Rob Roy, by Sir Walter Scott, 1817

Photo that should have been on the cover.

Again, gladly, I have been transported to another place and time by a book. A piece of my heart remains in the Scottish Highlands, overlooking a highland lake, skirling bagpipes the soundtrack, keeping hopes alive for justice and honor that will never return.

Rob Roy tells the story of an Englishman, Francis (Frank) Osbaldistone (I kept reading it as Osbaldistan), who becomes entangled in the Jacobite uprising of 1715. Frank's cousin steals from Frank's father, an esteemed merchant, and Frank must recover the lost assets by journeying through a Scotland roiling with unrest, taut with trickery, and rife with rebellion. Conflicts center on religion (Catholic, Presbyterian, Episcopal), class [upper, middle (commercial), lower (servants)], and loyalty (George or James, and to one's family versus one's politics). And in the background, the impoverished Scots scrabble out a living on the fragments of fortunes and land left to them after the odious Union joined them with England. Scots children are starving, the people are desperate.

Frank's hero journey puts him in touch with all of these factions--lords and prisoners, papists and presbyies, English and Scottish, high, low, and middle. Frank's main learning is that his loyalty is owed primarily to his father, and that good and evil does not attach itself to a category, but is spread evenly among the groups listed in the paragraph above. He grows in tolerance, loyalty, and love. In essence, he achieves his full adulthood in the course of the book, a true hero journey. And he is rewarded with a great prize.

Diana Vernon, the woman Frank falls in love with, also undergoes this transformation, although it's portrayed from a distance. She is a mysterious woman whose loyalties--both personal and political--are unclear. She has secrets and also secret sources of power (not supernatural, though). She draws close to Frank, then retreats, over and over, but because we know she is a woman of principle, the push and pull of her affections adds to her mystery rather than making her a hopeless coquette. (Oh, I didn't know how bad I wanted to use that word.) I liked her--she was intriguing.

I thought it was interesting that the hero of this book was not from the nobility, but from the merchant class, which was presented, in the main, as honorable and necessary. Frank speculates that his father is driven more by the love of addition and subtraction, by making things happen, than by greed or avarice. Still, Frank sees himself as somewhat above that station in life. At the beginning of the book, he is recalled from his delusions of nobility by his father's request that he enter the family business. That's the action that sets the book in motion. Will Frank give up his pretensions? That's the question of the book.

I am both saddened and thrilled to know that the problems of the Union still exist to this day, with Scotland chafing for more independence and holding tight to a national/cultural identity. The embodiment of this in the book is the title character, Rob Roy, a.k.a., the Macgregor, a.k.a., Robert Campbell. Like many oppressed minorities (thinking of American indians), Scots had the names they gave themselves as well as names indicating geography as well as those imposed by rulers. Rob Roy tried to be a man of honor in dishonorable circumstances, but he was alternately heroic and bloodthirsty. The scenes of Scotch butchery are hard to get through. Rob was primarily a man of action, the personification of the crisis of the time. Frank's dealings with Rob Roy bring him face to face with the coexistance of contradiction--Rob was loving, loyal, rebellious, murderous, generous, thieving, trustworthy, fickle. Knowing Rob Roy is a crux, a crucible for Frank, a test by which Frank is judged.

Rob Roy started slow and spiraled at a leisurely pace and then swirled faster and faster. The last chapter is a poignant denouement, with a surprise twist at the very end. DO NOT READ THE ENDING FIRST, you people who are prone to do so. The book is not at all like the Liam Neeson movie version, so don't think you know the ending. You don't!

Best bits: There is some mighty fine writing. Listen to this description of insomnia:

I paced the library until I had chafed myself into a temporary fever. I then threw myself on the couch, and endeavoured to dispose myself to sleep; but it was in vain that I used every effort to compose myself--that I lay without movement of finger or of muscle, as still as if I had been already a corpse--that I endeavoured to divert or banish disquieting thoughts, by fixing my mind on some act of repetition or arithmetical process. My blood throbbed, to my feverish apprehension, in pulsations which resembled the deep and regular strokes of a distant fulling-mill, and tingled in my veins like streams of liquid fire.

Appreciated gift: The many points of view by which the action is seen.

Main complaint: Not since Twain have I come across such dialect as Scott's Scottish brogue. The use of a buh-jillion apostrophes and odd word formations was difficult and hard to fathom. Still, if I read easy instead of trying to sound out every word, I seemed to get the sense of it pretty well. I know there is a Scots component to my genetics and I think that helped. If you have too much trouble with it, it might be good to find a translating dictionary or something. The word it took me longest to get was waur, meaning worse.

 Physical description: Nice Penguin edition, good size and binding, good typography with ample margins; 501 pages, 39 chapters. Short biography at the beginning was helpful to comprehension; some back matter advertising other Penguin titles. The cover was an authentic portrait of a Scotsman, but was not attractive.