The ‘long-remembered beggar,’* who for twenty years had made his regular rounds within the neighbourhood, received rather as an humble friend than as an object of charity, was sent to the neighbouring workhouse.* The decrepit dame, who travelled round the parish upon a hand-barrow, circulating from house to house like a bad shilling, which every one is in haste to pass to his neighbour, — she, who used to call for her bearers as loud, or louder, than a traveller demands post-horses, — even she shared the same disastrous fate. The ‘daft Jock,’ who, half knave, half idiot, had been the sport of each succeeding race of village children for a good part of a century, was remitted to the county bridewell,* where, secluded from free air and sunshine, the only advantages he was capable of enjoying, he pined and died in the course of six months.
The old sailor, who had so long rejoiced the smoky rafters of every kitchen in the country by singing Captain Ward* and Bold Admiral Benbow,* was banished from the county for no better reason than that he was supposed to speak with a strong Irish accent. Even the annual rounds of the pedlar* were abolished by the Justice, in his hasty zeal for the administration of rural police.
* Scott is flagging up a reference to ‘The Deserted Village’ by Oliver Goldsmith, a lament in verse for the depopulation of rural England. Goldsmith has been painting a picture of the unassuming and unambitious parish clergyman, “More skill'd to raise the wretched than to rise”:
His house was known to all the vagrant train.
He chid their wanderings, but reliev'd their pain;
The long-remember’d beggar was his guest,
Whose beard descending swept his aged breast.
See also Samuel Smiles on The Character of George Stephenson.
* By 1776, there were some 2,000 workhouses in the country, with 90,000 places. Already, what had begun as a means to give the unemployed some dignity was becoming a means to stack them out of sight. After the passage of the New Poor Law in 1834 (some twenty years after Guy Mannering was published) workhouses were increasingly designed not to assist the unfortunate but to scare the work-shy into jobs or face a lifetime in a vast residential sweatshop. The logic of this was baffling: if it worked, the only people punished by the wretched conditions inside would be the ones who least deserved to be there.
* A bridewell was a gaol for those who have committed minor offences. It took its name from St Bride’s Well, the location of such a gaol in London.
* Captain Ward was a piratical seaman who was the anti-hero of a seventeenth-century ballad, Captain Ward’s Fight with the Rainbow, an English ship. He is thought to be John Ward (?1553-1622), also known as Birdy. He terrorised shipping of all nations in the Mediterranean, and then, after his pleas for a pardon from James I were rebuffed, converted to Islam and operated as a corsair (a pirate who trafficked in slaves) from El Haouaria, Tunisia, then a city of the Ottoman Empire, under the name of Yusuf Reis. He died a wealthy man in Tunis, aged seventy.
* Another naval man about whom popular ballads were sung, but a rather more heroic figure than Jack Ward. Vice-Admiral John Benbow (1653-1702) won fame in the Royal Navy during the Nine Years’ War (1688-1697) and the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714). At the end of his career, he was badly let down by his junior captains in an engagement with the French near Hispaniola. Even his victorious opponent, Jean-Baptiste du Casse, was disgusted. “As for those cowardly captains who deserted you,” he wrote to Benbow afterwards, “hang them up, for by God they deserve it.”
* A pedlar or peddler was a term for a self-employed door-to-door salesman or handyman, often wandering over large distances.
Précis
The zealous laird brought down the full weight of the law on people totally unfitted to bear it. A beggar and a batty old lady were sent to a workhouse. A man too simple-minded to know wrong from right was jailed, and died soon afterwards. Even harmless pedlars and taproom eccentrics, especially if they sounded Irish, were shown the road. (60 / 60 words)
The zealous laird brought down the full weight of the law on people totally unfitted to bear it. A beggar and a batty old lady were sent to a workhouse. A man too simple-minded to know wrong from right was jailed, and died soon afterwards. Even harmless pedlars and taproom eccentrics, especially if they sounded Irish, were shown the road.
Variations: 1.increase the length of this precis to exactly 65 words. 2.reduce the length of this precis to exactly 55 words. 3.introduce one of the following words into the precis: about, although, because, besides, just, otherwise, since, whether.
Word Games
Sevens Based on this passage
Suggest answers to this question. See if you can limit one answer to exactly seven words.
Variations: 1.expand your answer to exactly fourteen words. 2.expand your answer further, to exactly twenty-one words. 3.include one of the following words in your answer: if, but, despite, because, (al)though, unless.
Jigsaws Based on this passage
Express the ideas below in a single sentence, using different words as much as possible. Do not be satisfied with the first answer you think of; think of several, and choose the best.
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