Celebrating Scott's 254th birthday

On this day, 254 years ago in 1771, Sir Walter Scott was born in Edinburgh, Scotland. Join us as we raise a dram to one of Scotland’s best loved figures and a literary legend!

We don’t have much evidence of how Sir Walter Scott celebrated his birthday. But, if birthdays mean presents, then he was the lucky one. He received so many presents and gifts for his collection from all over the world, that every day was a birthday for Scott.

Horns from South Africa

Sir Walter Scott received two boxes of animal horns from Thomas Pringle, a fellow Borderer, as gifts. Pringle (1789-1834) was a young farmer from Kelso who Scott befriended for his early literary efforts. For a short time, he edited 'Blackwood's Magazine' before emigrating to South Africa with his father and brothers in 1820. He became the public librarian in Cape Town and published 'The South African Journal' and 'The South African Commercial Advertiser', both of which were suppressed by the government for their political views. A prominent abolitionist, he became Secretary to the Anti-Slavery Society when he returned to Britain.

Scott talks of Pringle having sent him 'antlers and a skin' in his journal in 1826 and in the same year he writes to him “The curiosities you had the kindness to send me from the Cape reachd me in perfect safety and form a most important and valued part of the decorations of an old [new] Gothick entrance hall hung with armour antlers. Unfortunately, he never specified which horns or antlers in particular Pringle sent.

But we can have a pretty good guess by species – can you spot the horns in the entrance hall likely to have come from South Africa?

Robroyston chair

The Robroyston or Wallace chair, was gifted to Sir Walter Scott by Joseph Train in1822. It was reputedly made from the wood of the house at Robroyston where Sir William Wallace was finally captured on 3 August 1305, 720 years ago. Joseph Train (1779-1852) was a Scottish antiquary and correspondent of Sir Walter Scott's who, after dabbling in literature himself, resolved that ‘henceforth his chief pursuit should be collecting whatever he thought would be interesting to Scott’. Scott acknowledged his debt to Train’s endless flow of characters and tales in many different prefaces and notes. Characters such as Madge Wildfire from the Heart of Midlothian and Edie Ochiltree from The Antiquary are characters based on local characters Train told Scott about. The old ballads and songs he collected and passed on to Scott inspired many of his novels, such as Guy Mannering and Red Gauntlet. Train also gifted Scott Rob Roy’s purse which you can see in the octagonal table in the library. Wallace and Rob Roy, both folk heroes and freedom fighters, appealed to Scott’s romantic nature. Whilst apprenticed to his father in the 1780s, Scott had met individuals who had known Rob Roy and the items in his collection which reputedly belonged to him were his star items.

The Wallace chair can now be found in Scott’s study. See if you can find more Rob Roy memorabilia in the house.

Medallions from Edinburgh’s Mercat Cross

Gifts given to Scott can be seen in the gardens too. Visitors can admire a series of sculpted roundels set into the walls of the south court opposite the main façade of Scott’s conundrum castle. This is what remains of Edinburgh’s mercat cross, demolished by the town council of Edinburgh in 1756. The stones were saved by the antiquarian and lawyer Walter Ross who acquired them with the help of some trickery and a bit of cheek. He had them built into his villa, St Bernard’s House, until Henry Raburn, celebrated portrait painter, acquired it after his death. Raeburn demolished the house to develop yet another extension to Edinburgh’s New Town and decided to gift the roundels to Scott in 1822. This was his way of getting back into Scott’s good books after painting a portrait of him that Scott didn’t like. Scott was so taken with the roundels that he agreed to sit for Raeburn again. The result is one of the most iconic images of Scott.

The roundels are believed to depict famous figures from history and legend, much like the Stirling Heads, which Scott liked so much that he commissioned Elizabeth Nasmyth to paint them on the glass of the windows in the Armoury at Abbotsford.

Maybe you can spot similarities between the roundels in the South Court and the Stirling Heads on the painted glass in the Armoury?

If you’d like to give a gift to help preserve Scott’s extraordinary historic legacy, you can do so here. 

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Scott's birthday bust. Photo Credit: Phil Wilkinson