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By MacKenzie MacBride FSA Scot (1911)
Another new book we're embarking on and make sure you click on the link at the top of this page so you can see the collection of paintings of Arran.
In the opening chapter it starts...
Both the stranger and the native find something peculiarly alluring in Arran; and, though it is but a small island of twenty odd miles by seven, and the world is a large place, few who have known it fail to keep it amongst their cherished remembrances. I know an artist who has visited it regularly for forty years, and who starts again this autumn with a full programme of work already mapped out, and he would be the first to admit that much of his best work he owes to the pastoral loveliness and fine atmospheric effects so notable in the south of Arran. There are many, too, who, after thirty or forty years spent in the busiest cities, have been glad to turn their steps to their native island; others there are who, in the full tide of manhood, have forsaken the excitements of America and Australia and come home to settle in the smallest of villages close by Kilbrannan Sound. Paterson, a Lowlander, writing in 1834,says: "That the Highlanders of Scotland feel the love of country very strongly is unquestionable; and that it has a beneficial effect on their moral conduct is as certain. The dread of being expelled from Arran has more efficacy in restraining those of its inhabitants who may be inclined to dishonest, vicious, or idle courses, than all the penal laws in force."
You can read this book at http://www.electricscotland.com/history/arran
Alastair
Another new book we're embarking on and make sure you click on the link at the top of this page so you can see the collection of paintings of Arran.
In the opening chapter it starts...
Both the stranger and the native find something peculiarly alluring in Arran; and, though it is but a small island of twenty odd miles by seven, and the world is a large place, few who have known it fail to keep it amongst their cherished remembrances. I know an artist who has visited it regularly for forty years, and who starts again this autumn with a full programme of work already mapped out, and he would be the first to admit that much of his best work he owes to the pastoral loveliness and fine atmospheric effects so notable in the south of Arran. There are many, too, who, after thirty or forty years spent in the busiest cities, have been glad to turn their steps to their native island; others there are who, in the full tide of manhood, have forsaken the excitements of America and Australia and come home to settle in the smallest of villages close by Kilbrannan Sound. Paterson, a Lowlander, writing in 1834,says: "That the Highlanders of Scotland feel the love of country very strongly is unquestionable; and that it has a beneficial effect on their moral conduct is as certain. The dread of being expelled from Arran has more efficacy in restraining those of its inhabitants who may be inclined to dishonest, vicious, or idle courses, than all the penal laws in force."
You can read this book at http://www.electricscotland.com/history/arran
Alastair