Sir Walter Scott’s Use Of The Supernatural In The “Bride Of Lammermoor”

The supernatural machinery in Sir Walter Scott’s Monastery is generally and, no doubt, correctly, set down as a mistake.  Sir Walter fails, not because the White Lady of Avenel is a miracle, but because being miraculous, she is made to do what sometimes is not worthy of her.  This, however, is not always true, for nothing can be finer than the change in Halbert Glendinning after he has seen the spirit, and the great master himself has never drawn a nobler stroke than that in which he describes the effect which intercourse with her has had upon Mary.  Halbert, on the morning of the duel between himself and Sir Piercie Shafton, is trying to persuade her that he intends no harm, and that he and Sir Piercie are going on a hunting expedition.  “Say not thus,” said the maiden, interrupting him, “say not thus to me.  Others thou may’st deceive, but me thou can’st not.  There has been that in me from the earliest youth which fraud flies from, and which imposture cannot deceive.”  The transforming influence of the Lady is here just what it should be, and the consequence is that she becomes a reality.

But it is in the Bride of Lammermoor more particularly that the use of the supernatural is not only blameless but indispensable.  We begin to rise to it in that scene in which the Master of Ravenswood meets Alice.  “Begone from among them,” she says, “and if God has destined vengeance on the oppressor’s house, do not you be the instrument. . . .  If you remain here, her destruction or yours, or that of both, will be the inevitable consequence of her misplaced attachment.”  A little further on, with great art, Scott having duly prepared us by what has preceded, adds intensity and colour.  He apologises for the “tinge of superstition,” but, not believing, he evidently believes, and we justly surrender ourselves to him.  The Master of Ravenswood after the insult received from Lady Ashton wanders round the Mermaiden’s Well on his way to Wolf’s Crag and sees the wraith of Alice.  Scott makes horse as well as man afraid so that we may not immediately dismiss the apparition as a mere ordinary product of excitement.  Alice at that moment was dying, and had “prayed powerfully that she might see her master’s son and renew her warning.”  Observe the difference between this and any vulgar ghost story.  From the very first we feel that the Superior Powers are against this match, and that it will be cursed.  The beginning of the curse lies far back in the hereditary temper of the Ravenswoods, in the intrigues of the Ashtons, and in the feuds of the times.  When Love intervenes we discover in an instant that he is not sent by the gods to bring peace, but that he is the awful instrument of destruction.  The spectral appearance of Alice at the hour of her departure, on the very spot “on which Lucy Ashton had reclined listening to the fatal tale of woe . . . holding up her shrivelled hand as if to prevent his coming more near,” is necessary in order to intimate that the interdict is pronounced not by a mortal human being but by a dread, supernal authority.