My Favourite Stories of Scotland by Laurie, John - 1978

Lutterworth Press, 1978. Hardcover. Very Good/Very Good. 5.5" X 9. Phillips, Douglas. H/B 128 pages, condition is very good. I then called on Mr Lee, with whom I associate fine gay ideas of the Edinburgh Theatre in my boyish days, when I used to walk down the Canongate and think of players with a mixture of narrow-minded horror and lively-minded pleasure; and used to wonder at painted equipages and powdered ladies, and sing 'The bonny bush aboon Traquair', and admire Mrs Bland in her chair, with tassels, and flambeaux before her.... The entries in James Boswell's Journal, in which this vivid glimpse appears, breathe a frank delight in experience, whether he is living on bread and cheese to eke out his allowance (having lent two guineas to a charming actress) or dining with the literary wits of his day. Here to flank him are other classic Scots writers: Sir Walter Scott in his ripest Doric, the rotund eloquence of Thomas Carlyle, the elegant simplicity of his wile Jane. Here too is savage joy on the football terraces as 'the Auld Firm' battles it out at Ibrox Park: the throwaway humour of Cliff Hanley walking from John o' Groats to Land's End - or at least as far as Wick: the black comedy of George Douglas Brown and the gentle sentiment of his namesake, Doctor John. The writers range from an anonymous and long-dead ballad-maker, to one of Scotland's finest modern poets. For John Laurie these passages are friends from a lifetime's reading, chosen to present the sweep and splendour of Scots writing, classic and contemporary, comic and tragic. . . . She sat propped up in a box-bed, on pillows, with her face to the open door, and the friendly airs of the countryside came in to stir her hair. With them came scents of the red earth and the grass, birch-tree, and myrtle from the moor. But more than all they brought her, who was at her end, a keen craving for one more summer of the grand world.