Ralph Thoresby

On August 16, 1658, the antiquary Ralph Thoresby was born.  Like Scott, Thoresby was a diarist.  Thoresby started his diary earlier in life than Scott did, beginning in 1677, when he was about 19.  Thoresby focused his attention on his native Leeds.

One point of connection with Walter Scott involves the legend of Robin Hood.  Scott included Robin Hood as Lockesley , and others of Hood's band: Friar Tuck, Allen-a-dale, and Little John in his novel “Ivanhoe”.  There is even a Thoresby; ‘…Broad Thoresby, and the Three Spears of Spyinghow, come to me instantly;…’

A likely candidate for the historical Robin Hood is Robert Hode, the Earl of Huntington.  Thoresby is quoted as a source for this intelligence, as in the following:

‘According to The Annotated Edition of the English Poets - Early ballads (London, 1856, p.70):
"His death is stated by Ritson to have taken place on the 18th of November, 1247, about the eighty-seventh year of his age; but according to the following inscription found among the papers of the Dean of York, and quoted from the Appendix to Thoresby's Ducatus Leodiensis, by Mr. Gutch... the death occurred a month later. In this inscription, which bears evidence of high antiquity, Robin Hood is described as Earl of Huntington - his claim to which title has been as hotly contested as any disputed peerage upon record. 

Hear undernead dis laitl stean
Lais Robert Earl of Huntingtun
Near arcir der as hie sa geud
An pipl kauld im Robin Heud
Sic utlaws as hi an is men
Vil England nivr si agen.
          Obiit 24 Kal Dekembris 1247"

Eugene Aram

From “The Book of Days”, and the "Newgate Calendar" (source of image), comes the story of Eugene Aram who was hanged at Tyburn, per these sources, on August 16, 1759. Aram was noteworthy firstly for being a scholar, having a noted facility for languages. Unfortunately, what gained him a historical note was his conviction for murdering a man named Daniel Clarke.


The murder may have been simply for gain, or he may have suspected his wife of having an affair with Clarke, which he claimed after conviction, and before his execution. The contrast between Aram’s extraordinary self-developed language skills and this act of violence has inspired several literary works. Among those is Thomas Hood’s “The Dream of Eugene Aram”, and Edward Lytton Bulwer’s “Eugene Aram, a Tale”.

It is Bulwer’s work that provides the link to Sir Walter Scott. Bulwer dedicated his work to Scott:

TO SIR WALTER SCOTT, BART,, &c., &c.

SIR,


IT has long been the high and cherished hope of my ambition to add my humble tribute to the rich and numberless offerings that toe been laid upon the shrine of your genius. At each succeeding book that I have given to the world, I have paused to consider, if it were worthy of being inscribed with your great name, and at each I have played the procrastinator, and hoped for that morrow of better desert which never came. Having now arrived at a work which closes the series I contemplated from the first, it is possible that this may be the only opportunity afforded me of expressing that high, that just, that affectionate admiration with which you hare inspired me in common with all your cotemporaries, and which a French writer has not ungracefully termed " the happiest prerogative of genius." I seize this occasion, then, not as the best, but lest I should lose the last. As a Poet, and as a Novelist, your fame has attained to that height in which praise has become superfluous; but in the character of the writer, there seems to me a yet higher claim to veneration than in that of the writings. The example your genius sets us, who can emulate?—the example your moderation bequeaths to us, who shall forget? It is a great lesson to all cultivators of letters, to behold one who, in winning renown, has at last conquered envy, and who is at once without an equal and without a detractor.


You have left us for a while; but what heart does not, from that very absence, and from its reported cause, follow you to a southern shore, with feelings that make remembrance a duty scarcely less than a delight? What Scotchman can ever forget that you have immortalised his country — or what Englishman that you have bestowed an equal gift upon his language? Whatever the honours that await you abroad, you have left the gratitude, the homage, the very hearts of two mighty Nations to watch over your fame at home.


You, I feel assured, will not deem it presumptuous in one, who, to that bright and undying flame which now streams from the gray hills of Scotland,—the last halo with which you have crowned her literary glories, — has turned from his first childhood with a deep and unrelaxing devotion; — you, I feel assured, will not deem it presumptuous in him to inscribe an idle work with your illustrious name: — a work which, however worthless in itself, assumes something of value in his eyes when thus rendered a tribute of respect to you.


THE AUTHOR OF "EUGENE ARAM."


London, December 22, 1831

Carolina Oliphant, Lady Nairne

Another entry, another birthday. Carolina Oliphant was born on August 16, 1766; five years before Scott. The "flower of Streatearn", so named because of her beauty, collected folk songs, a la Robert Burns and James Hogg, putting her own words to them.

Carolina was born into a strongly Jacobite family. Both her father and grandfather fought with Bonnie Prince Charlie in 1745. She was born in Gask, in Perthshire.

Gask (or Findogask, after St. Findoc) is not far from Perth, the setting for Scott's "Fair Maid of Perth". On September 11, 1745, Prince Charles Edward Stuart breakfasted in Gask on his way south from Perth.

Carolina became Lady Nairne in 1824, largely due to Scott's efforts to have peerages and titles that had been forfeited due to the Jacobite uprising restored.

In 1846, her collected songs "Lays of Streathearn" was published. One arrangement was done by Finlay Dun.

Sources: Wikipaedia, Rampant Scotland