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Neil Munro Biography

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“That's richt. When we were campaignin' wi' Marlborough oor lads had mony time to sleep wi' the canon dirlin' aboot them. Ye get us'd to't, as Annalpa says aboot bein' a weedow woman. And if ye hae noticed it, Coont, there's nae people mair adapted for fechtin' under difeeculties than oor ane; that's what maks the Scots the finest sogers in the warld. It's the build o them, Lowlan' or Hielan', the breed o' them; the dour hard character o' their country and their mainner o' leevin'. We gied the English a fleg at the 'Forty-five,' didnae we? That was where the tartan cam' in: man, there's naethin' like us!”

Fighting SpiritScots LanguageSoldieringThe Scots
Book:Doom Castle
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“Seek in Glen Massan no emotions of terror and the wild sublime, but a softer sentiment, roused by the forgotten Gaelic bard who sung the sorrows of the sons of Usnach; and in Tarsuinn, Garrachra and Glen Lean, I would restore, in fancy, shepherds and hunters on the grass-grown drove-road and the abandoned hill. The Clyde has drained those glens, not of their waters only, but of men, and melancholy broods among the shadows of Benmore as if it, too, remembered lonefully the unreturning generations.”

MelancholyGaelicHighland ClearancesCattle DrovingGlensArgyllRiver Clyde
Book:The Clyde, River and Firth
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“What does his lordship dae? He buys up a bunch o' islands in the Hebrides; carts in the native crofter population to Stornoway; runs them through a sapple o' Sunlight Soap, cuts their nails; learns them the English language; gets them an eight-'oors day, and starts them fishin' on scientific principles. Stornoway becomes the Port Sunlight of the North; every man has a nice wee red-tiled cottage, and a picture palace at the door, and the cod fish is fair worried oot o' its life.”

HebridesCroftersWestern IslesLord LeverhulmeStornoway
Book:Erchie, My Droll Friend
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“Doubtless what affected them in some degree was a foreboding of the part the Road would play in times of trouble with the Gall. They saw it used continually, so far as it was finished, by the redcoats and the Watches; standing, wrapped, themselves, in plaids, on thicket verges or the slopes of the hills in mist, like figures of some other clime or age, they watched, with gloomy brows, dragoons pass cantering, four abreast, or companies of footmen out of Ruthven Castle. Sometimes on it could be heard the roll of drums; up Blair of Athole once had come a house on wheels, glass-windowed, horses dragging it, a gentleman within it smoking, and a bigger gentleman they touched their cap to, driving. Never a day went past but someone could be seen upon the street (as Gaelic had it); here, in Badenoch, the world seemed coming to an end.”

BadenochJacobitesField Marshal George WadeRuthven Castle
Book:The New Road
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