Source : Le coffre aux images de Kate
As Father Christmas is already driving his heavily loaded reindeer-drawn sleigh across the icy territories of his faraway country I’m very busy preparing the festivities of the end of the Year, dreaming of a vivifying walk in the countryside or a good book to read by the fireside…
Source : Le coffre aux images de Kate
To celebrate Christmas, I would like to share with you some of my favourites books which I’ve just taken out of the crowded shelves of my ‘Scottish library’. To choose only a few of them is extremely frustrating but I get over the feeling knowing that I will soon have the opportunity to introduce many other ones on Scotiana!
Winter Tales – George Mackay Brown – Polygon 2006
It was in winter that the islanders gathered round the hearth fire to listen to the stories
(Winter Tales – Foreword)
I’ve already introduced Winter Tales in a previous post but George Mackay Brown is such a good story teller that I can’t help to put him first on my Christmas list.
Winter Tales George Mackay Brown Flamingo 1996
‘The Paraffin Lamp’ is the first story of Winter Tales (it has only three and a half pages). It tells the story of old Thomas, an Orkneyan farmer. The old man rejects any idea of progress, desperately clinging to his old way of life and taking care of his old horse with love and tenderness. ‘He did have a tractor, but most of the time it rusted in the shed. His horse Sammy was the last horse on the island.’ The happy end of the story is full of humour.
I like GMB’s short stories and more particularly his winter tales and ghost stories. In the olden times ghost stories were very popular at Christmas time. Dickens’s Christmas Carol has never lost its popularity since it was first published on 19 December 1843.
A few years ago I fell upon a treasury for sale on the online shop of Kenny’s, the famous Irish bookshop situated in Galway. It consisted of a lot of old newspaper cuttings about GMB. I couldn’t believe my eyes! They had probably been collected year after year up to the poet’s death by a devoted admirer. I immediately bought these precious cuttings and put them in a big blue cardboard file. Among these clippings I found very interesting articles about GMB, The Independent‘s obituary ( dated Monday 15 April 1996) and also nice illustrated Christmas short stories mainly written for The Scotsman.
Here they are:
- ‘The Laird’s Son’ (The Scotsman, 26 December 1989)
- ‘The Wood Carver’ (The Scotsman, 23 December 1991)
- ‘Ikey A Calendar Story’ (The Scotsman, 26 December 1992)
- ‘The Architect’ (The Scotsman, 24 December 1993)
- ‘Herman: a Christmas story’ (Glasgow Herald, 23 December 1989)
(Paperback edition – Grafton Books 1989)
Many of the stories in this book are set in winter, round about solstice and Christmas and New Year.
In the North, winter has always been the time of story-telling. In Orkney, until recently the hearth-fires were stoked up in Hall and croft on the long nights and story-tellers and fiddlers came into their own.
(George Mackay Brown – The Masked Fisherman – Introduction)
I have two editions of The Masked Fisherman. One is an old ex-library paperback I often take with me in the tram to read or re-read the marvellous stories in which I discover something new at each reading. Among them:
‘Anna’s Boy’
‘The Nativity Bell and the Falconer’
‘Christmas visitors’
‘Miss Tait and Tommy and the Carol Singers’
…………………
‘The Last Island Boy’ is the story which made me discover George Mackay Brown a few years ago. It takes place at Christmas time in a small island of Orkney. Life is hard for the last islanders. We follow the peregrinations of a boy across the deserted place, in the empty ruined houses which stand here and there and testify to the good old life. Each house has a story to tell and the little boy dreams, listening to them.
‘The Last Island Boy’ was published in The Scotsman on 24 December 1985 and re-published in The Best of Best Short Stories 1986-1995 collected by Giles Gordon & David Hughes (Minerva 1995).
‘Christmas said the man. What do we want with Christmas? What’s Christmas to us? All I know is, it’s winter. The worst storms are still to come. Will we last through the winter ? That’s what I’d like to know.
The woman said nothing. She put a few pieces of salt fish into the pot and began to peel potatoes. (…)
The next day was Saturday. The boy lay warm in the nest of his bed till nine o’clock.
When he got up and went into the kitchen the lamp was still lit. The woman was baking at the table. Her face was flushed. It seemed to be a different baking from the usual Saturday morning oatcakes and floury bannocks. There were three stone jars on the table. She was intent on a cookery book. The whole stove seemed to throb with the red glow of the peat.
‘There’s tea in the pot,’ said the woman. ‘The porridge is a bit cold.’ (…)
(Canongate Classics 1993)
With his pen in his hand Murdo looked out at the tall white snow covered mountain that he could see ahead of him through the window.
He was trying to write a story.
He looked down at the green pen in his hand. The day was cold and white, and now and again he could see a black bird flying across the intensely blue sky.
His wife was working in the kitchen. After she had finished cooking she would polish the table and chairs and the rest of the furniture. Now and again she would come to the door and say,
‘Are you finished yet?’
And Murdo would say, ‘I haven’t even started,’ and he would look out at the mountain again, he would resume his enchanted scrutiny of it. The white stainless mountain that was so cold and high.
(Iain Crichton Smith – Listen to the Voice – ‘Murdo’)
Iain Crichton Smith is also one of my favourite authors. He was a great poet and wrote many short stories. Though born in Glasgow he moved to the Isle of Lewis at the age of two and was brought up with his two brothers by his widowed mother in the small crofting town of Bayble, 6 miles east of Stornoway. I remember our first trip to the Hebrides in 2003 and my visit to a bookshop of Stornoway where I wanted to buy several of his books. I asked the bookseller to help me but with my French accent she did not understand the name of the author I was looking for. When I wrote it down on a piece of paper she exclaimed with a smile: ‘Oh Iain Crichton Smith!’ and she at once showed me the shelf where his books were lining up. I chose the two big volumes you can see below (respectively 570 and 708 pages!) and a few other ones. If you like good short stories I recommend these two books though the story of ‘Murdo’ doesn’t appear in them.
‘What I really see myself as is more a short story writer and a poet’
At first when he had got the job he had been very pleased to tell them everything he knew, how the stone huts had been unearthed by an archaeologist who had come up from the south. He would point from the little brae above to the stone enclosures where the little people had slept, presumably after telling each other stories in the flickering light of the flames, the passageways down which they had crawled, the stone cupboards. It was rather like being a teacher and on top of that he had a blue uniform with yellow facings. He was an important man (…)
But that was of course before he had actually seen the little people…
(Iain Crichton Smith The Red Door ‘The Little People”)
Iain Crichton Smith is a born storyteller. I do like the story of ‘The Little People’ and the images it conjures up. The description of the archaelogical site remembers me of Skara Brae in Orkney… by the way, don’t you want to know more about the mysterious ‘little people’?
(Stanfords Travel Classics Jb Publishing 2010)
Here’s a book to read and re-read, especially if you don’t intend to follow Stevenson’s trail in the Cévennes for it will make you feel as if you were there. And if you intend to follow it I’m sure you’ve already read it!
It was already hard upon October before I was ready to set forth, and at the high altitudes over which my road lay there was no Indian summer to be looked for. I was determined, if not to camp out, at least to have the means of camping out in my possession; for there is nothing more harassing to an easy mind than the necessity of reaching shelter by dusk, and the hospitality of a village inn is not always to be reckoned sure by those who trudge on foot. A tent, above all for a solitary traveller, is troublesome to pitch, and troublesome to strike again; and even on the march it forms a conspicuous feature in your baggage. A sleeping-sack, on the other hand, is always ready—you have only to get into it; it serves a double purpose—a bed by night, a portmanteau by day; and it does not advertise your intention of camping out to every curious passer-by. This is a huge point. If a camp is not secret, it is but a troubled resting-place; you become a public character; the convivial rustic visits your bedside after an early supper; and you must sleep with one eye open, and be up before the day. I decided on a sleeping-sack; and after repeated visits to Le Puy, and a deal of high living for myself and my advisers, a sleeping-sack was designed, constructed, and triumphantly brought home.
Kenneth White has written an unforgettable book about his ancestor’s experience… a book beautifully illustrated with watercolours.
E&C Editions (2 avril 2005)
Pour parler de Stevenson, impossible de trouver plus compétent que Kenneth White : Ecossais comme Stevenson, écrivain, comme lui, de l’espace et du mouvement, et qui, de plus, a développé au cours de longues années de fréquentation une profonde familiarité avec les Cévennes. Il s’agit en l’occurrence d’un véritable compagnonnage de l’esprit. Kenneth White se trouve en une telle osmose avec Stevenson que non seulement il suit, dans toutes leurs ramifications, les pistes de son prédécesseur, mais encore les prolonge. (From the backcover of Le chemin des crêtes).
Kenneth White is himself a great traveller. It was an unforgettable experience for us to follow in his steps on the Blue Road in Quebec, in 2010. Why not following him again along his peregrinations “across the territories”…
Kenneth White – Across the Territories – Polygon 2004
‘Who could imagine a more pleasant companion than this Scotsman? He has a way of listening to how people talk, or of watching a hawk in the sky, that makes you want to get out there and travel with him.’
(Claude Roy Le Nouvel Observateur)
Kenneth White’s books are always ‘une invitation au voyage’ out of the beaten track 😉
‘The Isles of the Orks’, the first chapter of Across the Territories relates a trip Kenneth White made to Orkney.
I’ve selected an extract which conjures up memories of our recent visit to Orkney, in last September.
Later that morning, still windy and rainy, I went down the long steep main street, lined with great plainstones (on every single one, a wavering chart of geological time-tides), to the packed little Stromness museum, where I spent a couple of hours with harpoons, Eskimo whalebone sculptures, a fossil fish, a Greenland falcon, a big lump of blue-glinting labradorite, and a biography of John Rae, born here in these islands.
What interests me about John Rae, Arctic explorer and Hudson’s Bay company doctor (a good proportion of the Hudson’s Bay men were Orcadians, known along the canoe routes of northern Canada as ‘Les Orknays’), is that he practised a kind of field-tactics very different from the orthodox strategy of the established authorities. He learned directly from the Inuit how to move about in the frozen wilderness. (…)
We took a lot of pictures inside this very interesting museum. Between the many treasures it shelters we discovered George Mackay Brown’s rocking chair beside a window on the sill of which you can see a vase containing a bunch of daffodils… GMB’s house stands on the other side of the road. Janice took a lot of photos of John Rae’s memorabilia. There is a moving memorial devoted to him in the cathedral of Kirkwall.
Within the wall of the Orkney cathedral, in the ‘Poets’ Corner’, not far from George Mackay Brown’s commemorative plaque there is another one to the memory of Edwin Muir, a great Orkneyan writer, a man whose influence on GMB’s life and work was determining. Below is one of his most famous books, a travel book which goes far beyond mere travelling…
First published in 1935, Scottish Journey is a perceptive, subtle and beautifully written account by one of Scotland’s greatest modern writers of prose and poetry. Edwin Muir’s journey took him from Edinburgh to the Lowlands, to Glasgow and the Highlands, and the book, while a masterpiece of travel writing, is also a quest for the real nature of Scottish identity. T.C. Smout writes in his introduction to this edition:
‘Edwin Muir’s Scottish Journey has the clarity and impact of a brilliant photograph. As a traveller’s account it belongs to a genre familiar in writing about Scotland for centuries, and comprehending such masterpieces as the account of Dr Johnson… and the Wordsworths.”
(Extract from the back cover of this edition of Scottish Journey – Mainstream Publishing 2008)
I was very happy to fall on this nice paperback edition of Edwin Muir Scottish Journey at Ullapool Ceilidh Place bookshop. We spent unforgettable moments there browsing, chatting with the kind lady in charge of the shop and then sharing a delicious snack in the very cosy atmosphere of the adjacent coffee-shop .
Mary Queen of Scots was my first love: the character, that is. She was my heroine from when I was eight years old, as a result of a book which I borrowed recurringly from the Oxford Public Library. I particularly fancied the idea of her child attendants, the Four Maries, and I rather think that I included myself as the Fifth Marie in my first version of her story, or even the little Mary herself, since there were no limits to my historical fantasy. (…)
In quite a different way Mary Queen of Scots, the biography, first published forty years ago, was also my first love. I certainly felt all the insecurity, as well as the passion, traditionally associated with that state when I was working on it in the 1960s. The circumstances were these: I was quite unknown as a historian. I was working and writing without any knowledge that there were or would ever be any readers. I imagined the academic world to be populated by a host of angry thistles: although in fact the few academics I did meet – notably Sir James Fergusson of Kildrerran, Keeper of the Records of Scotland – were courteous and helpful. (…)
(From the Foreword to the New Edition of Antonia Fraser’s Mary Queen of Scots 40th anniversary edition 2009 )
Having still not read any biography of Mary Stuart, I didn’t hesitate when I fell upon this nice big book (758 pages! ) at the shop of Stirling Castle. I bought two copies of it: one for Janice and one for me. They are still on our reading list ;-). The red cross-stitch sampler figuring on the cover of the book is very beautiful and reflects one of the hobbies of Mary Stuart. She had much time to devote to her artistic activities during the long years of her captivity. We saw beautiful cross-stitch samplers in Traquair’s House, a few of them having been embroidered by Mary Stuart.
Do you remember the marvellous stories of Moobli and Rangi? Below are two stories that will delight all animal lovers. I also found them at Ullapool Ceilidh Place bookshop.
Bamse was originally bought as a puppy for his master’s four children. He was the gentlest of animals with his human companions; indeed, his name in Norwegian means ‘teddy bear’ or simply ‘teddy’ – an apt name for the St Bernard who began his life as a much-loved family pet, though it concealed the depth of character and courage of the animal who was to become a dog of war. But for the outbreak of World War II in 1929, Bamse might have grown up in a secure, happy family environment, knowing little more excitement than chasing balls and sticks and giving piggy-back rides to his child companions. As it was, he took his place in the roll-call of conspicuously brave animals who repaid their human masters’ trust with selfless loyalty. (Sea Dog Bamse World War II Canine Hero – Angus Whitson and Andrew Orr – Birlinn edition 2009)
This is the inspiring true story of a brown bear who became one of the Second World War’s most unusual combatants. Originally adopted as a mascot by the Polish Army in Persia, Wojtek, as the bear cub was named, soon took on a more practical role, and went on to play his part as a fully enlisted ‘soldier’ during the Italian campaign. After the war, Wojtek, along with some of his Polish compatriots from II Corps, came to the Scottish Borders, where he became a well-known member of the local community before subsequently moving to Edinburgh Zoo. For the rest of his life, and beyond, Wojtek remained a potent symbol of freedom and solidarity for Poles around the world, and continues to be an inspirational figure today.
(From the backcover of Wojtek the Bear Aileen Orr Birlinn 2012)
Now, every fan of Ian Rankin must know that his famous inspector is back! We were probably as surprised to learn the news as Watson when he discovered that under the disguise of an old bookseller his old friend Sherlock Holmes was hiding. Watson was brooding over the death of his friend when suddenly he re-appeared and Watson fainted… We won’t but we’re eager to read Rebus’s new adventures…
Ian Rankin’s new novel, which sees Rebus’s return is entitled Standing in Another Man’s Grave and was published in November 2012. It is twenty-five years since Rebus first appeared in Knots and Crosses, and five years since he retired. I wonder how long it will take to have this new book translated in French.
.
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My ‘coup de coeur’ 2012 is for a French writer of thrilling detective novels the action of which mostly take places in Scotland. All his stories start in Scotland and his main character, Inspector Sweeney, works in Edinburgh (did he happen to meet Inspector Rebus… I wonder…) Not only is John-Erich Nielsen a great fan of Scotland which he knows very well but he has created a gallery of unforgettable Scottish characters: the very funny, friendly and bright Inspector Sweeney, the grumpy aunt Midge and greedy sausage-dog Berthie. Nine titles have already been published (I’ve read five of them and I’m very eager to read the other four ). Only one has been translated in English today.
And now what about a little selection of books about books 😉
This inspiring volume, another big one with its 830 pages, was offered to me by Janice during our memorable walk in that very long and mythical street which uncoils ‘like a sailor’s rope from North to South’ in Stromness. Most of its shops were closed but we stopped in front of each colourful window displaying beautiful objects of local artcraft. One bookshop, ‘Stromness Books and Prints’ (it doesn’t sell prints) was open and of course we entered. This well-known shop is situated at 1 Graham Place, a few hundred yards away from the house George Mackay Brown lived in from 1968 to 1996, at 3 Mayburn Court.
Scotland’s books belong to the world and the world disproportionately enjoys them. More than twenty thousand works of Scottish literature have been translated into a range of over seventy languages, from Albanian to Yakut. From ‘Auld Lang Syne’ to Sherlock Holmes, the imaginings of Scottish authors are part of international currency. Treasure Island, Jekyll and Hyde, Peter Pan are familiar reference points of twenty-first-century culture. To most people they matter not because their origins lie in earlier centuries of Scottish literature, but because of their sheer imaginative sparkle (…)
Scotland’s Books: The Penguin History of Scottish Literature exists to give readers a convenient overview of the landscape of Scottish imaginative writing. It is the first book to present to the general reader the extended history of Scottish Literature in a single volume.
(Scotland’s Books – Introduction – Robert Crawford Penguin Books 2007)
Robert Crawford was born in 1959 in Lanarkshire and grew up there. He studied at the universities of Glasgow and Oxford. A well-known poet, he has published several collections of poetry. He is Professor of Modern Scottish Literature at the University of St Andrews and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
Dumfries & Galloway Council 2000
Iain and Margaret had highly recommended us Julia Muir Watt’s book but we couldn’t find it before leaving Scotland in October, nor even in the many bookshops we visited at Wigtown. I was very happy to fall upon a new copy of it on Abebooks and quite delighted when I realized that the seller was Julia Muir Watt herself. I also bought the literary map which can be sold separately (very useful when travelling the area). The cover of the map booklet is the same as that of the book. Trying to find out what writers appeared on it, I immediately recognized JM Barrie and Thomas Carlyle whose native home we visited at Ecclefechan in last September. On the left of Thomas Carlyle there is Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe who happened to be born at Hoddom Castle and who was a great friend of Sir Walter Scott. As I tried to discover what man was hiding behind a hood I found in Julia’s book that it was John Patrick, Third Marquess of Bute. This immediately conjured up unforgettable memories of our visit to the Isle of Bute and to the extraordinary gothic palace of Mountstuart.
John Patrick, Third Marquess of Bute (1847-1900)
The Third Marquess of Bute was born to one of the largest fortune in Europe, and became the greatest private patron of architecture Britain had ever known. His fascination with mediaevalism led to his celebrated conversion to Catholicism, on which Disraeli based the plot of “Lothair”. His intervention in Wigtownshire, where he worked on his immense translation of the Breviary, consisted in the restoration of his own seat at Mochrum, and in extensive archaelogical investigations at and around Whithorn, the historical site of St Ninian’s “Candida Casa”.
This mysterious hooded man makes me think to the character of William of Baskerville played by Sean Connery in Jean-Jacques Annaud’s film ‘The Name of the Rose’ (1986) based on Umberto Eco’s novel (1980).
It was a gorgeous spring evening, with every hill showing as clear as a cut amethyst. The air had the queer, rooty smell of bogs, but it was as fresh as mid-ocean, and it had the strangest effect on my spirit… There was no plan of campaign in my head, only just to go on and on in this blessed, honest-smelling hill country, for every mile put me in better humour with myself.
(John Buchan – The Thirty-Nine Steps)
This wide-ranging anthology is a rich celebration of this fascinating part of the country. In addition to pieces by authors with well-known connections with the area, such as John Buchan, Walter Scott and Thomas Carlyle, it also includes extracts from the works of J.M. Barrie, Daniel Defoe, John Keats, Dorothy L. Sayers and John Welsey, and features a great range of local anecdote, legend and lore (…)
(From the backcover of Where The Whaups Are Crying – A Dumfries and Galloway Anthology by Innes MacLeod Birlinn Edition 2001)
Walter Scott at his desk in his Abbotsford study © 2006 Scotiana
But of course I would not like to end this Christmas post without mentioning our dear friend from Abbotsbord. A few years ago, in Sir Walter’s extraordinary library, Janice and I promised to read ALL his books (!!). We’ll keep our promise and will resume our audios (in English and French) of Rob Roy (to begin with!)
Scott wrote short stories throughout his career. Some are inset into novels but others were published separately in periodicals. This collection of eight pieces of shorter fiction from periodicals extends from a satirical piece appearing in 1811 in The Edinburgh Annual Register through stories from The Sale-Room and Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine to four stories published late in his life in The Keepsake. Only three of these stories were regularly reprinted. The other five are here made readily available for the first time, and show both Scott’s versatility and his continuous exploration of the possibilities of fiction.
The Edinburgh edition of the Waverley novels is extremely interesting but costs a lot of money and I’ve only got the Rob Roy volume.
I’ve also found a complete illustrated Kindle edition which I’ve already downloaded for less than 2 euros !!
Looking for good Scottish recipes for Christmas? Then I recommend you to read this very very interesting cookery book that was offered to us by Iain and Margaret when we visited them during our last trip to Scotland in September!
It is difficult to give you an idea of this book in a few lines. Looks like a culinary bible to be opened everyday… but it also contains a very interesting chapter devoted to the history of the book and also of the Glasgow School of Cookery. It is illustrated with a number of photos and documents.
I’ve just made a few incursions in it looking for some recipes we’ve tasted in Scotland: good soups to begin with to cheer you up when it is cold and grey outside, the leek and potatoes soup or a mushroom soup, salmon recipes and of course some of the delicious little cakes which are served at teatime: muffins and scones, pancakes… WOW! What about a Scottish meal for ‘le réveillon’ ?
Source : Le coffre aux images de Kate
Wishing you all a very joyful and happy Christmas on behalf of Scotiana Team!
BONNE LECTURE 🙂
A bientôt,
Mairiuna
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