Preface
Chapter I--Introductory
Village
libraries--Difficulties of travel--Literary Societies in the
Highlands--Gaelic books--Happiness and geniality of natives--Oban to
Gairloch--Winter sailing--A crafting village--Horrors of the Minch--Notes on
Lewis--Highland doctors--Hotels and anglers--Recent books--Military--Moray
Firth--Among the miners--Handloom weaving--Professor Blackie and the
Highlands.
Chapter II--Music, Speeches, And Literature
Scotch a reading
nation--Hardships of students in old days--Homer in Scalloway--When
education ends--Objects of chapter--Music--M.P.'s--Rural depopulation--Its
causes--Emigration--Village halls--The moon--A lecture in Islay--Mental and
material wealth--Real greatness--A Highland laird on literature--Varieties
of chairmen--"Coming to the point"--Moral obligation--Compliment to
Paisley--Oratory at Salen--Lecture in a dungeon--Surprises--A visit to the
Borders--Tarbolton--Scotch language--Choice books--The essayists--A Banff
theory--Goldsmith in Gaelic--Biblia abiblia--Favourites for the
road--Horace--Shakespeare's Sonnets--Xenophon--French literature and
journalism--Romance and Augustanism--Victorian writers--Celt and Saxon.
Chapter III--Ecclesiastical
Sectarian feeling--Typical
anecdotes--Music and religion--Ethical teaching in schools--The Moderates--A
savoury book--The Sabbath--"The Men of Skye"--The auldest kirk--The
Episcopal Church--An interlude of metre--The Christian Brethren--Drimnin in
Morven--Craignish--A model minister--Ministerial trials in olden times--An
artful dodger--Some anecdotes from Gigha--Growing popularity of Ruskin.
Chapter IV--Educational
Some Insular
Dominies--Education Act of 1872--Education in the Highlands--Feeding the
hungry--Parish Council boarders--Dwindling attendances--Arnisdale--Golspie
Technical School--On the Sidlaws--Some surprises--Arran schools--Science and
literature--Study of Scott--The old classical dominie--Vogue of Latin in
former times--Teachers and examinations--Howlers--Competing subjects.
Chapter V--A Trip to Shetland
Aberdeen--En route--Lerwick--Past
and present saints--Some notes on the islands--A Shetland poet--A visit to
Bressay--From Lerwick to Sandwick--Quarff--"That holy man, Noah"--Fladibister--Cunningsburgh--"Keeping
off"--The indignant elder--Torquil Halcrow--Philology--A Sandwick
gentleman--Local tales--Foulah and Fair Isle--The fishing season.
Chapter VI--Commercial Travellers and Their Anecdotes
Trials of commercials--The
two-est-faced knave--Mary, the maid of the inn--Anecdotes of the
smoking-room: Sonnet to Raleigh--Peelin's below the tree--"She's away!"--A
mean house--One of the director's wives--Temperance hotels--A memorial
window--The blasted heath--The day for it--The converted drummer--A circular
ticket--A compound possessive--Sixteen medals--"She's auld, and she's thin,
and she'll keep"--The will o' the dead--Sorry for London--"Raither unceevil"--An
unwelcome recitation--A word in season--A Nairn critic--A grand day for
it--A pro-Boer--"Falls of Bruar, only, please!"--A bad case of nerves.
Chapter VII--Legends and Literary Notabilia
Gairloch folk-lore: Prince
Olaf and his bride--A laird who had seen a fairy--Tales from Loch Broom: The
dance of death--The Kildonan midwife--The magic herring--Taisch--Antiquities
of Dunvegan--Miscellaneous terrors--St. Kilda--Lady Grange--Pierless
Tiree--Lochbuie in Mull--Inveraray Castle--The sacred isle--Appin--Macdonald's
gratitude--Notes on the Trossachs--Lochfyneside: Macivors, Macvicars, and
Macallisters--Red Hector--Macphail of Colonsay--Tales from Speyside: Tom
Eunan!--Shaws and Grants--The wishing well--Ossian and Macpherson--At the
foot o' Bennachie--Harlaw--Lochaber reivers--Reay and Twickenham--Rob Donn--Rev.
Mr. Mill of Dunrossness.
Chapter VIII--Metrical and Supplementary
Arrival of the Mail-train at
a Highland Station--Defoe, the Father of Journalism--A Village Toper--A
Reverend Hellenist--Antigone--Shadows of the Manse--"My Heart's in the
Highlands"--Saddell, Kintyre--Springtime in Perthshire--Dr. George
Macdonald's Creed--Abbotsford--Carlyle--Shelley--Picture in an
Inn--Rain-storm at Loch Awe--Kinlochewe--General Wade--Sound of Raasay in
December--Les Neiges d' Antan--The Islands of the Ness--American Tourist
Loquitur--The Miners--In a Country Graveyard--No Place like Home.
