SOURCE: "Scott and Cultural Relativism: The Two Drovers'," in Studies in Short Fiction, Vol. 15, No. 1, Winter, 1978, pp. 1-9.

In the following essay, Cooney reveals a contradiction between the overt and covert meanings of "The Two Drovers " to suggest that a nascent though subconscious ideology of cultural relativism informs the tale.

Dr. Leavis's critical tip in a footnote to the first chapter of The Great Tradition must have sent many readers to that tale of Scott's which, he said, "remains in esteem while the heroics of the historical novels can no longer command respect."¹ Yet "The Two Drovers" has not, in the years since 1948, come in for much critical attention—Davie, Welsh, Hart, and Mayhead, for example, scarcely mention it.² Even the text is not easily come by; for all its brevity, it is not reprinted in any of the fat college anthologies where it might well claim a...