The Fair Maid of Perth (or St. Valentine's Day) is an 1828 novel by Sir Walter Scott, one of the Waverley novels. Inspired by the strange, but historically true, story of the Battle of the North Inch, it is set in Perth (known at the time as Saint John's Toun, i.e. John's Town) and other parts of Scotland around 1400. Composition and sources By the time he finished the first series of Chronicles of the Canongate on 16 September 1827 Scott had been discussing his next work of fiction for several weeks. He was originally minded to embark on a successor to Quentin Durward, which was eventually to become Anne of Geierstein (1829), but in the event he settled on a second series of the Chronicles. Like the first, this was envisaged as a collection of short stories, and it seems likely that by mid-November Scott had written a long Croftangry introduction to match the opening chapters of the first series. On 3 December he completed 'My Aunt Margaret's Mirror', and on the 5th he had decided that the next story would concern Harry Wynd; but before the middle of the month, in response to doubts by James Ballantyne and Robert Cadell about the commercial viability of another publication consisting of a long introduction and a set of short stories, he decided to abbreviate the introduction to a single chapter and allow the Wynd tale, now with the title Saint Valentine's Eve, to fill the rest of the three volumes. There was a break in composition over Christmas, but composition resumed in January and the first volume was completed on 5 February 1828, the second on 2 March and the third on the 29th of that month. Scott's sources for The Fair Maid of Perth are largely cited in the text of the novel or in the 'Magnum' notes. From the 14th and 15th centuries he drew on the two narrative poems, The Brus by John Barbour, and The Wallace by Blind Hary. From the same period he found helpful material in: Chronica gentis scotorum by John of Fordun, and its continuation Scotichronicon by Walter Bower; Orygynale Cronykil of Scotland by Andrew of Wyntoun; and Scotorum historiae by Hector Boece, translated by John Bellenden. From the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries he used The History of the Houses of Douglas and Angus by David Hume of Godscroft (1644; reissued 1648), and