(for many details about Perth) The Muses Threnodie by Henry Adamson edited with extensive notes by James Cant (1774), as well as The History of Scotland from the Accession of the House of Stuart to that of Mary by John Pinkerton (1797). This last was a particularly important source for the historical characters and the main events. Editions St Valentine's Day; or, The Fair Maid of Perth was published on 15 May 1828, by Cadell and Co. in Edinburgh and Simpkin and Marshall in London, the latter receiving 6000 copies in all. The price was one and a half guineas (£1 11s 6d or £1.57½). In the summer of 1831 Scott revisited the work for the 'Magnum' edition, making some textual changes and providing a few brief notes, but he was in poor health and many more changes and notes were introduced by J. G. Lockhart (with or without authorial input). Lockhart also provided the novel with an antiquarian and source-documenting introduction to replace Scott's original discussion of work's genesis. The work appeared posthumously in November and December 1832 as Volumes 42 and 43. The standard modern edition of The Fair Maid of Perth, by A. D. Hook and Donald Mackenzie, was published as Volume 21 of the Edinburgh Edition of the Waverley Novels in 1999: this is based on the first edition with emendations mainly from the manuscript; the 'Magnum' material appears in Volume 25b (2012). Plot introduction The fair maid of the title is Catharine Glover, daughter of a glovemaker in Perth, who kisses Henry Gow/Smith, the armourer, while he is sleeping, on Valentine's Day. But Catharine has caught the eye of the Duke of Rothesay, and when Gow interrupts an attempted abduction, the armourer is drawn simultaneously into royal intrigue and highland feud. Plot summary The armourer, Henry Gow, had excited the jealousy of the apprentice Conachar by spending the evening with the glover and his daughter and was returning to their house at dawn, that he might be the first person she saw on St Valentine's morning, when he encountered a party of courtiers in the act of placing a ladder against her window. Having cut off the hand of one, and seized another, who, however, managed to escape, he left the neighbours to pursue the rest, and was saluted by Catharine as her lover. The citizens waited on the provost, who, having heard their grievance,