ROBERT SCOTT FITTIS
MEMORIAL VOLUME.
THE MOSSTROOPER.
A Legend of the Scottish Border.
With Introductory Biographical Sketch by
A. H. MILLAR, F.S.A. (Scot.).
A stark, mosstrooping Scott was he,
As e’er couch’d Border lance by knee.
—Lay of the Last Minstrel.
They were all stark mosstroopers and arrant thieves;both to England and Scotland outlawed; yet sometimesconnived at.—History of Cumberland.
PERTH:
WOOD AND SON, 52 HIGH STREET.
1906.
PREFATORY NOTE.
After the death of my husband, Robert Scott Fittis, several of hisfriends suggested to me that some of his earlier writings should bere-published in book form as a Memorial of the Author, especially asit is now quite impossible to procure them otherwise. For thesereasons I have chosen “The Mosstrooper,” which, although nowre-published here as he revised it in a subsequent edition, wasoriginally written by my late husband when he was only between sixteenand seventeen years of age.
I take this public opportunity of thanking Mr. A. H. Millar for hisgreat kindness in writing the very full and accurate biographicalnotice which is prefixed to this Memorial Volume.
89 High Street,
Perth, December, 1906.
ROBERT SCOTT FITTIS.
(BIOGRAPHICAL).
Born 15th November, 1824.
Died 11th October, 1903.
ROBERT SCOTT FITTIS represents a type of the Scottish man of letterswhich is rapidly disappearing. While it could not justly be said thathe was unique as a personality, or that he introduced a novelcombination of intellectual qualities and thereby formed an epoch, thehonour must be ascribed to him of having continued the best traditionsof the Augustan Age of Scottish Literature, and of maintaining thedignity in literary affairs to which his native land had attained. Hewas a Scotsman “through and through,” loving the land of his birthwith intense devotion, reverencing the heroes whom she had broughtforth to adorn the records alike of war and literature, and devotingthe energies of a long life to setting before his countrymen the bestmodels of patriotism for their imitation. His natural gifts were sostrenuously cultivated that in his later days he was regarded as aninexhaustible encyclopædia of recondite information of the most variedkind. He was[Pg vi]...