1821 with the date 1822) is one of the Waverley novels by Sir Walter Scott, based roughly on the life of John Gow who features as Captain Cleveland.Warren S. Walker, "A 'Scottish Cooper' for an 'American Scott'", 537; John Robert Moore, "Defoe and Scott," 729. The setting is the southern tip of the main island of Shetland (which Scott visited in 1814), towards the end of the 17th century, with 1689 as the likely date of the main incidents.Walter Scott, The Pirate, ed. Mark Weinstein and Alison Lumsden (Edinburgh, 2001), 487.
Composition and sources On 21 August 1820 John Ballantyne offered Archibald Constable a new novel to follow Kenilworth (which was to be published in January the following year). No title or subject was specified at that stage, and it was not until April 1821 that Ballantyne noted that what he calls the 'Buccaneer' had been begun. The need for research on the northern isles, and other occupations, slowed Scott down, and the first volume was not completed until early August, but his pace then quickened and the work was finished in late October.Ibid., 393–96.
In 1814 Scott had taken a six-week cruise with the Northern Lighthouse Commissioners. He kept a diary (eventually published in his biography by J. G. Lockhart), and when he came to write The Pirate he was able to draw on it for many details about an otherwise unfamiliar part of Scotland. He accumulated a small collection of pirate literature, the most useful being History of the Lives and Actions of the most Famous Highwaymen, Murderers, Street-Robbers, &c. To which is added, A Genuine Account of the Voyages and Plunders of the most noted Pirates by Captain Charles Johnson (1742). This was supplemented by an account of the pirate John Gow supplied by Alexander Peterkin, Sheriff-Substitute of Orkney and Zetland, published in 1822, the year of the novel's appearance, as Notes on Orkney and Zetland. Scott was also acquainted with several books on the northern isles from the seventeenth century to his own time which discussed the agricultural questions that occupy Triptolemus Yellowley's attention in the novel.Ibid., 487–95.
Editions The Pirate was published in three volumes by Constable and Ballantyne in Edinburgh on 24 December 1821 and by Hurst, Robinson, and Co. in London two days later.For a description of the early editions see Ibid., 413–33. As with all the Waverley novels before 1827 publication was anonymous. The print run was 12,000, though 2000 of these were a late afterthought which resulted in a bibliographical complication. The price was one and a half guineas (£1 11s 6d or £1.57½). It is unlikely that Scott was involved with the novel again until March and then August 1830 when he revised the text and provided an introduction and notes for the 'Magnum' edition in which it appeared as Volumes 24 and 25 in May and June 1831.
The standard modern edition, by Mark Weinstein and Alison Lumsden, was published in 2001 as Volume 12 of the Edinburgh Edition of the Waverley Novels: it is based on the first edition with emendations mainly from Scott's manuscript and proof corrections; the Magnum material is included in Volume 25b.
Plot introduction The arrival of the shipwrecked captain, Cleveland, spoils young Mordaunt's relationship with the Troil girls, and soon a bitter rivalry grows between the two men. Minna falls in love with Cleveland, not knowing his true profession. Brenda however is in love with Mordaunt. The pirates capture the Troils, but after an encounter with the frigate HMS Halcyon, they are freed. Brenda and Mordaunt are reunited, and Minna and Cleveland parted.
Plot summary
Mr Mertoun and his son had arrived as strangers, and resided for several years in the remaining rooms of the old mansion of the Earls of Orkney, the father leading a very secluded life, while the son Mordaunt became a general favourite with the inhabitants, and especially with the udaller, Magnus Troil, and his daughters, Brenda and Minna. On his way home from a visit to them, he and the pedlar Snailsfoot sought shelter from a storm at a farmhouse, at Hafra, home of Triptolemus Yellowley agent of the Chamberlain of Orkney and Shetland, and his sister Barbara. The visitors were amused with the Yellowleys' penurious ways, and encountered Norna, a relative of Magnus Troil who was supposed to be in league with the fairies, and to possess supernatural powers. The next day a ship was wrecked on the rocky coast, and, at the risk of his life, Mordaunt rescued the captain, Cleveland, as he was cast on the beach clinging to a plank, while Norna prevented his sea-chest from being pillaged. Cleveland was in fact a pirate, but they did not know this. The captain promised his preserver a trip in a consort ship which he expected would arrive shortly, and went to seek the Udaller's help in recovering some of his other property that had been washed ashore. After the lapse of several weeks, however, during which the Troils had discontinued their friendly communications with him, Mordaunt heard that the stranger was still their guest, and that they were arranging an entertainment for Saint John's Eve, to which he had not been invited.
As he was brooding over this slight, Norna touched his shoulder, and, assuring him of her goodwill, advised him to join the party uninvited. Warned by his father against falling in love, and with some misgivings as to his reception, he called at Harfra on his way, and accompanied Yellowley and his sister to the feast. Minna and Brenda Troil replied to their discarded companion's greeting with cold civility, and he felt convinced that Captain Cleveland had supplanted him in their esteem. The bard, Claud Halcro, endeavoured to cheer him with his poetry and reminiscences of "glorious" John Dryden; and, in the course of the evening, Brenda, disguised as a masquer, told him they had heard that he had spoken unkindly of them, but that she did not believe he had done so. She also expressed her fear that the stranger had won Minna's love, and begged Mordaunt to discover all he could respecting him. During an attempt to capture a whale the following day, Cleveland saved Mordaunt from drowning, and, being thus released from his obligation to him, intimated that henceforth they were rivals. The same evening the pedlar brought tidings that a strange ship had arrived at Kirkwall, and Cleveland talked of a trip thither to ascertain whether it was the consort he had been so long expecting.
After the sisters had retired to bed, Norna appeared in their room, and narrated a startling tale of her early life, which led Minna to confess her attachment to the captain, and to elicit Brenda's partiality for Mordaunt. At a secret interview the next morning, Cleveland admitted to Minna that he was a pirate, upon which she declared that she could only still love him as a penitent, and not as the hero she had hitherto imagined him to be. He announced, in the presence of her father and sister, his intention of starting at once for Kirkwall; but at night he serenaded her, and then, after hearing a struggle and a groan, she saw the shadow of a figure disappearing with another on his shoulders. Overcome with grief and suspense, she was seized with a fit of melancholy, for the cure of which the udaller consulted Norna in her secluded dwelling; and, after a mystic ceremony, she predicted that the cause would cease when "crimson foot met crimson hand" in the Martyr's Aisle in Orkney land, whither she commanded her kinsman to proceed with his daughters. Mordaunt had been stabbed by the pirate, but had been carried away by Norna to Hoy, where she told him she was his mother, and, after curing his wound, conveyed him to Kirkwall. Here Cleveland had joined his companions, and, having been chosen captain of the consort ship, he obtained leave from the provost for her to take in stores at Stromness and quit the islands, on condition that he remained as a hostage for the crew's behaviour.
On their way they captured the brig containing the Troils, but Minna and Brenda were sent safely ashore by John Bunce, Cleveland's lieutenant, and escorted by old Halcro to visit a relative. The lovers met in the cathedral of St Magnus, whence, with Norna's aid, Cleveland escaped to his ship, and the sisters were transferred to the residence of the bard's cousin, where their father joined them, and found Mordaunt in charge of a party of dependents for their protection. When all was ready for sailing, the captain resolved to see Minna once more, and having sent a note begging her to meet him at the Standing Stones of Stenness at daybreak, he made his way thither. Brenda persuaded Mordaunt to allow her sister to keep the appointment, and as the lovers were taking their last farewell, they and Brenda were seized by Bunce and his crew from the boat, and would have been carried off, had not Mordaunt hastened to the rescue, and made prisoners of the pirate and his lieutenant. Norna had warned Cleveland against delaying his departure, and his last hopes were quenched when, from the window of the room in which he and Bunce were confined, they witnessed the arrival of the Halcyon, whose captain she had communicated with, and the capture, after a desperate resistance, of their ship.
The elder Mertoun now sought Norna's aid to save their son, who, he declared, was not Mordaunt, as she imagined, but Cleveland, whom he had trained as a pirate under his own real name of Vaughan, her former lover; and having lost trace of him till now, had come to Jarlshof, with his child by a Spanish wife, to atone for the misdeeds of his youth. On inquiry it appeared that Cleveland and Bunce had earned their pardon by acts of mercy in their piratical career, and were allowed to enter the king's service. Minna was further consoled by a penitent letter from her lover; Brenda became Mordaunt's wife; and the aberration of mind, occasioned by remorse at having caused her father's death, having died, Norna abandoned her supernatural pretensions and peculiar habits, and resumed her family name.
Characters Principal characters in bold
Basil Mertoun, alias Vaughan, of Jarlshof Mordaunt Mertoun, his son Swertha, their housekeeper Sweyn Erickson, a fisherman Magnus Troil, an udaller Minna and Brenda, his daughters Euphane Fea, his housekeeper Eric Scambester, his servant Ulla Troil, alias Norna of the Fitful Head, his kinswoman Nicholas Strumpfer, alias Pacolet, her servant Niel Ronaldson, parish constable of Jarlshof Triptolemus Yellowley, of Harfa, a factor Barbara (Baby) Yellowley, his sister Tronda Dronsdaughter, their servant Bryce Snailsfoot, a pedlar Claud Halcro, a bard Captain Clement Cleveland, alias Vaughan, a pirate John Bunce, alias Frederick Altamont, his lieutenant Dick Fletcher, Bunce's associate Captain Goffe, a pirate Hawkins, his boatswain George Torfe, Provost of Kirkwall Captain Weatherfort, of HMS Halcyon
Chapter summary Advertisement: The Author of Waverley outlines the history of the pirate John Gow on which his narrative is based.
Volume One
Ch. 1: Some years before the story begins, the mysterious and melancholy Basil Mertoun and his young son Mordaunt arrive in Zetland, where Magnus Troil of Burgh Westra agrees to rent him the deserted Jarlshof castle.
Ch. 2: Basil is cheated by the locals: he dismisses his housekeeper Swertha, but following advice from Mordaunt she achieves reinstatement. During his father's black moods Mordaunt engages in social activities in the neighbourhood.
Ch. 3: Mordaunt's affections seem to hover between the contrasting Troil daughters Minna and Brenda.
Ch. 4: Returning to Jarlshof from Burgh Westra in a storm, Mordaunt seeks refuge at Harfra (or Stourburgh) with Triptolemus Yellowley, a factor from Yorkshire devoted to agricultural improvements, and his sister Barbara (Baby).