Brewer's: Ravenswood

(Allan, Lord of). A decayed Scotch nobleman of the Royalist party.

Master Edgar Ravenswood.
His son, who falls in love with Lucy Ashton, daughter of Sir William Ashton, Lord-Keeper of Scotland. The lovers plight their troth at the Mermaid's Fountain, but Lucy is compelled to marry Frank Hayston, laird of Bucklaw. The bride, in a fit of insanity, attempts to murder the bridegroom and dies in convulsions. Bucklaw recovers, and goes abroad. Colonel Ashton, seeing Edgar at the funeral of Lucy, appoints a hostile meeting; and Edgar, on his way to the place appointed, is lost in the quicksands of Kelpies-flow. (SirWalterScott: Bride of Lammermoor.)

In Donizetti's opera of Lucia di Lammermoor, Bucklaw dies of the wound inflicted by the bride, and Edgar, heart-broken, comes on the stage and kills himself, that “his marriage with Lucy, forbidden on earth, may be consummated in heaven.”

Source: Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, E. Cobham Brewer, 1894
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