Rob Roy

By: Sir Walter Scott

Narrated by: Sean Barrett

Rob Roy is a captivating novel of chivalry and romance set in the Scottish Highlands of the 18th century.

After rejecting the life his father has laid out for him, Frank Osbaldistone is sent to the North of England to live with his Uncle, where he is to repent his sins. However, when his father's wealth and reputation are threatened, he is drawn to the Scottish Highlands, where he must retrieve a set of stolen documents. It is here that he is pulled into a number of skirmishes relating to the Jacobite uprising of 1715, and where his path frequently crosses with the mysterious maverick outlaw known as Rob Roy....

Scott's portrayal of Scotland is remarkable in its vivid and evocative panorama of the highlands, and his insightful exploration of social, economic, and historic themes.

Download the accompanying reference guide.Public Domain (P)2015 Naxos AudioBooks

Scottish History Revived

This book allowed me to live this period of history thru the eyes and heart of an English outsider. While sometimes the Sottish brogue dialog stumped me, the traditional English narrator gave enough details to follow the storyline. Later, I discovered I understood the accent better and enjoyed that dialog as well.

Phenomenal reading of a classic book

As some have pointed out, the accents are so authentic that some of the dialogue is hard to understand, but I wouldn’t want to listen to it any other way.

awesome book!

this was beautifully read! the various accents he used made it easy to follow and were quite genuine!

Revolution

Family intrigue during the Jocoban Revolt in northern England. Stealing money and property from relatives leads to many adventures.

Great story, sometimes heavy dialect

If spoilers bother you, you probably shouldn't read this review. I can sum up the non-spoiler parts like this: it's a great yarn, and Sean Barrett is a wonderful reader, but the Scottish dialect is sometimes heavy enough to be confusing.

There. You've been warned — although I should note that the novel is over 200 years old, and spoilers really ought to have an expiration date.

So. Rob Roy takes a long time to show up in the novel that bears his name, and he doesn't fill many of its pages. The novel is narrated by, and mostly revolves around, Frank Osbaldistone, a dreamy London romantic, who rebels at the idea of going into business with his hard-headed father. The father ships him off to his Catholic brother who lives with his five sons on the family estate in Northumberland, near the Scottish border. The beautiful and flirtatious Diane Vernon is also in residence there: she is a cousin by marriage of the Osbaldistones and has been destined from birth to marry one of them. (I had a crush on her after about 5 lines of dialogue.)

One of the brothers, Rashleigh, turns out to be the villain of the piece. Rashleigh was trained by Jesuits for the priesthood, but changes careers to replace Frank as a partner in the father's business. He was Diana’s tutor, but she reveals to the smitten Frank that Rashleigh had made improper advances — hints at it, at any rate, in the best tradition of Victorian vagueness. Frank picks up on her meaning immediately and wants to avenge her honor. “I need no avengers,” she tells him. She is one of the liveliest heroines in Scott, if not in Victorian fiction in general.

Frank discovers that Rashleigh has been playing his father false. Rashleigh has sided with the Scottish Jacobites, who want to place the son of the Catholic James II on the throne. Rashleigh’s way of supporting the rebellion is (as is typical of him) complicated and underhanded. He tries to force the issue by defaulting on Osbaldistone loans involving the Scottish gentry. This will, he hopes, force them into bankruptcy and destabilize the country. It will also, as a side effect, ruin the Osbaldistone family business. As it turns out, the outlaw Robert Campbell — aka Robert MacGregor, aka Rob Roy — has documents that can expose the scheme, so Frank turns to him for help.

The Jacobite rebellion breaks out in earnest. Because the Northumberland Osbaldistones are supporters of the rebellion (though not of Rashleigh’s dishonest way to igniting it), Frank himself becomes entangled in the events leading up to the revolt. The tone of the story darkens considerably. One person who is a figure of fun in the early going meets a horrible and agonizing death before the end. Scott doesn't sugarcoat the barbarity of some of the action.

Once past the opening skirmishes, the rebellion itself is dealt with in summary fashion. Frank by then has returned to London and taken up his place in his father’s business after all. But he becomes involved once again at the end in a desperate venture, only to find Rob Roy once again a benefactor. Poetic justice is served, at least to an extent, though Frank’s Jacobite uncle and his five sons are punished far more than they deserve. Frank spends time and money trying to mitigate the wrath of the state. He and Diane end up together at the end, and Rashleigh ends up dead.

Despite the dark tone of the latter half of the novel, there are few writers as genial as Sir Walter Scott. He never lets history get in the way of a good story, so his chronology can't be depended on; the novel involves a number of historical characters, but it's no more history than Shakespeare’s plays about the Plantagenets. The characters themselves are all drawn with brilliant detail and precision.

As much as I love this novel — and I do love it — listening to it was a challenge. The Scots dialect is strong with this one. Sometimes the context helped; sometimes the sound was close enough to follow what was being said. At times, especially in the beginning, I needed to look up some of the exchanges in the printed version. The Signet Classics edition of the novel has a helpful glossary — something even the Penguin edition lacks. The glossary helped me understand sentences and phrases like the following:

“Yill?—deil a drap o' yill did Pate offer me; but Mattie gae us baith a drap skimmed milk, and ane o' her thick ait jannocks, that was as wat and raw as a divot. O for the bonnie girdle cakes o' the north!—and sae we sat doun and took out our clavers.”

Or these:

“Queeze-maddam”
“We pickle in our ain pock-neuk”
“Let folk tuilzie in their yards”
“The loon maun loup”
“A puir wabster-body”
“I sall haud ilk parochine”
“Gun and pistol, dirk and dourlach”

I'm not trying to warn anybody off the book. Just be prepared. I found the audiobook a challenge at times, but it repaid my efforts with an abundance of pleasure. Frank himself narrates in straightforward English, and the opaque dialect only involves a few of the characters. And even with them it eventually became easier to pick up the meaning from the context and tone of voice.

Sean Barrett’s deep, rich voice is a pleasure to listen to. He brings out the humor in the story and (at least to my American ears) assumes an astonishing number of regional accents.