Neil Munro > Quotes

“There's ten thousand wyes a hen can get into a gairden, but only the wan wye she can get oot, and it's gey ill for her to find it.”
― Neil Munro, Erchie, My Droll Friend

“The secret o' health, happiness and success is deep breathing, buttermilk instead o' beer, your bedroom window open, a penny a week and a mind weel disciplined.”
― Neil Munro, Erchie, My Droll Friend

“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!”
― Neil Munro, Doom Castle

“There's no a bar o the rale Tschaikowsky music that hasna as muckle meanin in't as a story by Annie S. Swan.”
― Neil Munro, Erchie, My Droll Friend

“I cannot approve of your foible for dancing-shoes to wade through snow in such weather.”
― Neil Munro, Doom Castle

“Oh Tillietudlem, no matter whaur I be,
Tillietudlem Castle 'll aye be dear tae me.
T'was there I met my Mary when first I went to see
Tillietudlem Castle and its bonny scenery.”
― Neil Munro, Erchie, My Droll Friend

“Bagpipes is a gey droll kind o' utensil; ye canna jist begin to play them the wye ye can a melodeon; they hae to be taken aside and argued wi', and half-throttled afore they'll dae onything wyse-like. They're awfu dour things, but they never hairmed onybody that never hairmed them. See, yonder's a chap that's got his pipes fine and tame noo; he's gaun on the platform to play something."'

The piper in question went on the platform and proceeded remorselessly to play a pibroch. Two very fat judges in kilts and a third in tartan knickerbockers sat on chairs beside the platform and took notes on sheets of paper as the pibroch unwound itself.

"What are they chaps daein'?" asked Duffy.

"They're judgin'" says Erchie. "I've seen Heilan' games afore. A' the prizes for bagpipe playin' gangs by points - ten points for the natest kilt; ten points for the richt wye o' cockin' yer bonnet; five points for no' gaun aff a'e tune on to anither; five points for the best pair o' leg for the kilt; five points for yer name bein' Campbell and the judges kennin' yer faither - thats the judges addin' up the points and wishin' they kent the tune he's playin'.”
― Neil Munro, Erchie, My Droll Friend

“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.”
― Neil Munro, Erchie, My Droll Friend

“Gleska! Some day when I'm in the key for't I'll mak a song aboot her. Here the triumphs o civilisation meet ye at the stair fit, and three bawbee mornin rolls can be had after six o'clock at nicht for a penny.

There's libraries scattered a ower the place; I ken, for I've seen them often, and the brass plate at the door tellin ye whit they are.

Art's a the go in Gleska too; there's something aboot it every ither nicht in the papers, when Lord Somebody-or-ither's no divorcin his wife, and takin up the space; and I hear there's hunders o pictures oot in yon place at Kelvingrove.

Theatres, concerts, balls, swarees, lectures - ony mortal thing ye like that'll keep ye oot o yer bed, ye'll get in Gleska if ye have the money to pay for't.”
― Neil Munro, Erchie, My Droll Friend

“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.”
― Neil Munro, The Clyde, River and Firth

“For a time the bay at the river mouth was full of long-tailed ducks, that for a whistle, almost came to your hand, and there too came flocks of wild-swan, flying in wedges, trumpeting as they flew. Fierce otters quarrelled over eels at the mouth of the Black Burn that flows underneath the town and out below the Tolbooth to the shore, or made the gloaming melancholy with their doleful whistle.”
― Neil Munro, John Splendid

“What had one time looked a night of winter, and the dark clouds surly, took a change about the threshold of the morning, and the moon came out and stared. The mountains seemed to lift, the glens to deepen; everywhere were shadows dark as ink, inhabited by creatures drowsy and alert - the creeping ones, the squeaking ones, the swooping ones, and in the grassy nooks the big red stags at stamping, roaring on their queens. Glen Coe was loud with running waters falling down the gashes of the bens, the curlew whistling and the echoes of MacTala, son of earth, who taunts. From out its lower end among the clachans and the trees there came a company of men behind a fellow on a horse, all belted, bearing weapons, walking one behind another.”
― Neil Munro, The New Road

“There's meat as weel as music in it, as the fox said when he ate the bagpipes.”
― Neil Munro, Doom Castle

“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.”
― Neil Munro, The New Road

“Nooadays the genteelest and the best leevin' folk gang to theatres and music-halls if somebody gi'es them a ticket for naething.”
― Neil Munro, Erchie, My Droll Friend