[9] Scott's ascription of "Sir Tristram" to Thomas the Rhymer, or Thomas
of Erceldoune, was doubtless a mistake. His edition of the romance was
printed in 1804. In 1800 he had begun a prose tale, "Thomas the Rhymer,"
a fragment of which is given in the preface to the General Edition of the
Waverley Novels (1829). This old legendary poet and prophet, who
flourished _circa_ 1280, and was believed to have been carried off by the
Queen of Faerie into Eildon Hill, fascinated Scott's imagination
strongly. See his version of the "True Thomas'" story in the
"Minstrelsy," as also the editions of this very beautiful romance in
Child's "Ballads," in the publications of the E. E. Text So.; and by
Alois Brandl, Berlin: 1880.

[10] See vol. i., p. 390.

[11] See the General Preface to the Waverley Novels for some remarks on
"Queenhoo Hall" which Strutt began and Scott completed.

[12] _Cf._ vol. i., p. 344.

[13] "I am therefore descended from that ancient chieftain whose name I
have made to ring in many a ditty, and from his fair dame, the Flower of
Yarrow--no bad genealogy for a Border minstrel."

[14] "He neither cared for painting nor sculpture, and was totally
incapable of forming a judgment about them. He had some confused love of
Gothic architecture because it was dark, picturesque, old and like
nature; but could not tell the worst from the best, and built for himself
probably the most incongruous and ugly pile that gentlemanly modernism
ever devised."--Ruskin. "Modern Painters," vol. iii., p. 271.