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CONTENTS
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Electric Scotland News
Electric Scotland Community
The Flag in the Wind
Book of Scottish Story
Scottish Loch Scenery
Geikie's Etchings
Town Council Seals of Scotland
Historical Tales of the Wars of Scotland
Robert Chambers - Songs of Scotland
The Heather in Lore, Lyric and Lay
Notes and Reminscences of Partick
Travel article
The Complete Scotland
History of the Gipsies
The Long Glen
Lays of the Covenanters
The Scottish Reformation
Essays of Hugh Haliburton
History of Scotland
Glencreggan: or A Highland Home in Cantire
McAnin
Electric Scotland News
----------------------
Well here in Canada we've been celebrating our Thanksgiving holiday so lots to eat and good frienda to celebrate with.
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I've been working on a history of Berwick and was amazed to learn that the taxes Berwick paid at one point in its history amounted to one quarter of the total taxes paid to England. The history of this town on the borders of Scotland is an amazing one and I look forward to bringing this to you in the weeks ahead.
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I also received a copy of the 150th anniversary booklet of the Edinburgh Fire Brigade and have managed to scan it into a pdf file. You can see this at http://www.electricscotland.com/history/police
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This week I was re-reading the book Cromar and Canada where family friends from Cromar in Scotland emigrated to Tilbury East. As that is only around 25 minutes up the road I decided to take some pictures which I've added to the book. Of course what you see today is vastly different from what these emigrants would have found on their arrival. As it is also very flat land it's not that easy to take decent pictures. I am going to see if I can find some old pictures that might be more representative of what they might have seen on their arrival. You can see the pictures I took at http://www.electricscotland.com/hist.../chapter20.htm
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And I almost forgot to tell you that we have our ScotCards working again at long last so you can now sent off a postcard to friends and relatives. And if you spend a little time on your card you can change the stamps, add music, poetry and stories and even java effects to it. Just a note on this you do need to be a member and logged in to be able to select these extra options. Membership is free.
See http://www.scotcards.org which is also available through the EScotland menu in our community.
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I've also posted my experiences with the Kontera advertising company that we were trying for a wee while on our site. I have to say I'm not a happy bunny with them right now and gone back to InfoLinks. I just fail to understand how their Business Development Manager can make you a clear deal and then end up telling me her company wouldn't approve it. You can see my posting on that at http://www.electricscotland.com/frie...ir/kontera.htm
At the end of the day it is advertising income which lets me run the site on a full time basis and allows me to provide all content free of charge.
ABOUT THE STORIES
-----------------
Some of the stories in here are just parts of a larger story so do check out the site for the full versions. You can always find the link in our "What's New" section in our site menu and at http://www.electricscotland.com/rss/whatsnew.php
Electric Scotland Community
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Talking about the rescue in Chile and some video recipes added this week amongst which you'll find clootie dumpling and two different ways to make stovies and also a picture of a rapid response security team.... a must see :-)
Our community can be viewed at http://www.electricscotland.org/forum.php
THE FLAG IN THE WIND
--------------------
This weeks issue has been compiled by Jamie Hepburn and in it he carries an interesting article on Education...
One of the things I have been proudest of the SNP in Government has been the commitment to free education. The decision to abolish tuition fees restored that principle to university education, and was the right thing to do.
I have therefore watched aghast at the Con-Dem Government’s response to the Browne Report on financing higher education in England. The ideas set out seem to me to be the introduction of a free market to university education, whereby universities will charge exorbitant fees for the privilege of attending.
This move towards a more American type of university sector is one that has to be resisted. I was fortunate enough to attend university when there were no fees and maintenance grants were still being paid, albeit not what they once had been. I only just made it, as the introduction of tuition fees and the abolition of grants (by Labour let’s remember) took place whilst I was at university.
If the system that England seems to be moving to had been in place, I might have baulked at the idea of going to university. I believe many young people considering the prospect today might now do so.
Not content with trying to establish this system in England, Vince Cable (the new Vince Cable, not the old one beloved of the liberal left) seems intent on foisting it on Scotland too. His suggestion that Scotland should introduce these outrageous fees for university students has already been rebuffed by the Scottish Government, and rightly so.
Wouldn’t it be better if Vince tried persuading his colleagues in the Con-Dem government to ditch the billions it will cost to renew nuclear weapons rather than hammering students and graduates?
You can read this compilation at http://www.scotsindependent.org
Christina McKelvie's weekly diary is available at http://www.electricscotland.com/hist...lvie/index.htm although at time of writing it didn't come in but might make it tomorrow.
Book of Scottish Story
----------------------
We've added "Black Joe o' the Bow" Part 2 which can be read at http://www.electricscotland.com/book.../story132b.htm
The other stories can be read at http://www.electricscotland.com/books/story/index.htm
The Lights and Shadows of Scottish Life
Our story this week is "Consumption" which can be read on the index page above.
Scottish Loch Scenery
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From drawings by A F Lydon with descriptive notes by Thomas A Croal (1882)
This week we added "Loh Ness" which you can read at http://www.electricscotland.com/pictures/lochs20.htm
The other entries can be read at http://www.electricscotland.com/pictures/lochs.htm
Geikie's Etchings
-----------------
This week we've added more articles...
The Jumping Jack
Auld Friends
The Brute's Wud
You can read these at http://www.electricscotland.com/hist...ikie/index.htm
Town Council Seals of Scotland
------------------------------
Historical, Legendary and Heraldic by Alexander Posteous
Added this week...
Queensferry South
Rattray to Rutherglen
You can read these at http://www.electricscotland.com/council/
Historical Tales of the Wars of Scotland
----------------------------------------
And of the Border Raids, Forays and Conflicts by John Parker Lawson (1839). This is a new publication we're starting on which is in 3 volumes. We intend to post up 2 or 3 stories each week until complete.
This week we've added...
Conflict At Drumderfit - 1372
The Raid Of The Monroes - 1378
You can read these at http://www.electricscotland.com/history/wars/
Robert Chambers
---------------
Robert Chambers is a famous author and publisher and we do carry a few of his publications on our site such as the 3 volume Domestic Annals of Scotland and his 4 volume Biographical Dictionary of Significant Scots.
John Henderson found his 2 volume Songs of Scotland which we both agree is a fabulous resource and so we are going to add this to the site in small chuncks in pdf format for you to enjoy.
This week we added...
Pages 243 to 258
You can read this at http://www.electricscotland.com/hist...ers_robert.htm
The Heather in Lore, Lyric and Lay
----------------------------------
By Alexander Wallace (1903)
We already have up a large page on Heather but when I discovered this book I thought it would be a good one for folk to dip into as it were.
This week we now have up...
The Heather as a Clan Badge
Heather Lore
White Heather
Shadow Folk of Heather Haunts
Heather Jock
The Comrade of the Heather
Grouse: The Heather Bird
The chapter on The Heather as a clan badge starts...
Not safe were they who rashly met
Thy warriors stern and true,
When the proud heather-badge was set
In all their bonnets blue.
—Ian Loin.
WHEN we reflect upon the many unique characteristics of the Heather—its stern beauty of delicate purple bells nestling to a green-mantled burly growth of brushwood; its distinctive vitality and strength of endurance; the wild, rugged solitude of its native home in the Scottish Highlands, and the untamed spirit of independence which over-broods this hermit flower of the mountain crags—it is not to be wondered at that the Heather should have been adopted as a symbol, or badge, by several of the leading clans of Scotland. Indeed, in olden times such badges were superstitiously regarded, and the clans adopting specific subjects as their symbols were supposed to be descended from these subjects. And who more proud of their ancestors than the descendants of the Heather!
Grighair is croic,
Domnuil is freuc,
Macgregor as the rock,
Macdonald as the heather.
The origin of the selection of certain plants as clan badges appears to be shrouded in mystery, and mythology aids us but little in our research looking to the discovery of the inception of the custom.
You can read the rest of this at http://www.electricscotland.com/gardening/heather23.htm
The other chapters can be read at http://www.electricscotland.com/gardening/heather.htm
Notes and Reminscences of Partick
---------------------------------
By James Napier (1873)
This is another of those books that don't have any chapters and is around 300 pages. We're splitting this book up into a logical sequence of pdf files for you to read and will be easier to download. Partick is now a suburb of Glasgow.
We have up this week...
Part 6 (Pages 111 - 126)
This can be read at http://www.electricscotland.com/history/partick/
Travel Article
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We have been getting in some wee articles from Holiday Cottages and you can read these at http://www.electricscotland.com/travel/holidayndx.htm
The article this week is about Selkirk - The Scenic town in the Scottish Borders.
The Complete Scotland
---------------------
We are now onto the Central belt of Scotland with...
Perth to Inverness: The Great North Road
Dunkeld and Birnam
Aberfeldy
Pitlochry
Pitlochry to Kinloch Rannoch
Blair Atholl and Glen Tilt
Newtonmore
Newtonmore to Fort William by Spean Bridge
Kingussie
Aviemore
The Cairngorms
Aviemore to Inverness via Carrbridge
Grantown
Grantown to Craigellachie, Tomintoul and Dufftown
You can read this at http://www.electricscotland.com/travel/scotland/
History of the Gipsies
----------------------
By James Simson (1866)
All these chapters are a substantial read but certainly most interesting. There are a huge amount of footnotes in this publication so have done my best to incorporate them into the text.
This week we have added...
Chapter V - Fife and Stirlingshire Gipsies
Chapter VI - Tweed-Dale and Clydesdale Gipsies
Here is how Chapter V starts...
IN this account of the Gipsies in Fife, the horde which at one period resided at the village of Lochgellie are frequently referred to. But it is proper to premise that this noted band were not the only Gipsies in Fife. This populous county contained, at one time, a great number of nomadic Gipsies. The Falkland hills and the Falkland fairs were greatly frequented by them;
(In Oliver and Boyd's Scottish Tourist, (1852), page 181, occurs the following passage: "A singular set of vagrants existed long in Falkland, called Scrapies, who had no other visible means of existence than a horse or a cow. Their ostensible employment was the carriage of commodities to the adjoining villages, and in the intervals of work they turned out their cattle to graze on the Lomond HiIl. Their excursions at night were long and mysterious, for the pretended object of procuring coals, but they roamed with their little carts through the country-side, securing whatever they could Iift, and plundering fields in autumn. Whenever any enquiry was addressed to a Falkland Scrapie as to the support of his horse, the ready answer was, ' Ou, he gangs up the (Lomond) Hill, ye ken.' This is now prevented ; the Lomond is enclosed, and the Scrapies now manage their affairs on the road-sides."
(The people mentioned in this extract are doubtless those to whom our author alludes. The reader will notice some resemblance between them and the tribe in the Pyrenees, as described at page 87.—Ed.)
and, not far from St. Andrews, some of the tribe had, within these fifty years, a small farm, containing about twenty acres of waste land, on which they had a small foundry, which the country people, on that account, called "Little Carron." As my materials for this chapter are chiefly derived from the LochgeIIie band, and their immediate connexions in other districts not far from Fife, their manners and customs are, on that account, brought more under review.
You can read the rest of this chapter at http://www.electricscotland.com/hist...s/chapter5.htm
Other chapters can be read at http://www.electricscotland.com/history/gipsies/
The Long Glen
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This is a story I found in old copies of the Celtic Magazine so I extracted it over a number of issues and now bring you the story.
This week we've added...
Chapter XIII - Donald Cam and Old Janet
Chapter XIV - The Queen's First Visit to Scotland
Chapter XV - Banning the Marquis
Chapter XVI - In the Shadow of the Disruption
Chapter XVII - The Parish Vacancy
Chapter XVIII - Bean Air Seachran
The chapter on Donald Cam and Old Janet starts...
AS if propitiated by the sportive worship on Dun-an-teine, the Sun-God shone brilliantly for the whole of that May—or rather the rest of it, for the Glen people's first of May was the 12th of that month, seeing that, in regard to Hallowe'en, Christmas, New Year, and Beltane, their ancient Christian, and pre-Christian, festivals, they disregarded Act of Parliament and Almanac, and stuck to the Old Style. It had been a cold, wet spring, and field labour had dragged considerably. A good deal of peat-cutting was always done before the barley and turnip sowing ; but this year, owing to the weather, the early part of that working, including the minister's day, turned out rather unsatisfactory. After Beltane the laird's tenants gathered as usual from their several separate hills and mosses to the one hill on which it was customary to cut the kain peats for the Castle. The weather then was so good that three or four days after being cut and spread on the grianan, or drying ground, which usually was gravelly hillocks, whose heather had been burned, they could be footed, or made into what they called ducain.
On a certain Thursday in this May the Castle peat-making had been carried on all the forenoon, in such a broiling sun that, at one o'clock, the men who were cutting and the women who were wheeling the peats to the drying ground, and spreading them in long, close rows, not without a suggestion of fanciful designs, were very glad to rest from their labours, and to eat their sober mid-day meal of .oatcakes and milk. After they had dined in sets of families, each by their own poll moine, or peat cutting, many of them gathered on the shady side of what to most of them was the common grianan, or spreading hillock. Here they looked down through a feadan, or narrow hollow between many hillocks, to the wood, which spread upwards a mile or so from the river. Duncan Ban was there, and so was his yellow fiddle, for the kain peat-cutting was one of the few occasions on which he could, to use Rob Macarthur's words, clip the beard of the cleir, by keeping up old customs, and tempting the young to dance to the Miiileann Dubh during the rest hour. But to-day he said it was too hot for fiddling and dancing, and nobody indeed was lively, until all at once a thick-set, short man, fanning a bare head with a broad, blue bonnet, emerged from the wood, and the question went round, "Who can he be?"
You can read the rest of this at http://www.electricscotland.com/history/longglen13.htm
The other chapters can be read at http://www.electricscotland.com/history/longglenndx.htm
Lays of the Covenanters
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By James Dodds (1880)
This is another book we're starting in pdf format and this week we've added...
Sharpe Offering a Bishopric to Robert Douglas
You can read this at http://www.electricscotland.com/history/covenanters/
The Scottish Reformation
------------------------
A Historical Sketch by Peter Lorimer D.D. (1860)
As some of you will know there is to be a special celebration of the 450th anniversary of the Scottish Reformation during November in Scotland. I thought that this would be a good time to make this book available so you can read up on it.
We now have up...
Chapter I.—The Hamilton Period, a. d. 1515—1543
Section 1. Commencement of the Reformation
Section 2. Patrick Hamilton. 1515—1528
Section 3. Sir David Lindsay of the Mount 1528—1531
Section 4. Alexander Alesius, Alexander Seyton, and Henry Forrest 1529—1531
Section 5. Struggle for the use of the Vernacular Scriptures 1532—1534
Section 6. Persecutions and Martyrdoms. 1534—1539
Section 7. Scottish Reformers in England. 1534—1540
Section 8. Sir David Lindsay, and the Satire of the Three Estates. 1539—1540
Section 9. Sir John Borthwick and the Scottish Nobility and Gentry. 1540—1541
This book is available at http://www.electricscotland.com/bibl...tion/index.htm
Essays of Hugh Haliburton
--------------------------
I am extracting some of his essays that detail Scottish Life and Character from his various works. This week we've added...
The Farmers Ingle
The Old Harvest Field
The Farmers Ingle starts...
MAKING incidental mention of Fergusson's name in the Heart of Midlothian, Scott proposed to designate him the Poet Laureate of the City Guard, because his verses referred so frequently to those military conservators of the peace ; but it will give a more intelligible idea of the position of Fergusson to describe him as the Poet Laureate of Edinburgh from 1770 to 1774. By both birth and upbringing he was a true son of the city; man, therefore, rather than nature, was his theme. The towns with which, by residence, he was acquainted were Edinburgh, Dundee, St Andrews, and Aberdeen; but it was Edinburgh with which he was longest and most intimately connected. Edinburgh furnished him with most of his subjects, and it was to an Edinburgh audience that he almost exclusively looked for applause. Once, however, he strayed beyond the bounds of city life for a subject, which he found in the Farmer's Ingle, and which he treated with such ability as to make one wish he had oftener meditated the rural muse. In any classification of his poems, The Farmer's Ingle must occupy a place by itself; not only because it is his one notable effort on a purely rural subject, but because it is the only worthy specimen of his serious style. All his other pieces which deserve preservation are avowedly humorous. The Farmer's Ingle, though not without a chance touch of humour, is a poem seriously sympathetic with the simple round of rustic life at a farm, and accurately descriptive of it. Poetical consideration apart, it has a historical value in the clear, careful, and correct picture which it presents of a phase of domestic farm-life in the east of Scotland in the latter half of last century. The original of the picture Fergusson probably found in some farm near St Andrews, when he wore the red gown and rejoiced in the freedom of an undergraduate.
The subject, when Fergusson selected it, was of a kind virgin to poetical treatment in the Scottish vernacular. There had been occasional references to the simple lives of common men in verses of an earlier date, but this was the first Scottish poem which seriously, directly, and exclusively dealt with the subject It was an attempt to invest a transcript from homely, every-day country-life with an interest which should be independent of caricature and false colour, and should appeal rather to the heart than to the fancy. The idea may have been got from the classical pastorals, or it may have been suggested by one or other of those brief bits of descriptive verse with which Ramsay introduces the dramatic scenes of the Gentle Shepherd. However it originated, the idea was ambitious, and was, I venture to say, admirably carried out. The result may never have been popular, but it constitutes, nevertheless, the masterpiece of Fergusson. It offers to the critic the best means of testing the strength and variety of the poet's power. Here we have picturesque glimpses of rural scenery, artistic compositions of rustic figures, touches of humour, finely-wrought though faint characterisation, portraiture, a sense of the supernatural, and a genuine sympathy with childhood, toiling manhood, and age, which once or twice makes near approach to pathos. An outline of the poem may be given.
You can read the rest of this at http://www.electricscotland.com/hist...rton/ingle.htm
The other essays can be read at http://www.electricscotland.com/history/haliburton
History of Scotland
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By Wm Robertson
This is part of the Works of Wm. Robertson and it's actually my intention to bring you all his works over time but to start we're doing his "History of Scotland" which got very favourable reviews at the time and so much so he was asked by the King to do a History of England.
The History is now going up and this week we've added...
Book 3 Section 1.
These can be read, along with a small biography of him at http://www.electricscotland.com/hist...on_william.htm
Glencreggan: or A Highland Home in Cantire
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By Cuthbert Bede (1861)
This week we put up Chapter III. - In Kilbrannan Sound
You can read this at http://www.electricscotland.com/history/glencreggan/
McAnin
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We got in an interesting report on this name from Alan McKenzie and it's connection with the MacKenzie clan. You can read this at http://www.electricscotland.com/mackenzie
And to finish...
Customer Satisfaction
Did you hear about an American visitor going into the inevitable tartan gift shop in the west of Scotland to buy a tie in his family tartan, Dunlop?
The assistant can't find one on display so goes and asks the manager who realises they have no Dunlop ties. Not wanting to lose a sale, though, he tells the assistant to sell the tourist a Macintyre tie instead, as the Dunlops were a sept of the Macintyre clan.
"Are you sure?" asked the assistant.
"Oh, yes," said the manager, "I thought everyone knew that Dunlops have been mackin' tyres for years."
Of course being a McIntyre this did get a groan from me! :-)
And that's it for now and hope you all have a good weekend :-)
Alastair
http://www.electricscotland.com
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Electric Scotland News
Electric Scotland Community
The Flag in the Wind
Book of Scottish Story
Scottish Loch Scenery
Geikie's Etchings
Town Council Seals of Scotland
Historical Tales of the Wars of Scotland
Robert Chambers - Songs of Scotland
The Heather in Lore, Lyric and Lay
Notes and Reminscences of Partick
Travel article
The Complete Scotland
History of the Gipsies
The Long Glen
Lays of the Covenanters
The Scottish Reformation
Essays of Hugh Haliburton
History of Scotland
Glencreggan: or A Highland Home in Cantire
McAnin
Electric Scotland News
----------------------
Well here in Canada we've been celebrating our Thanksgiving holiday so lots to eat and good frienda to celebrate with.
-----
I've been working on a history of Berwick and was amazed to learn that the taxes Berwick paid at one point in its history amounted to one quarter of the total taxes paid to England. The history of this town on the borders of Scotland is an amazing one and I look forward to bringing this to you in the weeks ahead.
-----
I also received a copy of the 150th anniversary booklet of the Edinburgh Fire Brigade and have managed to scan it into a pdf file. You can see this at http://www.electricscotland.com/history/police
-----
This week I was re-reading the book Cromar and Canada where family friends from Cromar in Scotland emigrated to Tilbury East. As that is only around 25 minutes up the road I decided to take some pictures which I've added to the book. Of course what you see today is vastly different from what these emigrants would have found on their arrival. As it is also very flat land it's not that easy to take decent pictures. I am going to see if I can find some old pictures that might be more representative of what they might have seen on their arrival. You can see the pictures I took at http://www.electricscotland.com/hist.../chapter20.htm
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And I almost forgot to tell you that we have our ScotCards working again at long last so you can now sent off a postcard to friends and relatives. And if you spend a little time on your card you can change the stamps, add music, poetry and stories and even java effects to it. Just a note on this you do need to be a member and logged in to be able to select these extra options. Membership is free.
See http://www.scotcards.org which is also available through the EScotland menu in our community.
-----
I've also posted my experiences with the Kontera advertising company that we were trying for a wee while on our site. I have to say I'm not a happy bunny with them right now and gone back to InfoLinks. I just fail to understand how their Business Development Manager can make you a clear deal and then end up telling me her company wouldn't approve it. You can see my posting on that at http://www.electricscotland.com/frie...ir/kontera.htm
At the end of the day it is advertising income which lets me run the site on a full time basis and allows me to provide all content free of charge.
ABOUT THE STORIES
-----------------
Some of the stories in here are just parts of a larger story so do check out the site for the full versions. You can always find the link in our "What's New" section in our site menu and at http://www.electricscotland.com/rss/whatsnew.php
Electric Scotland Community
---------------------------
Talking about the rescue in Chile and some video recipes added this week amongst which you'll find clootie dumpling and two different ways to make stovies and also a picture of a rapid response security team.... a must see :-)
Our community can be viewed at http://www.electricscotland.org/forum.php
THE FLAG IN THE WIND
--------------------
This weeks issue has been compiled by Jamie Hepburn and in it he carries an interesting article on Education...
One of the things I have been proudest of the SNP in Government has been the commitment to free education. The decision to abolish tuition fees restored that principle to university education, and was the right thing to do.
I have therefore watched aghast at the Con-Dem Government’s response to the Browne Report on financing higher education in England. The ideas set out seem to me to be the introduction of a free market to university education, whereby universities will charge exorbitant fees for the privilege of attending.
This move towards a more American type of university sector is one that has to be resisted. I was fortunate enough to attend university when there were no fees and maintenance grants were still being paid, albeit not what they once had been. I only just made it, as the introduction of tuition fees and the abolition of grants (by Labour let’s remember) took place whilst I was at university.
If the system that England seems to be moving to had been in place, I might have baulked at the idea of going to university. I believe many young people considering the prospect today might now do so.
Not content with trying to establish this system in England, Vince Cable (the new Vince Cable, not the old one beloved of the liberal left) seems intent on foisting it on Scotland too. His suggestion that Scotland should introduce these outrageous fees for university students has already been rebuffed by the Scottish Government, and rightly so.
Wouldn’t it be better if Vince tried persuading his colleagues in the Con-Dem government to ditch the billions it will cost to renew nuclear weapons rather than hammering students and graduates?
You can read this compilation at http://www.scotsindependent.org
Christina McKelvie's weekly diary is available at http://www.electricscotland.com/hist...lvie/index.htm although at time of writing it didn't come in but might make it tomorrow.
Book of Scottish Story
----------------------
We've added "Black Joe o' the Bow" Part 2 which can be read at http://www.electricscotland.com/book.../story132b.htm
The other stories can be read at http://www.electricscotland.com/books/story/index.htm
The Lights and Shadows of Scottish Life
Our story this week is "Consumption" which can be read on the index page above.
Scottish Loch Scenery
---------------------
From drawings by A F Lydon with descriptive notes by Thomas A Croal (1882)
This week we added "Loh Ness" which you can read at http://www.electricscotland.com/pictures/lochs20.htm
The other entries can be read at http://www.electricscotland.com/pictures/lochs.htm
Geikie's Etchings
-----------------
This week we've added more articles...
The Jumping Jack
Auld Friends
The Brute's Wud
You can read these at http://www.electricscotland.com/hist...ikie/index.htm
Town Council Seals of Scotland
------------------------------
Historical, Legendary and Heraldic by Alexander Posteous
Added this week...
Queensferry South
Rattray to Rutherglen
You can read these at http://www.electricscotland.com/council/
Historical Tales of the Wars of Scotland
----------------------------------------
And of the Border Raids, Forays and Conflicts by John Parker Lawson (1839). This is a new publication we're starting on which is in 3 volumes. We intend to post up 2 or 3 stories each week until complete.
This week we've added...
Conflict At Drumderfit - 1372
The Raid Of The Monroes - 1378
You can read these at http://www.electricscotland.com/history/wars/
Robert Chambers
---------------
Robert Chambers is a famous author and publisher and we do carry a few of his publications on our site such as the 3 volume Domestic Annals of Scotland and his 4 volume Biographical Dictionary of Significant Scots.
John Henderson found his 2 volume Songs of Scotland which we both agree is a fabulous resource and so we are going to add this to the site in small chuncks in pdf format for you to enjoy.
This week we added...
Pages 243 to 258
You can read this at http://www.electricscotland.com/hist...ers_robert.htm
The Heather in Lore, Lyric and Lay
----------------------------------
By Alexander Wallace (1903)
We already have up a large page on Heather but when I discovered this book I thought it would be a good one for folk to dip into as it were.
This week we now have up...
The Heather as a Clan Badge
Heather Lore
White Heather
Shadow Folk of Heather Haunts
Heather Jock
The Comrade of the Heather
Grouse: The Heather Bird
The chapter on The Heather as a clan badge starts...
Not safe were they who rashly met
Thy warriors stern and true,
When the proud heather-badge was set
In all their bonnets blue.
—Ian Loin.
WHEN we reflect upon the many unique characteristics of the Heather—its stern beauty of delicate purple bells nestling to a green-mantled burly growth of brushwood; its distinctive vitality and strength of endurance; the wild, rugged solitude of its native home in the Scottish Highlands, and the untamed spirit of independence which over-broods this hermit flower of the mountain crags—it is not to be wondered at that the Heather should have been adopted as a symbol, or badge, by several of the leading clans of Scotland. Indeed, in olden times such badges were superstitiously regarded, and the clans adopting specific subjects as their symbols were supposed to be descended from these subjects. And who more proud of their ancestors than the descendants of the Heather!
Grighair is croic,
Domnuil is freuc,
Macgregor as the rock,
Macdonald as the heather.
The origin of the selection of certain plants as clan badges appears to be shrouded in mystery, and mythology aids us but little in our research looking to the discovery of the inception of the custom.
You can read the rest of this at http://www.electricscotland.com/gardening/heather23.htm
The other chapters can be read at http://www.electricscotland.com/gardening/heather.htm
Notes and Reminscences of Partick
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By James Napier (1873)
This is another of those books that don't have any chapters and is around 300 pages. We're splitting this book up into a logical sequence of pdf files for you to read and will be easier to download. Partick is now a suburb of Glasgow.
We have up this week...
Part 6 (Pages 111 - 126)
This can be read at http://www.electricscotland.com/history/partick/
Travel Article
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We have been getting in some wee articles from Holiday Cottages and you can read these at http://www.electricscotland.com/travel/holidayndx.htm
The article this week is about Selkirk - The Scenic town in the Scottish Borders.
The Complete Scotland
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We are now onto the Central belt of Scotland with...
Perth to Inverness: The Great North Road
Dunkeld and Birnam
Aberfeldy
Pitlochry
Pitlochry to Kinloch Rannoch
Blair Atholl and Glen Tilt
Newtonmore
Newtonmore to Fort William by Spean Bridge
Kingussie
Aviemore
The Cairngorms
Aviemore to Inverness via Carrbridge
Grantown
Grantown to Craigellachie, Tomintoul and Dufftown
You can read this at http://www.electricscotland.com/travel/scotland/
History of the Gipsies
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By James Simson (1866)
All these chapters are a substantial read but certainly most interesting. There are a huge amount of footnotes in this publication so have done my best to incorporate them into the text.
This week we have added...
Chapter V - Fife and Stirlingshire Gipsies
Chapter VI - Tweed-Dale and Clydesdale Gipsies
Here is how Chapter V starts...
IN this account of the Gipsies in Fife, the horde which at one period resided at the village of Lochgellie are frequently referred to. But it is proper to premise that this noted band were not the only Gipsies in Fife. This populous county contained, at one time, a great number of nomadic Gipsies. The Falkland hills and the Falkland fairs were greatly frequented by them;
(In Oliver and Boyd's Scottish Tourist, (1852), page 181, occurs the following passage: "A singular set of vagrants existed long in Falkland, called Scrapies, who had no other visible means of existence than a horse or a cow. Their ostensible employment was the carriage of commodities to the adjoining villages, and in the intervals of work they turned out their cattle to graze on the Lomond HiIl. Their excursions at night were long and mysterious, for the pretended object of procuring coals, but they roamed with their little carts through the country-side, securing whatever they could Iift, and plundering fields in autumn. Whenever any enquiry was addressed to a Falkland Scrapie as to the support of his horse, the ready answer was, ' Ou, he gangs up the (Lomond) Hill, ye ken.' This is now prevented ; the Lomond is enclosed, and the Scrapies now manage their affairs on the road-sides."
(The people mentioned in this extract are doubtless those to whom our author alludes. The reader will notice some resemblance between them and the tribe in the Pyrenees, as described at page 87.—Ed.)
and, not far from St. Andrews, some of the tribe had, within these fifty years, a small farm, containing about twenty acres of waste land, on which they had a small foundry, which the country people, on that account, called "Little Carron." As my materials for this chapter are chiefly derived from the LochgeIIie band, and their immediate connexions in other districts not far from Fife, their manners and customs are, on that account, brought more under review.
You can read the rest of this chapter at http://www.electricscotland.com/hist...s/chapter5.htm
Other chapters can be read at http://www.electricscotland.com/history/gipsies/
The Long Glen
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This is a story I found in old copies of the Celtic Magazine so I extracted it over a number of issues and now bring you the story.
This week we've added...
Chapter XIII - Donald Cam and Old Janet
Chapter XIV - The Queen's First Visit to Scotland
Chapter XV - Banning the Marquis
Chapter XVI - In the Shadow of the Disruption
Chapter XVII - The Parish Vacancy
Chapter XVIII - Bean Air Seachran
The chapter on Donald Cam and Old Janet starts...
AS if propitiated by the sportive worship on Dun-an-teine, the Sun-God shone brilliantly for the whole of that May—or rather the rest of it, for the Glen people's first of May was the 12th of that month, seeing that, in regard to Hallowe'en, Christmas, New Year, and Beltane, their ancient Christian, and pre-Christian, festivals, they disregarded Act of Parliament and Almanac, and stuck to the Old Style. It had been a cold, wet spring, and field labour had dragged considerably. A good deal of peat-cutting was always done before the barley and turnip sowing ; but this year, owing to the weather, the early part of that working, including the minister's day, turned out rather unsatisfactory. After Beltane the laird's tenants gathered as usual from their several separate hills and mosses to the one hill on which it was customary to cut the kain peats for the Castle. The weather then was so good that three or four days after being cut and spread on the grianan, or drying ground, which usually was gravelly hillocks, whose heather had been burned, they could be footed, or made into what they called ducain.
On a certain Thursday in this May the Castle peat-making had been carried on all the forenoon, in such a broiling sun that, at one o'clock, the men who were cutting and the women who were wheeling the peats to the drying ground, and spreading them in long, close rows, not without a suggestion of fanciful designs, were very glad to rest from their labours, and to eat their sober mid-day meal of .oatcakes and milk. After they had dined in sets of families, each by their own poll moine, or peat cutting, many of them gathered on the shady side of what to most of them was the common grianan, or spreading hillock. Here they looked down through a feadan, or narrow hollow between many hillocks, to the wood, which spread upwards a mile or so from the river. Duncan Ban was there, and so was his yellow fiddle, for the kain peat-cutting was one of the few occasions on which he could, to use Rob Macarthur's words, clip the beard of the cleir, by keeping up old customs, and tempting the young to dance to the Miiileann Dubh during the rest hour. But to-day he said it was too hot for fiddling and dancing, and nobody indeed was lively, until all at once a thick-set, short man, fanning a bare head with a broad, blue bonnet, emerged from the wood, and the question went round, "Who can he be?"
You can read the rest of this at http://www.electricscotland.com/history/longglen13.htm
The other chapters can be read at http://www.electricscotland.com/history/longglenndx.htm
Lays of the Covenanters
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By James Dodds (1880)
This is another book we're starting in pdf format and this week we've added...
Sharpe Offering a Bishopric to Robert Douglas
You can read this at http://www.electricscotland.com/history/covenanters/
The Scottish Reformation
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A Historical Sketch by Peter Lorimer D.D. (1860)
As some of you will know there is to be a special celebration of the 450th anniversary of the Scottish Reformation during November in Scotland. I thought that this would be a good time to make this book available so you can read up on it.
We now have up...
Chapter I.—The Hamilton Period, a. d. 1515—1543
Section 1. Commencement of the Reformation
Section 2. Patrick Hamilton. 1515—1528
Section 3. Sir David Lindsay of the Mount 1528—1531
Section 4. Alexander Alesius, Alexander Seyton, and Henry Forrest 1529—1531
Section 5. Struggle for the use of the Vernacular Scriptures 1532—1534
Section 6. Persecutions and Martyrdoms. 1534—1539
Section 7. Scottish Reformers in England. 1534—1540
Section 8. Sir David Lindsay, and the Satire of the Three Estates. 1539—1540
Section 9. Sir John Borthwick and the Scottish Nobility and Gentry. 1540—1541
This book is available at http://www.electricscotland.com/bibl...tion/index.htm
Essays of Hugh Haliburton
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I am extracting some of his essays that detail Scottish Life and Character from his various works. This week we've added...
The Farmers Ingle
The Old Harvest Field
The Farmers Ingle starts...
MAKING incidental mention of Fergusson's name in the Heart of Midlothian, Scott proposed to designate him the Poet Laureate of the City Guard, because his verses referred so frequently to those military conservators of the peace ; but it will give a more intelligible idea of the position of Fergusson to describe him as the Poet Laureate of Edinburgh from 1770 to 1774. By both birth and upbringing he was a true son of the city; man, therefore, rather than nature, was his theme. The towns with which, by residence, he was acquainted were Edinburgh, Dundee, St Andrews, and Aberdeen; but it was Edinburgh with which he was longest and most intimately connected. Edinburgh furnished him with most of his subjects, and it was to an Edinburgh audience that he almost exclusively looked for applause. Once, however, he strayed beyond the bounds of city life for a subject, which he found in the Farmer's Ingle, and which he treated with such ability as to make one wish he had oftener meditated the rural muse. In any classification of his poems, The Farmer's Ingle must occupy a place by itself; not only because it is his one notable effort on a purely rural subject, but because it is the only worthy specimen of his serious style. All his other pieces which deserve preservation are avowedly humorous. The Farmer's Ingle, though not without a chance touch of humour, is a poem seriously sympathetic with the simple round of rustic life at a farm, and accurately descriptive of it. Poetical consideration apart, it has a historical value in the clear, careful, and correct picture which it presents of a phase of domestic farm-life in the east of Scotland in the latter half of last century. The original of the picture Fergusson probably found in some farm near St Andrews, when he wore the red gown and rejoiced in the freedom of an undergraduate.
The subject, when Fergusson selected it, was of a kind virgin to poetical treatment in the Scottish vernacular. There had been occasional references to the simple lives of common men in verses of an earlier date, but this was the first Scottish poem which seriously, directly, and exclusively dealt with the subject It was an attempt to invest a transcript from homely, every-day country-life with an interest which should be independent of caricature and false colour, and should appeal rather to the heart than to the fancy. The idea may have been got from the classical pastorals, or it may have been suggested by one or other of those brief bits of descriptive verse with which Ramsay introduces the dramatic scenes of the Gentle Shepherd. However it originated, the idea was ambitious, and was, I venture to say, admirably carried out. The result may never have been popular, but it constitutes, nevertheless, the masterpiece of Fergusson. It offers to the critic the best means of testing the strength and variety of the poet's power. Here we have picturesque glimpses of rural scenery, artistic compositions of rustic figures, touches of humour, finely-wrought though faint characterisation, portraiture, a sense of the supernatural, and a genuine sympathy with childhood, toiling manhood, and age, which once or twice makes near approach to pathos. An outline of the poem may be given.
You can read the rest of this at http://www.electricscotland.com/hist...rton/ingle.htm
The other essays can be read at http://www.electricscotland.com/history/haliburton
History of Scotland
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By Wm Robertson
This is part of the Works of Wm. Robertson and it's actually my intention to bring you all his works over time but to start we're doing his "History of Scotland" which got very favourable reviews at the time and so much so he was asked by the King to do a History of England.
The History is now going up and this week we've added...
Book 3 Section 1.
These can be read, along with a small biography of him at http://www.electricscotland.com/hist...on_william.htm
Glencreggan: or A Highland Home in Cantire
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By Cuthbert Bede (1861)
This week we put up Chapter III. - In Kilbrannan Sound
You can read this at http://www.electricscotland.com/history/glencreggan/
McAnin
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We got in an interesting report on this name from Alan McKenzie and it's connection with the MacKenzie clan. You can read this at http://www.electricscotland.com/mackenzie
And to finish...
Customer Satisfaction
Did you hear about an American visitor going into the inevitable tartan gift shop in the west of Scotland to buy a tie in his family tartan, Dunlop?
The assistant can't find one on display so goes and asks the manager who realises they have no Dunlop ties. Not wanting to lose a sale, though, he tells the assistant to sell the tourist a Macintyre tie instead, as the Dunlops were a sept of the Macintyre clan.
"Are you sure?" asked the assistant.
"Oh, yes," said the manager, "I thought everyone knew that Dunlops have been mackin' tyres for years."
Of course being a McIntyre this did get a groan from me! :-)
And that's it for now and hope you all have a good weekend :-)
Alastair
http://www.electricscotland.com