The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805) is a narrative poem in six cantos with copious antiquarian notes by Walter Scott. Set in the Scottish Borders in the mid-16th century, it is represented within the work as being sung by a minstrel late in the 1600s. Background Towards the end of 1802 Scott planned to include a long original poem of his own in the second edition of his edited collection Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border: it would be 'a sort of Romance of Border Chivalry & inchantment'. He owed the distinctive irregular accentual four-beat metre to Coleridge's Christabel, which he had heard recited by John Stoddart (it was not to be published until 1816). Scott tells how he showed the opening stanzas to his friends William Erskine and George Cranstoun, and believing that they had not approved, destroyed the manuscript. Some time later one of the friends indicated that they had been puzzled rather than disapproving and Scott proceeded, introducing the figure of the minstrel as intermediary between the period of the action and the present. The first canto was written while Scott was recovering from being kicked by a horse during a practice charge on Portobello sands. The figure of Gilpin Horner was included at the suggestion of the Countess of Dalkeith, though it is not certain at what stage. The third canto at least was finished by July 1803, and the whole poem was complete by August 1804. Editions The Lay of the Last Minstrel was published in Edinburgh by Archibald Constable and Co. on 12 January 1805, and by Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme in London on the 24th. The price was £1 5s (£1.25) and the print-run 750. A second edition of 1500 copies appeared in October and further editions individual and collected followed until 1830 when Scott provided a substantial new Introduction. In August and November 1806 he had made substantial additions for the fourth and fifth editions. A critical edition will appear as Volume 1 of The Edinburgh Edition of Walter Scott's Poetry to be published by Edinburgh University Press. Preface "The Poem, now offered to the Public, is intended to illustrate the customs and manners which anciently prevailed on the Borders of England and Scotland. ...As the description of scenery and manners was more the object of the Author than a combined and regular narrative, the plan of the Ancient Metrical Romance