THE death of Sir Walter Scott was marked at his grave in the precincts of Dryburgh Abbey by the laying of a wreath by the Edinburgh Sir Walter Scott Club.

Sir Walter died on September 21, 1832 at his beloved home at Abbotsford looking from his windows at the River Tweed which flows past both Abbotsford and Dryburgh Abbey where he was buried five days later.

Placing the wreath on Sir Walter’s tomb, Alasdair Hutton, Chairman of the Scott Club, said: “Sir Walter was only 61 but he left us and his country a legacy of writing unsurpassed by any writer before or since.” Alasdair pointed out that 2014 marked the two hundredth anniversary of the publication of Sir Walter’s first novel Waverley. He had been hugely popular as a poet with such epics as The Lay of the Last Minstrel and Marmion but he had started to slip out of favour with the public as a poet and decided to turn his hand to novels with the astonishing results we have with us today.

“And he displayed a sense of honour unequalled in our history when his business decisions turned sour.

“He did not blame anyone else but wrote himself to death to pay off the debts of his publisher which he took on his own shoulders.” Alasdair said he was sure Sir Walter would have thoroughly approved of the rebirth of his home at Abbotsford as one of the country’s most vibrant tourist attractions drawing people from far afield to Scotland and the Borders.