Sir Watt Tinlinn
Sir Watt Tinlinn was a knight whose
fictional adventures are related in The Lay of the
Last Minstrel by Sir Walter Scott (1805),
particularly in Cantos IV and VI.
The following is a note from the
1886 Rolfe edition of the work, which suggests that he
was actually an historical person:
Watt Tinlinn. [Sir Walter]
Scott remarks: “This person was, in my younger days, the
theme of many a fireside tale. He was a retainer of the
Buccleuch family, and held for his Border service a
small tower on the frontiers of Liddesdale. Watt was,
by profession, a sutor, but, by inclination and
practice, an archer and warrior. Upon one occasion, the
captain of Bewcastle, military governor of that wild
district of Cumberland, is said to have made an
incursion into Scotland, in which he was defeated and
forced to fly. Watt Tinlinn pursued him closely through
a dangerous morass; the captain, however, gained the
firm ground; and seeing Tinlinn dismounted, and
floundering in the bog, used these words of insult:
‘Sutor Watt, ye cannot sew your boots; the heels risp
[creak], and the seams rive.’ ‘If I cannot sew,’
retorted Tinlinn, discharging a shaft, which nailed the
captain’s thigh to his saddle, ‘if I cannot sew, I can
yerk.’” [In a footnote: Yerk, to twitch, as
shoemakers do in securing the stiches of their work.].A contemporary critic of the work,
Francis Jeffrey of The Edinburgh Review, did not
feel favorably toward the Tinlinns. After praising the
“elevating power of great names”, he continues, “but we
really cannot so far sympathize with the local
partialities of the author, as to feel any glow of
patriotism or ancient virtue in hearing of the Todrig
or Johnston clans, or of Elliots,
Armstrongs, and Tinlinns…into a poem which
has any pretensions to seriousness or dignity.” A note
from "The Ancestry of John Whitney": "Probably Mr.
Green, in his introduction to the reprint of the works
of Geoffrey Whitney, the poet, was not far wrong when,
in speaking of his early ancestors, he says, 'As a
family the Whitneys were a superior class of Wat
Tinlings, doing perpetual battle in their own behalf,
and, except when it suited their purposes, bidding
defiance to right and law.'" [Whitney's "Choice of
Emblems", ed. of Rev. Henry Green, 1866, introduction].
This is interesting because he is called "Tinling" -
whether by mistake of Rev. Green (in itself
interesting), or because he found a tale of Sir Watt
outside of Scott, where he was called Tinling. |
