Mainland. They are south of Lerwick, and can be visited in regular course by Mousa, Sumburgh and Fitful Heads, St. Ninian's, and thence back to Lerwick, whence they are accessible by ponies, or on foot and by boat; or, in suitable weather, they may all, perhaps, be better reached by sail-boat. Travellers may find that, during this exploring expedition and attempts at identification of the novelist's localities, a great deal must be done by individual imaginations; and that, as Scott associated his strange story with wild and romantic regions that he saw during an adventurous excursion, so, also, now not a little of the pleasure of viewing them may be created by following his example, and by animating them with weird beings that haunt them and with fantasies that they inspire.

"The Pirate" begins with a description of an old mansion, Jarlshof, at Sumburgh Head, a high, bold promontory, the southern end of Mainland. It is, indeed, one of the most commanding imaginable sites for a sea-side castle. The old mansion, "The Earl's House," represented as having been upon it, has disappeared; but without it the site is sufficiently interesting. At Jarlshof appeared Mordaunt Mertoun, its occupant during several years, and son of Basil Mertoun, an old pirate. Young Mertoun was in love with Brenda Troil, the younger of those two delightful, world-known daughters of old Magnus Troil, Udaller of Zetland, who lived at Burgh-Westra, about twenty miles distant, across a country nearly enough impassable. This young Mertoun was a rather melancholy but good-looking person of the sort said to be "interesting" to susceptible young ladies. Readers almost everywhere, and especially those who travel in Shetland, will with delight remember stately, black-haired, imaginative, high-minded Minna, and fair, blonde, graceful, cheerful, Scandinavian Brenda.

Mordaunt Mertoun, when returning from one of his visits to the Troil family, was overtaken by an unusually violent storm, and was driven to seek and to take refuge from it at Harfra or Stourburgh, the residence of a sort of missionary agriculturist, Triptolemus Yellowley. There appeared Norna, of Fitful Head, one of Scott's most supernatural yet living creations, who, through superstition and adversity, had become a sorceress, half pagan, half crazed. The storm abated, — allayed by her it is represented, — and Mertoun returned home. Neither the house of the Troils nor that of Yellowley can be identified: both were probably toward the southern end of the island, a portion well worth exploring.

Soon after the adventure in the storm, a vessel was wrecked on Sumburgh Head, and a stranger, cast upon the beach, was saved by Mertoun, to appear afterwards in active life. Mertoun's acquaintance with Norna was continued, and increased, by another interview with her, that was held at the "Green Loch," rather indefinitely situated, according to the author, in "a very solitary spot, where-embosomed among steep, heathy hills, which sunk suddenly down on the verge of the water-lay one of those small fresh-water lakes which are common in the Zetland isles, whose outlets form the sources of the small brooks and rivulets by which the country is watered." It was small,-"not more than threequarters of a mile in circuit." "The depth of the water gave the whole that cerulean tint of bluish green" whence it derived its name. It was, indeed, one of those remarkable scenes of "complete solitude," so strange and so fascinating in these far northern regions when the weather is fine, and so portentous during mists and storms; a scene that any pedestrian in Shetland may discover. And at some such place was another of those scenes that should be recalled rather by reading or by remembrance of Sir Walter's writing than by description here.

Another and immediately succeeding scene, at Burgh-Westra, is also of the same sort. Norna then, in an impressive, an almost startling manner, appeared to Minna and Brenda in their bedroom at night. There, like some unearthly witch, she, in words that agitated and that awed, narrated the story of her life. It was another rendering of the old and often repeated experience of a woman's trust and ruin. Norna, banished by her father from his presence, had fled with her then faithful lover, her fidelity to whom resulted (unwittingly to her) in consequences fatal to her father. His death finally rendered her insane. She disappeared from human society and wandered wildly, endeavoring continually to gain and exercise knowledge she had long sought, — first, when a girl, by exploring each barrow and cairn and valley and hill, and by learning the tales of each, and by striving to possess the powers of the Voluspa (the Sibyls); and then, later, by darker researches, and experiences that made her, in her own belief, "the powerful and the despairing Sovereign of the Seas and Winds." Through her story, as through the novel, we are impressed by a possibility, yet almost indefinable supernaturalness, of feeling, of incident and of scene, and by that peculiar magic picturesqueness we are apt to

associate with Scandinavian, or with any hyperborean, regions and people, when the latter are not Esquimaux in style. Norna's agitating disclosures were fearfully monitory to the sisters, each of whom was already attracted, if not ensnared, by one assuming the position of lover. Indeed, Mertoun, and the young man rescued from shipwreck, — called Cleveland, - were becoming particularly influential in their affairs. After this scene in the bedroom, occurred another, in a more imposing, and now more recognizable, place, where Minna Troil met Cleveland, whose curious history can hardly be abridged here. This scene was "in one of the loneliest recesses of the coast, where a deep indenture of the rocks gave the tide access to a" deep halier, or subterraneous cave worn by the waves in calcareous rock, and constantly invaded by them. The spot may be found by an adventurous explorer at not a very great distance from the site of Burgh-Westra. It has been named the Helyer of Swartaster. There "a small spot of milk-white sand, that stretched beneath " a precipice, afforded "space for a dry, firm, and pleasant walk of about a hundred yards, terminated at one extremity by a dark stretch of bay," and at the other "by the lofty and almost unscalable" cliff, "the abode of hundreds of sea-fowl of different kinds, in the bottom of which the huge helyer, or sea-cave, itself yawned, as if for the purpose of swallowing up the advancing tide, which it seemed to receive into an abyss of immeasurable depth and extent. The entrance to this dismal cavern consisted not in a single arch, as usual, but was divided into two, by a huge pillar of natural rock, which, rising out of the sea, and extending to the top of the cavern, seemed to lend its support to the roof, and thus formed a double portal." "In this wild scene, lonely, and undisturbed but by the clang of the sea-fowl, Cleveland had already met with Minna Troil more than once; for with her it was a favorite walk, as the objects which it presented agreed peculiarly with the love of the wild, the melancholy, and the wonderful." Two lovers, or any young lady and man, could hardly find a more impressive and bewitching scene for an interview; nor will the sentimental traveller probably discover any more inspiring natural objects amid which to imagine beings of romance. Certainly, it is an appropriate place for this meeting of Minna and her mysterious companion, when she learned much of strange affairs that form conspicuous part of the action of this story, and that decisively affected her destinies.

This action leads us next, to St. Ninian's Church, a celebrated shrine even after Romish times when it was founded, situated on St. Ronan's Isle, about ten miles north of Jarlshof. Mertoun had met Cleveland while he was beneath Minna's window serenading her, and had quarrelled with him. Towards this church, a ruin, she pursued them unsuccessfully, to prevent trouble. She, however, found Norna, and had a rather important interview with the father of Mertoun. A more interesting episode in the novel occurred afterwards, when Magnus Troil went, with his daughters, to Fitful Head, on which Norna's dwelling, an ancient tower, is represented to have stood. This Head, situated about half way between St. Ninian's and Sumburgh Head, is even loftier and bolder than that great promontory. Norna's tower is designed from the remarkable Pictish castle, Mousa, situated about thirteen miles north-east of Sumburgh on a small island, also called Mousa, lying close to Mainland. This castle is said to be "perhaps the most perfect Teutonic fortress now extant in Europe." Among the monuments of domestic or public life and manners in past ages, visited and described in this tour, this curious relic is certainly worth examination. And as we have not the power of the Wizard of the North, and cannot transport it to Fitful Head, we must, very naturally, make it the object of a separate excursion, and then combine it, in imagination, with the site on which Scott has so effectively placed it to be an appropriate haunt of the sorceress Norna. This "Burgh" is on rather low ground near the sea, and, says an excellent authority, "is built of middle-sized schistose stones, well laid together without any cement. The round edifice attains the height of 42 feet, bulging out below and tapering off towards the top, where it is again cast out from its lesser diameter, so as to prevent its being scaled from without. The door-way is so low and narrow as only to admit one person at a time, who has to creep along a passage fifteen feet deep ere he attains the interior open area. He then perceives that the structure is hollow, consisting of two walls, each about five feet thick, with a passage or winding staircase between them of similar size, and enclosing an open court about twenty feet in diameter. Near the top of the building, and opposite the entrance, three or four vertical rows of holes are seen, resembling the holes of a pigeon-house, and varying from eight to eighteen in number. These admit air and a feeble degree of light to the chambers or galleries within, which wound round the building, and to

which the passage from the entrance conducts, the roof of one chamber being the floor of that above it."

This curious labyrinthine structure, once a secure refuge for the islanders from hostile attacks, that were not infrequent, is now an interesting study to the antiquary, as well as to the traveller in search of the picturesque, and is one of the most northerly objects of ancient architectural work to be found in the British Isles. There is another large and almost entire tower of the same sort, on the island of Burra, in Orkney, accessible from Kirkwall. Others also exist, but that of Mousa may be imagined the lair of the sorceress, rising above the ragged, precipitous crags of Fitful Head, — a bold promontory, wild and mighty as the storms and the waves that often assail it. The Udaller, with his daughters, sought this castle of Norna and its mistress, in order to obtain from her a cure for Minna, who had grown ill and melancholy. Norna practised some of her remarkable incantations, and formed a curative spell that proved not unsuccessful upon the malady it was to remedy, love-sickness. The Udaller, however, found the castle as inhospitable as the stormy region around it, and was unable to make a very prolonged visit, owing to the peculiar opinions and excitable temperament of its mistress. He had, with the forethought of an ordinary mortal, brought a substantial lunch and a comfortable leathern flask of brandy, that were decently, and, to merely human perception, necessarily laid on a table in the lower room of the tower. The Sibyl learned, with great indignation, of this invasion on proprieties that she had ordained for her establishment, and, turning "with much haughtiness" to the Udaller, exclaimed, — “Have you so far forgot yourself as to bring earthly food into the house of the Reimkennar, and make preparations, in the dwelling of Power and of Despair, for refection and wassail and revelry?" To this question she allowed no reply, but immediate departure from her castle; out of the window of which were thrown the lunch and the brandy, and out of the door of which were turned the Udaller and his party. After this incident the affairs of the lovers in the story became even more romantic and interesting, and associated with other places than those already described.

From these now lone and weird scenes in Shetland, wild, or awful in the picturesqueness of their bare, mighty forms of earth and rock, veiled by no forest-trees or coppice, and half glimmering in their ghostly sunlight, or obscured in the dark clouds of furious