Readings from the Edinburgh Edition of the Waverley Novels

My first extract is from Rob Roy. It is a passage describing a journey north from Glasgow to the Highlands by Baillie Nichol Jarvie and he is accompanied amongst others by Andrew Fairservice, a groom or master of the stables, whom had been working in England and had recently seized the chance to come back to Scotland.
 
The second extract is from Tales of a Grandfather. The final passage is from The Letters of Malachi Malagrowther.

Click on the button below to listen. (5mins)

The Encounter.1818 Steel engraving by Charles Heath based on a painting by John Massey Wright. Used here with the permission of the Walter Scott Digital Archive Image Collection.

Read along as you listen to the recording - a facsimile copy of the text is below.

Tales of A Grandfather. (ed of 1889, p. 770. Chapter LX) 

   Men, of whom a majority had thus been bought and sold, forfeited every right to interfere in the terms which England insisted upon; .... But, despised by the English, and detested by their own country ....had no alternative left save that of fulfilling the unworthy bargain they had made.

....in consequence the nation ....considered it as a total surrender of their independence, by their false and corrupted statesmen, into the hand of their proud and powerful rival.

The Letters of Malachi Malagrowther. 1826 (Ed of 1981).

p. 9  a spirit of proselytism has of late shown itself in England for extending the benefits of its system, in all its strength and weakness, to a country which has been hitherto flourishing and contented under its own.

For more than one half of last century, this was a practice not to be thought of. Scotland was during that period disaffected, in bad humour, armed too, and smarting under various irritating recollections. This is not the sort of patient for whom an experimental legislator chooses to prescribe.

p.10 This period passed away, a happier one arrived, and Scotland, no longer the object of terror, or at least great uneasiness, to the British Government, was left from the year 1750 under the guardianship of her own institutions, to win her silent way to national wealth and consequence But neglected as she was, and perhaps because she was neglected, Scotland, has increased her prosperity in a ratio more than five time greater than that of her more fortunate and richer sister. She is now worth the attention of the learned faculty, and God knows she has had plenty of it.

p.136 ....There has been in England a gradual and progressive system of assuming the management of affairs entirely and exclusively proper to Scotland, as if we were totally unworthy of having the management of our own concerns. All must centre in London.

p.137 Good Heaven, Sir! To what are we fallen? - or rather, what are we esteemed by the English? Wretched drivellers, incapable of understanding our own affairs; or greedy peculators, unfit to be trusted? On what ground are we considered either as the one or the other?

p.143 For God sake, sir, let us remain as Nature made us, Englishmen, Irishmen, and Scotchmen, with something like the impress of our several countries upon each!

The Edinburgh Edition of the Waverley Novels. Rob Roy by Walter Scott.  Edited by David Hewitt. 
Published in 2008 by Edinburgh University Press. © The University Court of the University of Edinburgh
Permission has been granted to The Edinburgh Sir Walter Scott Club for usage here until Dec.2012.
For more information visit www.euppublishing.com/series/EEWN

Read more about this Edition on the EUP website