I may also mention that the tragic and savage circumstances which
are represented as preceding the birth of Allan MacAulay in the
Legend of Montrose, really happened in the family of Stewart of
Ardvoirlich. The wager about the candlesticks, whose place was
supplied by Highland torch-bearers, was laid and won by one of
the MacDonalds of Keppoch.

There can be but little amusement in winnowing out the few grains
of truth which are contained in this mass of empty fiction. I
may, however, before dismissing the subject, allude to the
various localities which have been affixed to some of the scenery
introduced into these Novels, by which, for example, Wolf's Hope
is identified with Fast Castle in Berwickshire, Tillietudlem with
Draphane in Clydesdale, and the valley in the Monastery, called
Glendearg, with the dale of the river Allan, above Lord
Somerville's villa, near Melrose. I can only say that, in these
and other instances, I had no purpose of describing any
particular local spot; and the resemblance must therefore be of
that general kind which necessarily exists between scenes of the
same character. The iron-bound coast of Scotland affords upon
its headlands and promontories fifty such castles as Wolf's Hope;
every county has a valley more or less resembling Glendearg; and
if castles like Tillietudlem, or mansions like the Baron of
Bradwardine's, are now less frequently to be met with, it is
owing to the rage of indiscriminate destruction, which has
removed or ruined so many monuments of antiquity, when they were
not protected by their inaccessible situation. [I would
particularly intimate the Kaim of Uric, on the eastern coast of
Scotland, as having suggested an idea for the tower called Wolf's