The Lord of the Isles

Set in 1307 and 1314 Scotland it covers the story of Robert the Bruce from his return from exile in Ireland to the successful culmination of his struggle to secure Scottish independence from English control at the Battle of Bannockburn.

[1] It seems that Scott made a substantial start on the poem featuring the Bruce, then called 'The Nameless Glen', in late 1811 or early 1812, but he laid it aside for Rokeby, begun in the spring of the latter year.

In August and early September 1814 he arranged to join a voyage to inspect the lighthouses around the Scottish coast on the cutter of the Commissioners for the Northern Lights so that when he resumed work on The Lord of the Isles he would be 'strong on scenery'.

Canto 2: The elder knight is recognised by Edith's brother the Lord of Lorn as the Bruce, who had murdered his father-in-law the Red Comyn in Greyfriars Church, Dumfries.

Swords are drawn, and Isabel makes an appeal for peace, nominally to the visiting English knight De Argentine but in fact to Ronald whose response indicates that he is in love with her.

When the Bruce arrives at Carrick in response to the beacon, he is met by the page bearing a message from Cuthbert warning him that the light was deceptive and that the English forces under Clifford are strong, but he decides to press on regardless.

In 1314 Isabel advises Edith (with the Bruce's knowledge and consent) to reassume her page disguise to test the sincerity of Ronald's reported repentance of his breach of faith.

[11] Its weakest feature was the unsatisfactory relationship between the historical and fictitious elements, Francis Jeffrey writing in The Edinburgh Review: 'we continue to look for the resumption of that wilder legend, long after the Bruce has filled the scene with his own real presence; and, of course, lend but a careless ear to the first exploits of him whom we do not immediately recognize as its proper hero'.