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THE MERMAID BRIDE and other Orkney folk tales
The Orcadian Limited, 1998 First Edition. Book Condition: Near Fine Condition. Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine. Size: 9" x 6" approx. Text body is clean, and free from previous owner annotation, underlining and highlighting. Binding is tight, covers and spine fully intact. Previous owner's signature in ink. Quantity Available: 1. Shipped Weight: Under 750 grams. Category: Myths, Legends & Folklore; Scotland; ISBN: 0952617420. Inventory No: 0033947. (Book ref. 0033947) £18.00
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ORKNEY NATURE
(T & AD Poyser 2000) 4tox, 308pp.Colour photographs. bw ills and maps. Fine in fine dustwrapper. (Book ref. 9748) £22.00
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An Orkney Tapestry
London: Quartet Books, 1978. Illustrated by Sylvia Wishart. Reprint. Pictorial Card Covers. Fair. 211 pp plus prelims and publisher's advertisements, illustrated by a map and 8 line-drawings by Sylvia Wishart. George Brown's prose is interspersed with poetry, much of it his own, and translations of the Norse sagas. The book concludes with a short play, "The Watcher". The covers in this copy are worn and creased. The page edges have browned and there is a little foxing on the fore edge. Apart from some minor corner creases, the contents are in good condition. The binding is firm and the text is clean. (Book ref. 008521) £8.50
Offered for sale by Colin Snowdon Order / Enquire about this book
Reminiscences of an Orkney Parish Together with Old Orkney Words, Riddles and Proverbs
Stromness: Orkney Natural History Society, 1974. Illustrated by Illustrated. 1st Edition. Card Covers.. Very Good/N/a. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall 161pp. A lovely copy of this first edition - paperback. Illustrated with a variety of b/w photographic images throughout. Light fading to the spine of the book and one corner has been lightly creased. Small soil mark to the head of the front card cover and a little scattered soiling to the reverse of the front card cover. The textblock is very fresh, clean and tight. A very good copy. (Book ref. 226803) £13.00
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Review of Scottish Culture 3
Edinburgh: John Donald, 1987 First edition. Paperback, 24x19 cm, numerous bw ills Pagination: xi, 139. Contents: Margaret Fairweather Michie 1906-1985, A Memoir; The twin pregnancy of Mary Stewart; Mary's marginalia; The plenishings of Hamilton Palace in the seventeenth century; Domestic architecture in medieval Shetland; Agriculture in Aberdeenshire in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: continuity and change; Eighteenth-century Scottish smuggling: the evidence from Montrose and Dumfries; A Highland pharmacy 1882-1972; The world of a nineteenth-century artist in Scotland (Sir Joseph Noel Paton); The lexicography of Scots, the current position; Three letters from Iceland; Notes of a trip to the Orkney Islands June 1863; Scottish herring markets in the Baltic and Russia; Sketching country furniture; Flowers of Scotland; A primitive bridge in Birsay, Orkney; Threshing with flails in West Jutland about 1924. Book: corners a little bumped, VG, Jacket: n/a (Book ref. 3073) £11.00
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Religion and Society in Scotland Since 1707
Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1997 First edition. Paperback, bibliography, index Pagination: x, 219. In this topical and thought-provoking book Callum Brown examines the key role of religion in the making of modern Scottish society since the Union of 1707. Tackling important contemporary themes in Scottish history such as the role of the Kirk in national identity, and the growth of secularisation and sectarianism the author offers original research and challenging interpretations.<P>The volume provides a coherent overview of the rise and fall of religion in recent Scottish social history, highlighting the development of Presbyterianism, Catholicism and Episcopalianism, as well as that of many minor churches and sects. Also included are detailed explorations of the Scottish church structure, religion in rural and urban society, the religions crisis of 1890-1930, and the impact upon religion of social change in the second half of the twentieth century.<P>This book is a completely revised and updated new edition of the author’s Social History of Religion in Scotland since 1730. It will be essential and provocative reading for students of Scottish history and for all those who wish to understand the predicament of churches today as attendances fall and secular recreation grows. Contents: Piety and progress (Discordant discourses; Religious change and secularisation); The church structure in Scotland 1707-1997 (The legacy of the early modern period; The Presbyterian churches; The non-Presbyterian churches; Pluralisation, ecumenism and religious change); Patterns of religious adherence (The measurement of religion; Denominational affiliation; Churchgoing and the origins of decline; Religious adherence and church connection); Religion in rural society 1707-1890 (The pre-industrial form of religion; The impact of economic and social change in the Lowlands; The Highlands, Hebrides and Northern Isles (Orkney and Shetland)); The challenge of the cities 1780-1890 (Civic administration and religion; Evangelicalism and the rise of the middle classes; Religion and the making of the Scottish working classes); The social question 1890-1939: the crisis of religious ideology (The decay of evangelicalism; The challenge of labour and the loss of social prophecy; Church and state; Popular religiosity); The haemorrhage of faith 1939-97: the crisis of church connection (Counting the ungodly?; Prosperity and social class; Culture, lifestyle and the decline of puritanism); Religion and identities since 1707 (Religion and Scottish identity: Protestantism and civil society; Religion and British identity; Sectarian identities; Piety and femininity). Book: upper edge of rear cover and last few leaves bumped, corners bumped, VG, Jacket: n/a (Book ref. 3004) £9.00
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The Island of the Women and Other Stories
London: John Murray, 1998 First edition. Grey cloth, gilt Pagination: 309. In these six stories George Mackay Brown leads us back along the sweep of Orkney’s past and beyond even that to the remoteness of fable. As always he reveals the timelessness of the lived moment, and he finds the constants of island life, indeed all life, in the harvest of sea and land, the compulsions of voyage and homecoming, and a people’s need not only for doers but for idlers and dreamers as well.<P>The book is full of incident, of paradox and of a marvellous ability to enter the imaginations of others. A poor choice of suitor has consequences both natural and supernatural. To break a siege of the Broch of Gurness, unlikely champions come forward for single combat. Njalsay is seen through the eyes of a poor idiot laird whose people understand him as little as he them. A poet becomes laureate by embracing silence. A wanderer’s tales are the better for being conceived at home.<P>James Ferguson described George Mackay Brown as ‘a miniature northern Homer’. The heroic simplicity and vividness of his writing have never been more enthralling than here. Contents: The Island of the Women; The Fortress; The Lairds' Story; The Wanderer's Tale; Paddy Crowsnest and the Elements; Poet and Prince, A Fable. Book: merest hint of bumping to tail of spine, Fine, Jacket: unclipped, just a hint of edge creasing, VG+ (Book ref. 2924) £24.00
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Winter Tales
London: John Murray, 1995 First edition. Blue cloth, silver titling Pagination: viii, 247. Winter and its festivals, celebrated alike by Orkney’s Stone Age builders and their Christian successors as a time of light springing from darkness, predominate in this collection. Christmas was a time for telling stories round the hearth fire and the author and his island community are part of that living tradition. He values it and engages in it, a story-teller for all seasons.<P>In this collection Lieutenant William Blight comes to the little port of Hamnavoe, an Edinburgh gentleman rediscovers his roots in Shetland, Scandinavians are shipwrecked on the Orkney coast, and we follow Norse warriors to the Holy Land. Most characteristically, George Mackay Brown looks at the effect of new ways of thinking and working on the ancient patterns of Orkney life. truly, as Seamus Heaney has put it, he transforms everything by passing it ‘through the eye of the needle of Orkney’. Contents: The paraffin lamp; Lieutenant Bligh and two midshipmen; The laird’s son; The children’s feast; A crusader’s Christmas; The lost sheep; A boy’s calendar; The woodcarver; Three old men; Ikey; A nativity tale; Dancey; Shell story; The architect; St Christopher; The sons of Upland Farm; The road to Emmaus; The fight in the plough and ox. Book: hint of bumping to head of spine, Near-Fine, Jacket: unclipped, merest hint of bumping to extremities, Near-Fine (Book ref. 2923) £34.00
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Beside the Ocean of Time
London: John Murray, 1994 Reprint [same year as first]. Blue cloth, silver titling Pagination: 217. In this beautifully crafted novel set on the fictitious island of Norday in the Orkneys, George Mackay Brown beckons us into the imaginary world of the young Thorfinn Ragnarson, the son of a crofter. In his day-dreams he relives the history of this island people, travelling back in time to join Viking adventurers at the court of the Byzantine emperor in Constantinople, then accompanying a Falstaffian knight to the battle of Bannockburn.<P>Thorfinn wakes to the twentieth century and a community whose way of life, steeped in legend and tradition, has remained unchanged for centuries. But as the boy grows up, and falls in love with a vivacious and mysterious stranger, the transforming effect of modern civilization brings momentous and irreversible changes to the island. During the Second World War Thorfinn finds himself in a German prisoner-of-war camp, and it is here that he discovers his gifts as a writer. Long afterwards he returns, now a successful novelist, to a deserted and battle-scarred island. Searching for the peace and freedom of mind he had in abundance as a child, he finds instead something he didn’t even know he was looking for.<P>George Mackay Brown intertwines myth and reality to create a novel of deceptive simplicity. The story of Thorfinn and the island of Norday is a universal and profound one, rooted in the timeless landscape of the Orkneys, the inspiration of all his writing.. Book: head sl bumped, VG+, Jacket: unclipped, light edge creasing, VG+ (Book ref. 2922) £14.00
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Hawkfall and Other Stories
London: Hogarth Press, 1974 First edition. Blue cloth, gilt Pagination: 220. Though these stories are primarily entertainments, they are also studies in depth of a community. George Mackay Brown lives in the Orkneys, surrounded by sea and sky, where time has an altogether different nature and significance from time in the cities. ‘In Orkney’, wrote Edwin Muir, ‘the lives of living men turn into legend.’ And legend, though active in time, is timeless. The rich history of the islands – the succession of neolithic man, Pict, Norseman, Scot – has had a deep effect on the modern islander. The author writes about contemporary Orkneymen, but also about the Orkneymen, but also about the Orkneymen of 500 years ago and those of 4,000 years ago as if they were contemporaries, for the same lineaments are discernible in them.<P>Hawkfall, perhaps the central story of this finely integrated collection, traces a typical island attitude through the vicissitudes, violences, hypocrisies of many generations. The legendary element, in all its power, is never far away. In The Drowned Rose the ghosts of dead lovers, still in love with the things of this world, mix with the living, while Sealskin explores the relationship between legend, art and life.. Book: head/tail sl bumped, leading edge of rear board sl bumped, slight darkening to upper edge of boards, small dent to rear board, VG, Jacket: clipped, rear cover sl yellowed, light edge creasing, VG (Book ref. 2919) £28.00
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A Calendar of Love and Other Stories
London: Hogarth Press, 1970 Third impression. Blue cloth, gilt Pagination: 157. ‘Orkney is such a green world in itself’, writes George Mackay Brown in a foreword to his first collection of short stories. ‘Walk a mile or two and you will see, mixed up with the modern houses of concrete and wood, the old farmhouses sunk in time; hall and manse from which laird and minister ruled in the eighteenth century; smuggler’s cave, witch’s hovel … homesteads of Vikings … immense burial chambers where the Norse Jerusalem-farers broke in and covered the walls with runes.’<P>Against this background, the characters of these stories – the fishermen, the crofters, the farmers, the wild tinkers and the heavy drinkers – live out their hard and often bitter lives. Other stories, in their mixture of Norse and Scottish legend and history, recreate the witch trials, the priest hunts and the Viking raiders of earlier days.. Book: head/tail sl bumped, VG, Jacket: clipped, extremities sl rubbed, rear cover a little dusty, VG (Book ref. 2918) £13.00
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White Maa's Saga
Loanhead: Macdonald, 1983 Reprint. Beige cloth, gilt Pagination: 284. From the highlands and islands of Scotland they come to the University of Inverdoon, where Peter Flett finds the pursuit of medicine rather worse than the War.<P>To ‘Whit-Maa’ - as his people in Orkney dub Peter Flett - women are ‘either cooks or harlots’. But even modern Vikings are susceptible to beauty as to wine, and Peter’s two love affairs are touched with poetry. His Saga begins in the rough-house of student humour; but it passes through deeper experience with an old-time Norse wooing in which Peter visits his lady by night; and culminates in danger and tragedy with a man-killing on the island of Hoy.. Book: slight browning to margins (as usual), upper edge a little dusty VG, Jacket: upper edge slightly creased, VG+ (Book ref. 2890) £13.00
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The Road to Rannoch and the Summer Isles
Edinburgh: John Grant, 1946 New and revised edition. Blue cloth, gilt titling to spine, map endpapers, 22 plates, 2 drawings, glossary Pagination: xv, 184. Contents: The Summer Isles, white wings on sapphire seas,; The Island of Lewis, the story of the Fife settlers; The Rock of Brissay, a robber’s stronghold in the Atlantic; Mull of the Mountains, a gangrel’s paradise; The Bad Step, a Jacobite hidie hole in the Orkneys); The Coming of Spring on the Braes of Perthshire; The Heart of the Highlands, in praise of petrol; Glen Lyon, the longest glen in Scotland; Macgregor’s leap, a legend of Glen Lyon; The Oldest Weapon in the World, an archer’s reverie; The Voyage of the Kelpie, a canoeing cruise in Scotland; An Old Highland House, and its romantic story; The Road to Rannoch and the Appin mystery; The Bounds of Black Mount, an idyll of the red deer; The Loch of the Vanished Races, a rune of Rannoch; The Black Wood of Rannoch; The Land’s End of Scotland, death on Dunaverty and peace in Kilcolmkil; The Island of Mary Rose; The Lure of Wayside Wells, winter dreams of summer days; Wandering Willies, memories of the road; Winter Beauty, fires of death among the hills; A King of the Road, the last of the minstrels. Book: spine a little dulled, head/tail a little bumped, pages untrimmed, VG, Jacket: rear cover and flap only loosely inserted (Book ref. 2888) £13.00
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Orkney and Shetland: An Archaeological Guide
Newton Abbot: David & Charles, 1974. 1st Edition. Hardcover. /Dust Jacket Included. First Edition. 8vo. Colour dj. 263 pp. B/w plates and detailed plans and illustrations throughout. Blank ffep removed. Light tape marks to rear endpaper. Overall clean and bright. VG / VG+ (Book ref. 07582) £8.00
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Against the Wind: An Orkney Idyll
London: Heinemann, 1966. 1st Edition. Hardcover. /Dust Jacket Included. First Edition. 8vo. Colour dj. 210 pp. B/w plates and illustrations. Inscr. to half-title page, otherwise very clean. VG / VG (Book ref. 07375) £10.00
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Traditional Dancing in Scotland
Routledge and Kegan Paul, London 1964 tall 8vo., ix, 2 pp.maps, 313 pps., frontispiece plate, diagrams,ills.,music examples. With an appendix ' Dancing in Cape Breton Island Nova Scotia'. VG+ in VG- rubbed & chipped dust jacket, price clipped. (Book ref. 6022) £22.00
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The Highland & Island of Scotland;
Glasgow, Collins, 1976; 1st edition; Hardback; 11.5" x 8"; N fine/ Dj Nr fine; 160pp profusely illustrated; Dark green cober swiht gilt tiotle on spine; Dust jacket has price intact.. " Written with provocative wit and perception the author communicates a very personal journey through the Highlands & Islands---- a land of many paradoxes and landscapes of incomparatible beauty, a hard life for the poor, a good life for the rich." (Book ref. 10397) £10.00
Offered for sale by Wheen O'Books Order / Enquire about this book
Stenwick Days. Orcadian Stories;
Kirkwall, The Orkney Press, 1984; Hardback. Nr fine/ Dj Nr fine 150pp with delightful illustrations by the Author. Yellow covers with black title on spine. " The richly comic world of the mythical Orkkney parish of Stenwick forms the backcloth for this series of riotous adventures." (Book ref. 13114) £10.00
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The Very Rich Hours. Travels in Orkney, Belize, the Everglades and Greece;
Boston, Beacon Press, 1992; Hardback. Nr fine/ Dj Nr fine. 224pp with green endpapers. Stone covers with purple cloth covers on spine plus silver title . "The author takes us to four far- flung corners of the globe -- and gives us some of the most sensual, learned, and witty writing about place to appear in years." (Book ref. 13893) £6.00
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Life in the Orkney Islands;
Edinburgh, Paul Harris Publishing, 1979; 1st edition. Hardback. 8" x 8". Nr fine/ Dj Nr fine. 126pp with an introduction by Ernest W. Marwick & Photographs by Chick Chalmers. f (Book ref. 13089) £38.00
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