Scott’s Fabrications
Lockhart, in his “Life of Sir Walter Scott,” thus refers to the source of a large number of the mottoes in the Waverly Novels:
It was in correcting his proof-sheets of the “Antiquary” that Scott first took to equipping his chapters with mottoes of his own fabrication. On one occasion he happened to ask John Ballantyne, who was sitting by him, to hunt for a particular passage in Beaumont and Fletcher. John did as he was bid, but did not succeed in discovering the lines. “Hang it, Johnnie,” cried Scott, “I believe I can make a motto sooner than you will find one.” He did so accordingly; and from that hour, whenever memory failed to suggest an appropriate epigraph, he had recourse to the inexhaustible mines of “Old Play” or “Old Ballad,” to which we owe some of the most exquisite verses that ever flowed from his pen.