Two great books on Scottish customs
Recently I’ve been doing some rereading and I wanted to recommend two books that’s might be of interest for people here. One is Highland Folkways by I.F. Grant. It was published in the early 60s by the founder of the Highland Folk Museum and contains all sorts of information about people’s day to day life, what houses were like, food, the seasons, tools, clothes including kilts.
The other is Scottish Customs by folklorist Margaret Bennett. It has first hand accounts of birth, marriage, and funeral traditions from Martin Martin in the 17th century to transcriptions from a few years ago. It covers all of Scotland.
There is so much questionable ‘history’ out there so it’s nice to hear from more reliable sources of what people did and believed in. They’ve also given me the chance to test my Gaelic and Scots knowledge.
Tha mi uabhasach sgith gach latha.
“A man should look as if he has bought his clothes (kilt) with intelligence, put them (it) on with care, and then forgotten all about them (it).” Paraphrased from Hardy Amies
Proud member of the Clans Urquhart and MacKenzie.
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