Sir Walter Scott: An Index, Placing the Short Poems in His Novels and in His Long Poems and Dramas

The references in this Index relate to the "Collected Edition" of Scott's writings, published by Cadell ( 1829-1833). The Table of "Volumes and Chapters," immediately following the section "In the Novels," will facilitate the finding of any poem in any other edition of the Novels. The index to the long poems and dramas applies to any edition.

Poems of the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border and such detached poems as Jock of Hazeldean are not indexed. In the Cadell Edition they may be placed by means of the contents in each volume and the General Index in the twelfth volume of the Poems. The indexes of other editions may be expected to serve this end in their various ways.

The random origin of Scott's shorter poems is suggested by the following passage from his Introduction, written in 1827, to the Highland Widow. From this it may well appear that a general index to his scraps of verse is only the more desirable.

"The scraps of poetry which have been in most cases tacked to the beginning of chapters in these Novels, are sometimes quoted either from reading or from memory, but, in the general case, are pure invention. I found it too troublesome to turn to the collection of the British Poets to discover apposite mottos, and, in the situation of the theatrical mechanist, who, when the white paper which represented his shower of snow was exhausted, continued the storm by snowing brown, I drew on my memory as long as I could, and, when that

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