ABSTRACT
In Walter Scott's journal entry for 16 June 1829, pirates figure as images of chaos and existential angst. Scott had been at work on his contribution to Thomas Moore's 1830 Letters and Journals of Lord Byron, when he wrote:
Byron had died five years earlier in Greece. Scott infuses the scene with recollections of Byron, whom he liked and with whom he agreed on 'everything except politics and religion'.2 The pirates here serve as markers for fundamental questions about the meaning of life: how can such unexpected evil come to those who, like the sailor or Byron, are 'joyous and unthinking', in some sense, innocents. The final question, 'Who can tell?', however, concerns Scott himself, as it must anyone confronted with the arbitrary nature of death and the ephemerality of existence.
