Reviews for The folklore of the Scottish Highlands

The average rating for The folklore of the Scottish Highlands based on 2 reviews is 2.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2019-07-26 00:00:00 Keesh Lee Having been interested in mythology and folklore since my pre-teens I was quite informed about Norse and Greek Mythology well before my high school days. As I grew up, the challenges of career and profession reduced the time I could spend on reading, and it was restricted to flights (2/3 hours or overnight train journeys). It was just recently about 4 / 5 years back, with the easy availability of free e-books and low priced sites (monthly subscription of a few dollars), I have been able to spend time once again poring over digital books, and reading between two to three books, every month. About three months back, I read my first book by the author Anne Ross - "Druids : Preachers of Immortality" and was impressed by the style of writing, variety of information and depth of research. I gave a rave review and rated the book 5 star. Then about ten days back, I picked up this book - "Folklore of Scottish Highlands". After going through the book, my ardour diminished. The book has some interesting information about early highland superstitions, culture, and traditions. With such a rich a vibrant subject matter, this book could have been better written and not as dry as it was. It rambles around Gaelic customs, folklore and beliefs in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland and is more a reference work on the works of Pennant, Carmichael and other eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth century writers and collectors of incidents of ancient Celtic and Scottish customs, and Anne Ross is the compiler / editor. Though she claims Gaelic Highland descent and that whatever she has included in the book has been verified by field studies by herself, still the book falls short of expectations. Her contribution to the subject matter is in this book is practically zero. I wonder why she claims to be the author and copyrights the book, it is after all a compendium with a few comments from the editor - Anne Ross. This is not to say that book did not contain much information, but it would have made better reading , if more tales could have been included and quotations from Carmichael, Pennant and others reduced. In spite of the wonderful and deep wide spectrum of the subject, the book leaves much to be desired.

Review # 2 was written on 2015-10-06 00:00:00 Nikki Evans Fascinating subject matter and some good points, but would have benefited from some thorough editing as the material (almost entirely the rehashing of the work of others) was poorly organized.