“And her haunt was near this part / Where oft the very slender hart /
Had drank at this place but was near / Frightened by her very fair / Form appearing like a fog”
(MS IA, MS III)—In the novel,
where
Mary Avenel sees a “bonny ladie”, the others see only “a wreath of rising mist, which fancy might form into a human figure,
but which afforded to
Martin only the sorrowful conviction, that the danger of their situation was about to be increased by a heavy fog”.
While
Martin and
Tibb do whisper the brief exchange that
Ruskin paraphrases twenty lines later, about the danger of talking aloud about fairies,
especially on this day of All‐Hallowʼs Eve,
Tibb does not allude to the
White Lady in this episode, as
Ruskin indicates. Rather,
Ruskin appears to draw on a passage at the end of chapter 4,
following the childrenʼs report of the supposed ghost of
Walter Avenel, an episode that
Ruskin mainly reserves for his book 4.
Even in that passage in the novel,
Tibb does not mention the location of the
White Ladyʼs haunt, but explains to
Elspet Glendinning
that “‘great ancient families’” like the Avenels “‘canna be just served wiʼ the ordinary saunts, (praise to them)
like
Saunt Anthony,
Saunt Cuthbert, and the like, that come and gang at every sinnerʼs bidding, but they hae a sort
of saunts or angels, or what not, to themsels; and as for the
White Maiden of Avenel, she is kenʼd ower the haill country’”.
At the end of volume 1,
Halbert Glendinning climbs to the fountain of a spring in the hills above
Glendearg to summon
the
White Lady: “A huge rock rose in front, from a cleft of which grew a wild holly‐tree [the emblem of the Avenels],
whose dark green branches rustled over the spring which arose beneath. The banks on either hand rose so high,
and approached each other so closely, that it was only when the sun was in its meridian height,
and during the summer solstice, that its rays could reach the bottom of the chasm in which he now stood”
(
Scott, The Monastery, ed. Fielding,
47 [vol. 1, chap. 3], 56 [vol. 1, chap. 4], 111–12 [vol. 1, chap. 11]). The image of a hart drinking at the spring and being startled by a mist in human form
is
Ruskinʼs own contribution.