The Bride of Lammermoor

infobox Book |
name = Old Mortality
orig title =
translator =


author = Sir Walter Scott
cover_artist =
country = Scotland
language = English, Lowland Scots
series = Tales of My Landlord (3rd series)
genre = Historical novel
publisher =
release_date = 1819
media_type = Print (Hardback & Paperback)
pages =
isbn = NA
preceded_by =
followed_by =

"The Bride of Lammermoor" is an historical novel by Sir Walter Scott, set in Scotland in the reign of Queen Anne (1702-1714). Along with "A Legend of Montrose", it forms the third series of Scott's "Tales of My Landlord"; the two novels were published together in 1819.

The novel was used as the basis for Donizetti's opera "Lucia di Lammermoor".

The story is fictional, but was based (Scott tells us) on an actual incident in the history of the Stair family. "The family of Dalrymple," observes Scott, "produced within two centuries as many men of talent, civil and military, of literary, political and professional eminence, as any house in Scotland."

The spelling "Lammermoor" is an Anglicisation of the Scots "Lammermuir".

Plot outline

The story recounts the tragic love of Edgar, Master of Ravenswood, with Lucy Ashton, the daughter of Ravenswood's enemy Sir William Ashton. Sir William's wife, Lady Ashton, is the villain and evil perpetrator of the whole intrigue, haughty and manipulative in her objective to cancel initial happy engagement between Edgar and Lucy and forcing the later to speedily arranged ill marriage with Laird of Bucklaw. In the climax, when the intrigue takes its full course, after wedding celebration, Lucy severely wounds her husband and descends quickly into insanity and dies. In the story, Caleb Balderstone, an eccentric old Ravenswood family retainer, provides some comic relief.

ee also

*Lammermuir Hills