SCOTT'S HOUSE IN CASTLE STREET 250 After the drawing by J. M. W. Turner, R.A. JOHN GIBSON LOCKHART 274 After the painting by Henry W. Pickersgill, R. A. {p.001} CHAPTER XXXIV. Progress of the Lord of the Isles. -- Correspondence with Mr. Joseph Train. -- Rapid Completion of the Lord of the Isles. -- "Refreshing the Machine." -- "Six Weeks at a Christmas." -- Publication of the Poem, -- And of Guy Mannering. -- Letters to Morritt, Terry, and John Ballantyne. -- Anecdotes by James Ballantyne. -- Visit to London. -- Meeting with Lord Byron. -- Dinners at Carlton House. 1814-1815. By the 11th of November, then, The Lord of the Isles had made great progress, and Scott had also authorized Ballantyne to negotiate among the booksellers for the publication of a second novel. But before I go further into these transactions, I must introduce the circumstances of Scott's first connection with an able and amiable man, whose services were of high importance to him, at this time and ever after, in the prosecution of his literary labors. Calling at Ballantyne's printing-office while Waverley was in the press, he happened to take up a proof sheet of a volume entitled "Poems, with notes illustrative of traditions in Galloway and Ayrshire, by Joseph Train, Supervisor of Excise at Newton-Stewart." The sheet contained a ballad on an Ayrshire tradition, about a certain "Witch of Carrick," whose skill in the black art was, it seems, instrumental in the destruction {p.002} of one of the scattered vessels of the Spanish Armada. The ballad begins:-- "Why gallops the palfrey with Lady Dunore? Who drives away Turnberry's kine from the shore? Go tell it in Carrick, and tell it in Kyle-- Although the proud Dons are now passing the Moil,[1] On this magic clew, That in fairyland grew, Old Elcine de Aggart has taken in hand To wind up their lives ere they win to our strand." [Footnote 1: The Mull of Cantyre.]