E. Cobham Brewer 1810–1897. Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. 1898.
Meg Merrilies (in Sir W. Scott’s Guy Mannering).
This character was based on that of Jean Gordon, an inhabitant of the village of Kirk Yetholm, in the Cheviot Hills, in the middle of the eighteenth century. A sketch of Jean Gordon’s life will be found in Blackwood’s Magazine, vol. i. p. 54. She is a half-crazy sibyl or gipsy.
