Excerpt from The Poems and Ballads of Sir Walter Scott, Vol. 4 of 6 Life of Scott, especially dwelling on Laird N ippy, Mr. Laidlaw, the duke's tenant at the Peel Mr. Laidlaw's wife was a woman of superior mind and manners, a great reader, and one of the few to whom Scott liked lending his books. Though it has nothing to do with Rokeby, I cannot help adding that Mrs. Laidlaw, being a kinswoman of my grandfather, bequeathed to him all Scott's poems, given to her, with autograph inscriptions, by the author. My Rokeby, therefore, reaches me at first hand, with the legend, which Mr. Morritt tells, of the lady who, being accused of witchcraft, turned by her curse the Laidlaws into a landless name. Mr. Morritt was a man of cultivated tastes, and wrote in defence of the Unity of the Homeric poems, against Wolf and others. This was not a theme about which Scott knew anything, or cared much; but he Visited Rokeby, and was delighted with the scenery of Teesdale, more romantic, with cliffs and woods, than that of his own Tweed. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.