Guy Mannering.

32 WAVERLEY NOVELS.
GROUNDWORK OF GUY MANNERING.
1842.
SINCE the death of Sir Walter Scott, the public have
received many additional details concerning the communications that passed, while the Waverley Novels were in
progress, between their Author and his devoted friend,
Mr. Joseph Train, Supervisor of Excise at Castle
Douglas in Galloway. Not the least curious of these
particulars connects itself with the origin of Guy AMannering. Shortly after the publication of Waverley, as
stated in the Life of Scott, Mr. Train forwarded to
Abbotsford a BIS. collection of anecdotes relating to the
Galloway gipsies, together with (in Mr. Train's own
words) " a local story of an astrologer, who, calling at a
farm-house at the minute when the good-wife was in
travail, had, it was said, predicted the future fortunes of
the child almost in the words placed in the mouth of
John MIacKinlay in the Introduction to Guy Mannering."
At a subsequent period Mr. Train found that an
ancient lady, Mrs. Young of Castle Douglas, had been
in the habit of repeating once every year to her family,
in order the better to preserve it in her own memory, a
ballad called The ZDurham Garland; from which, or
some Scotch modification of it, he was inclined to con