A highly readable and absorbing anthology of traditional Scottish customs and rites of passage, Scottish Customs from the Cradle to the Grave draws upon a broad range of literary and oral sources. Scotland has been fortunate to have written accounts of intrepid early travellers such as Martin Martin, Edward Burt and John Lane Buchanan, and extracts from their writing are found alongside modern interviews made by Margaret Bennett and researchers from the School of Scottish Studies at Edinburgh University. This expanded edition includes a large amount of new material. The result is a detailed and comprehensive picture of social behaviour in Scotland over the last 400 years. The book is divided into three sections, each covering a stage in the cycle of life: Childbirth and infancy; Love, courtship and marriage; Death The first edition was originally published by Polygon and was joint runner-up of the 1993 Katharine Briggs Folklore Award.

Customs play an important part in all societies and offer fascinating insights into a country's history and culture. Scotland boasts a multitude of unique customs, many of which can be traced back to the times of the Druids, Celts and Romans. This book introduces hundreds of Scottish customs associated with a huge range of topics. As well as customs associated with key events of our lives, from birth to death, it also includes customs associated with the world of work, food and drink, health, animals and nature. Extracts from written works through the ages bring these customs to life and show how important they have been in the story of Scotland for thousands of years.

Originally published in 1978, this book explores the relationship between the Gaelic and English spheres of life, from the life of the bilingual Gael, in the confrontation of Highland and Lowland Scotland and the literary expressions of these. It is argued that the picture of Gaelic society that is popularly accepted does not owe its form to any simple observation, but to symbolic and metaphorical requirements imposed by the larger society. Beginning with the birth of the Romantic movement and moving on to modern Gaelic literature and anthropological studies, aspects of the relationship of a dominant to a ‘minority’ culture are raised. The racial stereotypes of Celt and Anglo-Saxon that were widely accepted in the 19th Century are also discussed, and the understanding of how a dominant intellectual world has used Gaelic society in the process of seeking its own definition is pursued through a study of the concepts of ‘folklore’ and the ‘folk’.

This book gives an insight to what life was like in Scotland during the late 17th and early 18th centuries. What folk ate, drank, their music and general way of life. Clan tartans did not exist until the early 1800s and this book explains in detail the dress and weaponry of a Highlander and why they wore Highland garb. The Jacobite battles from 1689-1719 are also outlined for the reader.