e therefore never felt much elevated, nor
did I experience any violent change in situation, by the
passport which my poetical character afforded me into higher
company than my birth warranted.--(1826).]

Every Scottishman has a pedigree. It is a national prerogative as
unalienable as his pride and his poverty. My birth was neither
distinguished nor sordid. According to the prejudices of my country,
it was esteemed _gentle_, {p.003} as I was connected, though
remotely, with ancient families both by my father's and mother's side.
My father's grandfather was Walter Scott, well known in Teviotdale by
the surname of _Beardie_. He was the second son of Walter Scott, first
Laird of Raeburn, who was third son of Sir William Scott, and the
grandson of Walter Scott, commonly called in tradition _Auld Watt_, of
Harden. I am therefore lineally descended from that ancient chieftain,
whose name I have made to ring in many a ditty, and from his fair
dame, the Flower of Yarrow--no bad genealogy for a Border minstrel.
_Beardie_, my great-grandfather aforesaid, derived his cognomen from a
venerable beard, which he wore unblemished by razor or scissors, in
token of his regret for the banished dynasty of Stuart. It would have
been well that his zeal had stopped there. But he took arms, and
intrigued in their cause, until he lost all he had in the world, and,
as I have heard, run a narrow risk of being hanged, had it not been
for the interference of Anne, Duchess of Buccleuch and Monmouth.
Beardie's elder brother, William Scott of Raeburn, my great-grand-uncle,
was killed about the age of twenty-one, in a duel with Pringle of
Crichton, grandfather of the present Mark Pringle of Clifton. They
fought with swords, as was the fashion of the time, in a field near
Selkirk, called from the catastrophe the _Raeburn Meadow-spot_.
Pringle fled from Scotland to Spain, and was long a captive and slave
in Barbary. _Beardie_ became, of course, _Tutor of Raeburn_, as the
old Scottish phrase called him--that is, guardian to his infant
nephew, father of the present Walter Scott of Raeburn. He also managed
the estates of Makerstoun, being nearly related to that family by his
mother, Isobel MacDougal. I suppose he had some allowance for his care
in either case, and subsisted upon that and the fortune which he had
by his wife, a Miss Campbell of Silvercraigs, in the west, through
which connection my father used to _call cousin_, as t