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Bonnie Scotland and what we owe her cover

Bonnie Scotland and what we owe her

Chapter 2: PREFACE
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About This Book

A series of travel essays records repeated journeys through Scotland’s Highlands, Lowlands, islands, towns, and countryside, blending landscape sketches with vivid urban portraits. Historical and literary reflections accompany descriptions of abbeys, castles, and memorial sites while the author considers poets, reformers, and notable national episodes. Social customs, kirk and school life, Highland dress, industry, sporting pursuits, canals, and island communities receive close attention. Interwoven throughout are observations on hospitality and character and reflections on the cultural connections between Scotland and readers abroad.

PREFACE

In the period from student days until within the shadow of the great world-war of 1914, I made eight journeys to and in Scotland; five of them, more or less when alone, and three in company with wife or sister, thus gaining the manifold benefits of another pair of eyes. On foot, and in a variety of vehicles, in Highlands and Lowlands, over moor and water, salt and fresh, I went often and stayed long. Of all things remembered best and most delightfully in this land, so rich in the “voices of freedom,”—the mountains and the sea,—the first is the Scottish home so warm with generous hospitality.

In this book I have attempted to tell of the Scotsman at home and abroad, his part in the world’s work, and to picture “Old Scotia’s grandeur,” as illustrated in humanity, as well as in history, nature, and art, while showing in faint measure the debt which we Americans owe to Bonnie Scotland.

W. E. G.

Ithaca, New York.