1. In Note XXI to The Lady of the Lake Scott writes: ‘The connoisseurs in pipe-music affect to discover in a well-composed pibroch the imitative sounds of march, conflict, fight, pursuit, and all the “current of a heady fight”. To this opinion Dr Beattie has given his suffrage, in the following elegant passage: “A pibroch is a species of tune, peculiar, I think, to the Highlands and Western Isles of Scotland. It is performed on a bagpipe, and differs totally from all other music. Its rhythm is so irregular, and its notes, especially in the quick movement, so mixed and huddled together, that a stranger finds it impossible to reconcile his ear to it, so as to perceive its modulation. Some of these pibrochs, being intended to represent a battle, begin with a grave motion resembling a march; then gradually quicken into the onset; run off with noisy confusion, and turbulent rapidity, to imitate the conflict and pursuit; then swell into a few flourishes of triumphant joy; and perhaps close with the wild and slow wailings of a funeral procession.” ’

1. The song is sung by Malcolm Graeme as he languishes, a prisoner of the King of Scotland, in one of the castle turrets. Imprisoned he may be, but his spirit remains unbroken: he longs to be reunited with his beloved Ellen Douglas, who, on a mission to Stirling Castle, hears the song of her imprisoned lover. The King eventually pardons Graeme and Ellen’s father.

1. The song is sung by Norman, heir of Armandave, as he leaves his young bride, Mary, to join his clansmen in battle, having received a summons from Roderick Dhu, chief of the Clan-Alpine.

1. The opening phrase and the rhythm of Scott’s poem were adapted by Albert Gamse when he wrote the lyrics for ‘Hail to the Chief’, the official Presidential Anthem of the United States of America.

2. Roderick the Black, son of Alpine, suitor of Ellen Douglas.

1. ‘The Coronach of the Highlanders, like the Ululatus of the Romans, and the Ululoo of the Irish, was a wild expression of lamentation, poured forth by the mourners over the body of a departed friend. When the words of it were articulate, they expressed the praises of the deceased, and the loss the clan would sustain by his death. […] The coronach has for some years past been superseded at funerals by the use of the bagpipe; and that also is, like many other Highland peculiarities, falling into disuse, unless in remote districts’ (Scott’s note).

2. Duncan was one of Roderick Dhu’s bravest soldiers. In Schubert’s song he is mourned by all the women and girls.

3. a hollow in the side of a hill, where game can be found.

4. trouble, distress.

1. The novel concerns Clement Cleveland, a pirate who has been shipwrecked on the Shetland coast. As Robert Louis Stevenson puts it in Memories and Portraits: ‘The figure of Cleveland – cast up by the sea on the resounding foreland of Dunrossness – moving, with the blood on his hands and the Spanish words on his tongue, among the simple islanders – singing the serenade under the windows of his Shetland mistress – is conceived in the very highest manner of romantic invention.’

2. Ulla Troil or Norna of the Fitful-head, so called because of the sea-cliff where she dwells as a recluse, claims to possess supernatural powers, and turns out to be the mother of Cleveland.

3. Victim of a curse, Norna is permitted to give vent to her suffering for only one hour each year.

4. The daughters of Magnus Troil, Brenda and Minna, both suffer from nightmares in which they hear ‘some wild runic rhyme, resembling those sung by the heathen priests of old, when the victim (too often human) was bound to the fatal altar of Odin or of Thor’.

1. The song is sung in Chapter XVII by King Richard, who tells of his exploits.

2. battlefield.

3. a saint allegedly born in Iconium and the first woman Christian martyr. The minstrel implies that it is to Tekla, a Western woman, that the Crusader returns.

4. ‘listed field’ implies a place that has been prepared for a tournament. Richard’s army was for some time at Ascalon, south-west of Jerusalem.

5. Iconium was the medieval name for the Turkish town of Konja.

6. Sultan.

7. Paynim = non-Christian, especially Muslim.

8. In the nineteenth century Syria included all the countries along the eastern coast of the Mediterranean, including the Holy Land.