A collection of traditional oral stories from Scotland, mainly the Highlands, many never before published. The stories are myths and legends as well as cultural history. They include traditional methods of treating diseases, Druidical customs and rituals, stories of Selkies, shapeshifters, heros, Vikings, faeries, giants and magic.

The folklore of the Scottish Highlands is unique and very much alive. Dr Anne Ross is a Gaelic-speaking scholar and archaeologist who has lived and worked in crofting communities. This has enabled her to collect information at first hand and to assess the veracity of material already published. In this substantially revised edition of a classic work first published 30 years ago, she portrays the beliefs and customs of Scottish Gaelic society, including: seasonal customs deriving from Celtic festivals; the famous waulking songs; the Highland tradition of seers and second sight; omens and taboos, both good and bad; and, chilling experiences of witchcraft and the Evil Eye Rituals associated with birth and death. Having taken her MA, MA Hons and PhD at the University of Edinburgh, Anne Ross became Research Fellow in the School of Scottish Studies, Edinburgh. She then rapidly established herself as one of Britain's leading Celtic scholars. Her seminal work is "Pagan Celtic Britain" and she has also published "Druids - Preachers of Immortality" with Tempus Publishing.

Sixteen lively tales tell of giants rumbling down mountainsides, of a magic wand that turns stone pillars into warriors, of gods and goddesses, evil hags, powerful forces, and more.

She wasn't looking to claim the heart of a dragon, but when this bluestocking goes toe-to-toe with a brooding, broken Highland warrior, she'll find just how easy it is for him to make her burn. In Victorian England, gossip is often as precious as gold. But the Highlanders are a more mysterious bunch—and if anyone found out what Stephen MacAlasdair really was, he'd be hunted down, murdered, his clan wiped out. As he's called to London on business, he'll have to be extra vigilant?especially between sunset and the appearance of the first evening star. Mina just wanted to find out more about the arrogant man who showed up in her employer's office. She never thought the stranger would turn into a dragon right in front of her. Or that he'd then offer her an outrageous sum of money to serve as his personal secretary. Working together night and day to track a twisted monster, Mina will come to see a man in love is more powerful and determined than any dragon.

The myths of the Gimi, a people of the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea, attribute the origin of death and misery to the incestuous desires of the first woman or man, as if one sex or the other were guilty of the very first misdeed. Working for years among the Gimi, speaking their language, anthropologist Gillian Gillison gained rare insight into these myths and their pervasive influence in the organization of social life. Hers is a fascinating account of relations between the sexes and the role of myth in the transition between unconscious fantasy and cultural forms. Gillison shows how the themes expressed in Gimi myths—especially sexual hostility and an obsession with menstrual blood—are dramatized in the elaborate public rituals that accompany marriage, death, and other life crises. The separate myths of Gimi women and men seem to speak to one another, to protest, alter, and enlarge upon myths of the other sex. The sexes cast blame in the veiled imagery of myth and then play out their debate in joint rituals, cooperating in shows of conflict and resolution that leave men undefeated and accord women the greater blame for misfortune.

The Highlands of Scotland are rich in traditional stories. Even today, in the modern world of internet and supermarkets, old legends dating as far back as the times of the Gaels, Picts and Vikings are still told at night around the fireside. They are tales of the sidh – the fairy people – and their homes in the green hills; of great and gory battles, and of encounters with the last wolves in Britain; of solitary ghosts, and of supernatural creatures like the sinister waterhorse, the mermaid, and the Fuath , Scotland’s own Bigfoot. In a vivid journey through the Highland landscape, from the towns and villages to the remotest places, by mountains, cliffs, peatland and glen, storyteller and folklorist Bob Pegg takes the reader along old and new roads to places where legend and landscape are inseparably linked.