The Character Statues

Hal O’ the Wynd

Found on the lower tier of the North West buttress of the Scott Monument.

Hal O’ the Wynd (from the novel 'The Fair Maid of Perth', 1828), is the burly blacksmith armed with a broadsword and wearing a coat of chain- mail, waiting for action and prepared for an encounter with the foe on the Inch of Perth.

Henry Gow or Smith, the lover of Catharine Glover, the Fair Maid of Perth, is "known to Highland and Lowland as the best armourer that ever made sword, and the truest soldier that ever drew one". He is powerfully built and his "professional jealousy" often leads him into quarrels.

"There was daring and resolution in the dark eye, but the other features seemed to express a bashful timidity, mingled with good-humour…"

He participates, as a substitute for an absent Chattan warrior, in the bloody battle between the champions of the clans Quhele and Chattan, after which he memorably declares, "I fought for my own hand."

About the Sculptor

John Hutchinson (1833 to 1910)

Born at Laurieston, Edinburgh, Hutchinson served an apprenticeship with a wood carver along with Robert Scott Lauder. He studied at the Trustees Academy in 1848 and in Rome in c.1849. He sculpted portrait figures in bronze, marble and wood.

“He blended a national vigour and realistic propriety with a feeling for the chaste purity of the classical ideal”

(From the Dictionary of Scottish Art and Architecture.)

Other works include a colossal John Knox for the quadrangle of New College, and the Adam Black monument in Princes Street both in Edinburgh. He has works in the National Gallery of Scotland and the Scottish National Portrait Gallery.

Also on the Scott Monument - The Glee Maiden, Baron Bradwarine, Flora MacIvor.

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