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Oh my earnest friend,
to think of all the silly
opinions you defend…
—“Inscription for a mirror”, by Gael Turnbull – a perfect poem for social media
Also published in WHILE BREATH PERSIST (The Porcupine’s Quill, 1992)
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As by barren trackway
on a mountain crest
with view of scree and corrie,
ridge and col,
a traveller might pause…
—“A cairn”, by Gael Turnbull (1928–2004) – born #OTD, 7 April
Published in WHILE BREATH PERSIST (The Porcupine’s Quill, 1992)
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An Introduction to Gaelic Storytelling
3 May, Scottish Storytelling Centre, Edinburgh – £14
Join Gaelic storyteller Martin MacIntyre for an introductory session exploring the history, importance & joy in Gaelic storytelling culture in Scotland. This is a bilingual event in English with some content in Gaelic. No prior knowledge of Scottish Gaelic is required to attend, everyone welcome!
https://scottishstorytellingcentre.online.red61.co.uk/event/913:5956/913:25551/
scottishstorytellingcentre.online.red61.co.ukScottish Storytelling Centre
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“As a patterned textile, [tartan] features straight lines, right angles, bright colours, and no ambiguity; as a symbol, its lines become fuzzy, its angles circular, its colours muddied, and its meaning polysemic.”
—Ellen R. Beard, “When Tartan Was Not Fake: The Disclothing Act in Gaelic Song”
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https://www.thebottleimp.org.uk/2022/06/when-tartan-was-not-fake-the-disclothing-act-in-gaelic-song/
The Bottle Imp · When Tartan Was Not Fake: The Disclothing Act in Gaelic Song - The Bottle ImpTartan is simultaneously a material object, a design template, and a symbol with multiple referents. As a patterned textile, it features straight lines, right angles, bright colours, and no ambiguity; as a symbol, its lines become fuzzy, its angles circular, its colours muddied, and its meaning polysemic (Brown, 9). While this paper addresses the significance […]
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“It has been calculated that the area of tartan cloth made each year is sufficient to cover Edinburgh’s Royal Mile to a depth of six hundred feet, an event which you could be forgiven for thinking has already happened”
—“Tartan Nation: ethnicity & Scotland”
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https://www.thebottleimp.org.uk/2011/11/editorial-tartan-nation-ethnicity-and-scotland/
The Bottle Imp · Tartan Nation - The Bottle ImpOnce you can accept the universe as being something expanding into an infinite nothing which is something, wearing stripes with plaid is easy. — Albert Einstein Tartan is significant. Famously it was banned by the Hanoverian regime, following the Jacobite rebellion of 1745. Later rebels of other sorts have taken to it too, from mohawk’d […]
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“Admiration for Scottish thought did not, for many Americans, extend to admiring, or even liking, the Scots in their midst. Jefferson included a condemnation of ‘Scotch and other foreign mercenaries’ in an early draft of the Declaration of Independence”
—Prof Susan Manning, “Scotland and America”
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https://www.thebottleimp.org.uk/2007/05/scotland-and-america/
The Bottle Imp · Scotland and America - The Bottle ImpIn 1781 John Witherspoon coined the word ‘Americanism,’ which he declared to be ‘exactly similar in its formation and signification to the word Scotticism.’ What could he have meant? Since Witherspoon wrote these words – when ‘America’ did not yet exist as a recognised separate nation – there has been no shortage of commentators to […]
Today, 6 April, is Tartan Day – a principally North American day of celebration of Scottish heritage, although it’s also marked, unofficially, in Argentina. 6 April was chosen as it’s the date of the signing of the Declaration of Arbroath in 1320.
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Your carolan’s blythe, bricht bird i the blackthorn bou,
this braw Voar morn, wi trill eftir spirlan trill,
tho you only ken the warld as it liggs the nou,
an nocht but a glisk concerns your chatteran bill…
—Maurice Lindsay, “On Hearin a Merle Singan (Arbroath Day, April 6th, 1946)”
published in A KIST O SKINKLAN THINGS (ASL, 2017)
https://asls.org.uk/publications/books/volumes/a-kist-o-skinlan-things/
“Most works of mountaineering literature have been written by men, and most male mountaineers are focused on the summit… But to aim for the highest point is not the only way to climb a mountain, nor is a narrative of siege and assault the only way to write about one.”
—Robert Macfarlane on the beauty & urgency of Nan Shepherd’s THE LIVING MOUNTAIN
https://lithub.com/robert-macfarlane-on-the-beauty-and-urgency-of-nan-shepherds-the-living-mountain/
Literary Hub · Robert Macfarlane on the Beauty and Urgency of Nan Shepherd’s The Living MountainThe Cairngorm Mountains of north-east Scotland are Britain’s Arctic. In winter, storm winds of up to 170 miles per hour rasp the upper shires of the range, avalanches scour its slopes and northern …
Nurture Through Nature with Children’s Books
1 May–7 Sep, Museum of Edinburgh: free
Delve into the Museum of Childhood’s book collection & explore the links between wellbeing & nature introduced to us through books from an early age.
A partnership project between the Museum of Childhood & SELCIE – Scotland’s Early Literature for Children Initiative at Edinburgh University.
https://www.edinburghmuseums.org.uk/whats-on/nurture-through-nature-children’s-books
Museums and Galleries Edinburgh · Nurture Through Nature with Children’s BooksDelve into the Museum of Childhood’s book collection and explore the links between wellbeing and nature introduced to us through books from an earl
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You can read William Lithgow’s
The Totall Discourse of The Rare Adventures & Painefull Peregrinations of long Nineteene Yeares Travayles from Scotland to the most famous Kingdomes in Europe, Asia and Affrica
online via @gutenberg_org
One of Scotland’s greatest travellers, William Lithgow – AKA “Lugless Will” – walked some 36,000 miles across Scotland, England, Ireland, much of Europe, North Africa & the Middle East. He endured many hardships, including being tortured by the Spanish Inquisition (although one band of Italian robbers took pity on him & actually gave him money). His ears, however, he lost at home, following an ill-advised romance…
Special Collections and Archives / Casgliadau Arbennig ac Archifau · The painful peregrinations of ‘Lugless’ Will Lithgow, a 17th century Scottish travellerWilliam Lithgow has been described as one of Scotland’s greatest travellers. He was born around 1582, the son of a Lanarkshire merchant, and began his explorations in his youth with walking trips t…
Another April and another day
with all the seasons in it, with lapwings
falling out of sunlight into rain,
stalling on a squall and then tumbling
over the collapsing wall of air
to float in zones of weightlessness again…
—James Aitchison, “Landscape with Lapwings”
published in The Edinburgh Book of Twentieth-Century Scottish Poetry (Edinburgh University Press, 2005)
Frae the bud leaves are breakin
Trees are dauncin, branches sway
Blossoms in the wind are blawin
Spring has come tae flooer the day…
—Donald Smith, “Scotlan’s Spring”
via the Scottish Poetry Library
https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/scotlans-spring/
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Kirsteen: The Story of a Scotch Family Seventy Years Ago
by Margaret Oliphant
edited by Anne M. Scriven
First published in 1890, KIRSTEEN is a startlingly modern novel that offers a fascinating perspective on women in Victorian society
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Association for Scottish LiteratureAnnual Volume 40 (2010)by Margaret Oliphant Edited by Anne M. Scriven Price: £9.95 Paperback ISBN 9780948877995 Price: £25.00 Hardback ISBN 9780948877988 ASLS, Glasgow, December 2010 Order from our bookshop Kirsteen is the…
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“THE OPEN DOOR… explores the borders between the natural physical world and the spiritual one. Like many of Oliphant’s ghost stories, it is about a past which refuses to be silent and a modernity which refuses to listen to it.”
—Prof Rosemary Mitchell on Margaret Oliphant’s THE OPEN DOOR
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Leeds Trinity UniversityMargaret Oliphant’s ‘The Open Door’: Looking Back to Move Forward
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“The Victorian era witnessed the emergence of a new genre of science fiction, dystopian literature… Oliphant’s short story ‘The Land of Darkness’ is an important and overlooked example”
—Dr Oliver Tearle on Margaret Oliphant’s ‘The Land of Darkness’
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Interesting Literature · Dante Among the Machines: Margaret Oliphant’s ‘The Land of Darkness’In this week’s Dispatches from the Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle considers a curious dystopian story by Queen Victoria’s favourite novelist The terms ‘dystopian’ and ‘ecology’ both g…
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“The belief persists that nineteenth-century Scotland failed to develop a realist novel […] I have argued here that this supposition rests on the neglect of women’s writing”
—Prof Juliet Shields on “Oliphant & Co.”: Scottish women writers of the later 19th century
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The Bottle Imp · Oliphant & Co. - The Bottle ImpMargaret Oliphant (1828-96) has attained the obscure place in English literary history that she gloomily predicted for herself in her posthumously published autobiography: ‘No one will mention me in the same breath with George Eliot. And that is just. It is a little justification to myself to think how much better off she was. Should […]
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Virginia Woolf wrote that Margaret Oliphant had “sold her brain” & “prostituted her culture”…
—on BBC Sounds: Clare Walker Gore discusses Oliphant’s career, laments Woolf’s dismissal of her work, & shows why Oliphant deserves to be read today
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BBCBBC Radio 4 - Arts & Ideas, Margaret Oliphant - women writers to put back on the bookshelfThe Scottish writer whose comic heroine Miss Marjoribanks bucks 19th-century conventions