Old Mortality

Old Mortality is one of the Waverley novels by Walter Scott. Set in south west Scotland, it forms, along with The Black Dwarf, the 1st series of his Tales of My Landlord (1816). The novel deals with the period of the Covenanters, featuring their victory at Loudoun Hill (also known as the Battle of Drumclog) and their defeat at Bothwell Bridge, both in June 1679; a final section is set in 1689 at the time of the royalist defeat at Killiecrankie. Scott's original title was The Tale of Old Mortality, but this is generally shortened in most references. Composition and sources On 30 April 1816 Scott signed a contract with William Blackwood for a four-volume work of fiction, and on 22 August James Ballantyne, Scott's printer and partner, indicated to Blackwood that it was to be entitled Tales of My Landlord, which was planned to consist of four tales relating to four regions of Scotland. In the event the second tale, Old Mortality, expanded to take up the final three volumes, leaving The Black Dwarf as the only story to appear exactly as intended. Scott completed The Black Dwarf in August, and composed Old Mortality during the next three months. Scott was steeped in 17th-century literature, but among the printed sources drawn on for The Tale of Old Mortality the following may be singled out for special mention: Memoirs of Captain John Creichton in The Works of Jonathan Swift D. D., which Scott edited in 1814 The Secret and True History of the Church of Scotland by James Kirkton, edited by Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe in 1817 Some Remarkable Passages of the Life and Death of Mr. Alexander Peden, by Patrick Walker (1724) The History of the Sufferings of the Church of Scotland, by Robert Wodrow (1721–22).