FICTION VERSUS TRUTH.

Otago Witness, Issue 1951, 11 April 1889, Page 32

FICTION VERSUS TRUTH.

Ulany great reforms have been achieved by means of certain novels. Dickens, the late Mr Charles Reade, Mr Wilkie Collins, Mr Walter Besant, and others have thus suc■ceeded in getting rid of abuses and in bringing about valuable improvements of , every sort, when even the newspapers have ' failed to do so. The reason is that public ■ opinion has been most effectually moved ■ through these stories. Readers have first of • all become interested in the stories as stories, and then their indignation or their sympathies having been thoroughly aroused, they have insisted on changes being made, and often helped to carry them out. This ■ shows what power the " novel with a purpose " is capable of wielding.

But there is a more curious case — relating, however, to a much smaller matter — of the novelist's influence, and one which has not hitherto been noticed. Tillietudlem Castle, as is well known, plays an important part in Scott's story of "Old Mortality." There was no such castle when Sir Walter i wrote, but the building which he described under that name was Craignethan Castle, some 10 or 12 miles from the town of Lanark. Now, see what has happened since 1816, in .which year " Old Mortality " was first •published. So great was the interest excited by the novel that the castle's real name has fallen into disuse, people preferring to employ the fictitious title ; and at this very day it is actually known by the name invented ■by Scott. Not only so, but the district has adopted it as well, and the sign board at the railway station bears the name of Tillietudlem, and not Craignethan. It is said rightly enough that truth is stranger than fiction, •but here is an instane'e of fiction being stronger than truth.