SOURCE: A foreword to The Two Drovers, A Short Story by Sir Walter Scott, The Kindle Press, 1971, pp. i-x.

Below, Parsons supplies both literary and factual sources for narrative elements of "The Two Drovers " and traces the critical reception of the story.

The way of life of Scott's two drovers would not have seemed strange to his readers. In the fall of the year, drovers from the north and west of Scotland still converged on trysting places. One of these was Doune in Perthshire, which served Skye and the western isles as well as the northwest Highlands. Drovers usually went on foot, covering ten or twelve miles a day, grazing their cattle at midday, and arranging to rent "stances" to rest, graze, and water them at night. Cattle entering England by way of Carlisle might be driven from Doune to Stirling, Falkirk, and Peebles, in the Lowlands, over...