  BRIDE OF LAMMERMOOR, one of the products of 1819, is founded on a remarkable narrative, connected with the marriage of Miss Janet Dalrymple, daughter of the first Lord Stair, who, without the parental knowledge, engaged herself to the Lord Rutherford, but who subsequently consented to abandon her noble lover, and accept the hand of David Dunbar, younger of Baldoon, whose suit was supported by her parents. On the 24th August 1669, shortly after the nuptial ceremony, the bridegroom was found in the bridal chamber lying across the threshold, frightfully wounded and streaming with blood. On a search, the bride was discovered in the chimney-corner, dabbled in gore, and moping as an idiot; she survived only two weeks. The bridegroom, who recovered from his wounds, refused to answer any questions in relation to the tragedy; he was killed by a fall from his horse in March 1682.* * The marriage contract of the Bride of Lammermoor has lately been discovered at St Mary's Isle, the seat of the Earl of Selkirk. His lordship is the representative of the family of Dunbar of Baldoon, and has the family papers in his possession. In arranging these he came upon the contract. The four signatures are, David Dunbar the bridegroom, Janet Dalrymple the bride, James Dalrymple, and Baldoon, father of the bridegroom. James Dalrymple may have been the bride's brother, who rode behind her to the church, and whose dagger was used in the assault There is a little tremor in the bride's signature. The accompanying illustration represents Fast Castle, the original of Wolf's Crag, of which the proprietors, the Logans and Humes, were conspicuous in Scottish history. Margaret of England, on her way to join her husband, James IV, at Edinburgh, lodged a night in the castle. "Yonder is Wolf's Crag," said Ravenswood, "and whatever it still contains is at your service, Bucklaw." The roar of the sea had long announced their approach to the cliff, on the summit of which, like the nest of some sea-eagle, the founder of the fortalice had perched his eyrie. The pale moon, which had hitherto been contending with flitting clouds, now shone out, and gave them a view of the solitary and naked tower, situated on a projecting cliff that beetled on the German Ocean. On three sides the rock was precipitous; on the fourth, which was towards the land, it had been originally fenced by an artificial ditch and drawbridge, but the latter was broken down and ruinous, and the former had been in part filled up, so as to allow a passage for a horseman into the narrow courtyard, encircled on two sides by low offices and stables partly ruinous, and closed on the landward front by a low embattled wall, while the remaining side of the quadrangle was occupied by the tower, built of a greyish stone, glimmering in the moonlight like the sheeted spectre of some huge giant. A wilder or more disconsolate dwelling, it was perhaps difficult to conceive. The sombrous and heavy sound of the billows successively dashing against a rocky beach at a profound distance beneath, was to the ear what the landscape was to the eye, a symbol of unvaried and monotonous melancholy.
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