SOURCE: "Wandering Willie's Tale," in Variety of Attempt-British and American Fiction in the Early Nineteenth Century, University of Nebraska Press, 1976, pp. 49-60.

Below, Doubleday analyzes the narrative point of view and the function of the narrator in "Wandering Willie's Tale, " linking the historical sense conveyed by the story to Scott's use of "preternatural" material.

Washington Irving's Abbotsford, his account of a visit to Sir Walter Scott, is our best record of the typical substance of Scott's oral storytelling. Although Irving does not attempt to reproduce Scott's manner of telling the anecdotes he records, he assures us that Scott "gave the dialogue with appropriate dialect or peculiarities": Scott's conversation, Irving says, "reminded me constantly of his novels." Apparently Scott could project his gift for the spoken vernacular to the printed page. Now writers on Scott commonly say that he was at his best when he wrote in the vernacular...