Books with author Sir George Douglas

It is only within comparatively recent years that the homely stories in the mouths of the country people have been constituted a branch of learning, and have had applied to them, as such, the methods and the terminology of science. No doubt a very noteworthy gain to knowledge has resulted from this treatment, a curious department of research has been opened up, and light has been cast upon various outside things of greater importance than the subject of study itself. But, side by side with this gain to knowledge, is there not, involved in the method of treatment indicated, a loss to the stories themselves? Classified, tabulated, scientifically named, they are no longer the wild free product of Nature that we knew and loved: they are become, so to speak, a collection of butterflies in a case, an album of pressed wild flowers. No doubt they are still very interesting, and highly instructive; but their poetry, their brightness, the fragrance which clung about them in their native air, their native soil, is in large measure gone! Well then, with all due recognition of the value of the labours of the scientific folklorist, the comparative mythologist, whose work I would not for one moment be understood to undervalue, is there not room, even at the present day, to study these stories from another point of view, and that the simplest and most obvious one the point of view, I mean, of the story teller pure and simple? One would hope that the time had not yet come when the old tales, considered on their own merits, have entirely ceased to charm; and it is an undeniable fact that there are still persons among us who would regard it as a real and personal loss could they be made to believe that the ideal hero of their childhood, as he falls heroically, in a bloody battle, wounded to the death, is in reality a myth, or an allegory to embody the setting of the sun; and who would even feel themselves aggrieved could they be brought to realise that the bugbear of their baby years their own particular bugbear is common also to the aborigines of Polynesia. So great is the power of early association. Well then, my proposal is to consider the Tales of the Scottish Peasantry simply from the literary, critical, or story teller's point of view, from the point of view, that is, of persons who actually tell them, to whom they are actually told. I suppose that most nations, whilst their life has remained primitive, have practised the art of storytelling; and certainly the Scotch were no exceptions to the rule. Campbell of Isla, who wrote about thirty years ago, records that in his day the practice of story telling still lingered in the remote Western Islands of Barra; where, in the long winter nights, the people would gather in crowds to listen to those whom they considered good exponents of the art. At an earlier date, but still, at that time, within living memory, the custom survived at Poolewe in Ross shire where the young people were used to assemble at night to hear the old ones recite the tales which they had learned from their fore fathers. Here, and at earlier dates in other parts of the country also, the demand for stories would further be supplied by travelling pedlars, or by gaberlunzie men, or pauper wandering musicians and entertainers, or by the itinerant shoemaker or tailor "Whip the Cat" as he was nicknamed, both of which last were accustomed to travel through thinly populated country districts, in the pursuit of their calling, and to put up for the night at farm houses, where, whilst plying their needles, they would entertain the company with stories. The arrival of one of these story tellers in a village was an important event. As soon as it became known, there would be a rush to the house where he was lodged, and every available seat on bench, table, bed, beam, or the floor would quickly be appropriated. And then, for hours together just like some first rate actor on a stage the story teller would hold his audience spell bound.

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Set in mid-19th century Ayrshire, in the fictitious town of Barbie the novel The House with the Green Shutters (1901) describes the struggles of a proud and taciturn carrier, John Gourlay, against the spiteful comments and petty machinations of the envious and idle villagers of Barbie (the "bodies"). The sudden return after fifteen years' absence of the ambitious merchant, James Wilson, son of a mole-catcher, leads to commercial competition against which Gourlay has trouble responding.

This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curated for quality. Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts - the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience. We believe this work is culturally important and have elected to bring the book back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.

Introduced by Cairns Craig. The most famous Scottish novel of the early twentieth century, The House with the Green Shutters has remained a landmark on the literary scene ever since it was first published in 1901. Determined to overthrow the sentimental ‘kailyard’ stereotypes of the day, George Douglas Brown exposed the bitter pettiness of commercial greed and small-town Scottish life as he himself had come to know it. More than this, however, his novel lays bare the seductive and crippling presence of patriarchal authority in Scottish culture at large, symbolised by the terrible struggle between old John Gourlay and his weak but imaginative son. Illuminated by lightning flashes of descriptive brilliance, Brown’s prose evokes melodrama, Greek tragedy and postmodern alienation in a unique and unforgettably powerful reading experience. ‘Brown’s masterpiece was practically the first Scottish novel since Galt which dealt with nineteenth-century Scottish life as it really was; to do this, and to get away from the sentimentalism of the Kailyard, it had to be sharply, almost brutally realistic.’ Kurt Wittig, The Scottish Tradition in Literature

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This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curated for quality. Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts - the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience. We believe this work is culturally important and have elected to bring the book back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.

Excerpt from Lands Forlorn: A Story of an Expedition to Hearne's Coppermine RiverDr. Sandberg examined and mapped only the section of the Copper Range immediately west of the Coppermine River, but the party followed the same traps to the Dismal Lake and found them strewn on the shores of Great Bear Lake one hundred and fifty miles west of the Coppermine River. Simpson, Hanbury, and others picked up metallic copper on the beach of the islands in Bathurst Inlet. Thus these rocks, with a general north-east and south-west strike, have been traced for some three hundred miles, and if the same rocks really reappear in Victoria Land, where Stefansson describes the Eskimos as gathering copper, their cross-section must be vastly greater than the corresponding series on Lake Superior. The total area, therefore, within which copper ore may possibly be found, covers nearly ten thousand square miles.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curated for quality. Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts - the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience. We believe this work is culturally important and have elected to bring the book back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. This text refers to the Bibliobazaar edition.