What do you think?
Rate this book
Tales of the West
Ringan Gilhaize: or, The Covenanters
In a story which lays bare the strengths and the horrors of the egalitarian Scottish Presbyterian spirit, Ringan Gilhaize looks across three generations to describe Scotland’s most turbulent years, from his grandfather’s support for the Reformation, to the harsher years of his own sufferings as a persecuted Covenanter in the killing times.
Unique when it was published in 1823, and unique to this day, Ringan Gilhaize is an autobiography, a folk history of enormous scope, and a compelling psychological portrait of how idealism can turn to fanaticism. History tells us that John Graham of Claverhouse ("bluidy Clavers") was killed by a stray musket ball at the battle of Killiecrankie in 1689. This is the story of the bitter religious and political conflicts that led to that battle, from the mouth of the man who pulled the trigger. Galt shows the full range and power of his writing here and reinforces his claim to be in the very highest rank of Scottish writers.
Introduced by Patricia J. Wilson.
Unique when it was published in 1823, and unique to this day, Ringan Gilhaize is an autobiography, a folk history of enormous scope, and a compelling psychological portrait of how idealism can turn to fanaticism. History tells us that John Graham of Claverhouse ("bluidy Clavers") was killed by a stray musket ball at the battle of Killiecrankie in 1689. This is the story of the bitter religious and political conflicts that led to that battle, from the mouth of the man who pulled the trigger. Galt shows the full range and power of his writing here and reinforces his claim to be in the very highest rank of Scottish writers.
Introduced by Patricia J. Wilson.
512 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1823
5 people are currently reading
69 people want to read
About the author
John Galt
480 books17 followersJohn Galt was a Scottish novelist, entrepreneur, and political and social commentator. He was the first novelist to deal with issues of the Industrial Revolution and he has been called the first political novelist in the English language.
In 1820 Galt began to write for Blackwoods Magazine which published Annals of the Parish and The Ayrshire Legatees in 1821, The Provost and Sir Andrew Wylie in 1822, and The Entail in 1823. His novel Ringan Gilhaize (1823) offers a very different perspective on Scotland's Covenanting period to Walter Scott's The Tale of Old Mortality (1816).
Galt was instrumental in establishing the Canada Company, which was granted a charter in 1826 and bought almost 2.5 million acres of land from the British Government with a view to selling it on in individual plots to settlers. He founded the cities of Guelph and Goderich in Ontario. His novels Lawrie Tod (1830) and Bogle Corbet (1831) are concerned with the settlement of North America.
In 1820 Galt began to write for Blackwoods Magazine which published Annals of the Parish and The Ayrshire Legatees in 1821, The Provost and Sir Andrew Wylie in 1822, and The Entail in 1823. His novel Ringan Gilhaize (1823) offers a very different perspective on Scotland's Covenanting period to Walter Scott's The Tale of Old Mortality (1816).
Galt was instrumental in establishing the Canada Company, which was granted a charter in 1826 and bought almost 2.5 million acres of land from the British Government with a view to selling it on in individual plots to settlers. He founded the cities of Guelph and Goderich in Ontario. His novels Lawrie Tod (1830) and Bogle Corbet (1831) are concerned with the settlement of North America.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
March 22, 2022
Compared to the lost cause of the Jacobites, endlessly retrodden by Scottish (and other) writers, the rise and defence of Calvinism in Scotland has been relatively neglected in the Scottish tradition. James Hogg’s The Brownie of Bodsbeck is an exception, as is Scott’s Old Mortality whose unsympathetic treatment of the Covenanting cause impelled Galt to write this riposte, and much more recently James Robertson gave us The Fanatic. The relevant events are seen through the eyes of the Gilhaize family but only in so far as any of its members were directly involved in them. The book is narrated by the titular Ringan Gilhaize and its first section tells of his grandfather’s activities during the Scottish Reformation, which in later life he endlessly recounted to the family round the fireside, and features his encounters with, among others, John Knox and James Stuart (the illegitimate half-brother of Mary Queen of Scots and whom on taking up the throne on her return from France she made Earl of Moray. A confirmed reformer, after Mary’s exile to England he became Regent of Scotland.) This time period was when the groundwork for the stern Calvinistic bent of Scottish Presbyterianism was laid and the text contains many examples of invective against prelacy, papistical idolaters and the Whore of Babylon.
The latter two sections deal with Ringan’s own life and times when, first Charles I, and later his son Charles II, tried to reintroduce elements of episcopacy into Scottish religious observance. This led in the former’s time to the signing of the National Covenant and a few years later the Solemn League and Covenant, which latter was essentially an anti-royal but certainly anti-Catholic agreement between Scottish Protestants and the English Parliament for Presbyterianiam to become the established religion south of the border. (These two Covenants are sometimes rolled into one in people’s minds but it was from them that the Covenanters - in that word’s pronunciation the emphasis is placed on the third syllable - gained their name.) The Covenanter’s insistence on the view that no king could interfere between a man’s conscience and God and that rebellion against any king who attempted to do so was justified, effectively made the Covenanters heirs to the Declaration of Arbroath and holders of the Scottish conscience.
The text of “Gilhaize’s” account is mainly in English larded with Scots words and forms of speech but has that wordiness that is characteristic of novels of its time and of course is reflecting the language of between two and three hundred years earlier than when Galt was writing. The dialogue, moreover, tends to be in very broad Scots indeed.
The novel is in part a history lesson since “Gilhaize” has to provide the background to the events he himself took part in. He therefore mentions the protests in St Giles Cathedral against the prayers in Charles I’s new Prayer Book as supposedly started by Janet (aka Jenny) Geddes (though her name does not appear in contemporary accounts,) a defiance of authority which led to open rebellion and the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. (For a long time these were known as the English Civil War despite the fact that they were precipitated by the necessity for Charles I to recall the English Parliament to provide money to suppress his Scottish religious rebels.)
After the Restoration of the Stuarts, fierce resentment resulted from Charles II’s apostasy in the matter of the Covenant which he had signed essentially in bad faith in what would now probably be called an act of real politique to bring the Scots Parliament onto his side in his war against Cromwell – a hopeless endeavour given the outcome of the Battle of Worcester. To the Covenanters signing was a sacred and binding act. Reneging on that could not be forgiven.
Galt’s focus on the affairs of one family allows him to illustrate the build up of both the petty and the major injustices of the anti-Covenanter legislation as well as Covenanters’ hatred of the favourite General of both the latter Stuart kings, James Graham of Claverhouse, whom the Covenanters dubbed “Bloody Clavers” for his enthusiastic prosecution of the sequestrations, fines, imprisonments and hangings which feed into the slow descent by Ringan into a haze of self-righteousness and moral zeal. A minor drawback of this is that most of the battles mentioned in the book take place off-stage since neither his grandfather nor Ringan himself were present at them. (Exceptions are Drumclog, Rullion Green in the Pentlands, and Killiecrankie, in all of which Ringan took part.)
The final vindication of the Covenanting resistance was the outcome of the “Glorious Revolution” of 1688 - here Galt has Gilhaize believe in the false propaganda that a man child was palmed off on the nation as the lawful son of James VII (and II,) known to Covenanters as “the Tyrant,” and his papistical wife - which secured the Protestant ascendancy in the form of William and Mary.
Two hundred year-old fiction is problematic for the modern reader at any time - patterns of language have changed, writers no longer need to pad out stories to reach a required word count, sentences tend to be less laboriously constructed - but the remoteness here is compounded by the dense nature of the history, the numbers of historical figures, the intensity of the religious discourse. Throughout, the book rings with Biblical imagery and allusions.
Though in their particulars its concerns have now passed into history in Scotland (except for their remnants being attached to a certain football rivalry) Ringan Gilhaize, as an examination of the mindset of the religious zealot, the firm believer in a higher calling, is salutary, and still has resonance for the present day. I’m glad I read it even if the prose does not always flow as smoothly as I might have wished.
The latter two sections deal with Ringan’s own life and times when, first Charles I, and later his son Charles II, tried to reintroduce elements of episcopacy into Scottish religious observance. This led in the former’s time to the signing of the National Covenant and a few years later the Solemn League and Covenant, which latter was essentially an anti-royal but certainly anti-Catholic agreement between Scottish Protestants and the English Parliament for Presbyterianiam to become the established religion south of the border. (These two Covenants are sometimes rolled into one in people’s minds but it was from them that the Covenanters - in that word’s pronunciation the emphasis is placed on the third syllable - gained their name.) The Covenanter’s insistence on the view that no king could interfere between a man’s conscience and God and that rebellion against any king who attempted to do so was justified, effectively made the Covenanters heirs to the Declaration of Arbroath and holders of the Scottish conscience.
The text of “Gilhaize’s” account is mainly in English larded with Scots words and forms of speech but has that wordiness that is characteristic of novels of its time and of course is reflecting the language of between two and three hundred years earlier than when Galt was writing. The dialogue, moreover, tends to be in very broad Scots indeed.
The novel is in part a history lesson since “Gilhaize” has to provide the background to the events he himself took part in. He therefore mentions the protests in St Giles Cathedral against the prayers in Charles I’s new Prayer Book as supposedly started by Janet (aka Jenny) Geddes (though her name does not appear in contemporary accounts,) a defiance of authority which led to open rebellion and the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. (For a long time these were known as the English Civil War despite the fact that they were precipitated by the necessity for Charles I to recall the English Parliament to provide money to suppress his Scottish religious rebels.)
After the Restoration of the Stuarts, fierce resentment resulted from Charles II’s apostasy in the matter of the Covenant which he had signed essentially in bad faith in what would now probably be called an act of real politique to bring the Scots Parliament onto his side in his war against Cromwell – a hopeless endeavour given the outcome of the Battle of Worcester. To the Covenanters signing was a sacred and binding act. Reneging on that could not be forgiven.
Galt’s focus on the affairs of one family allows him to illustrate the build up of both the petty and the major injustices of the anti-Covenanter legislation as well as Covenanters’ hatred of the favourite General of both the latter Stuart kings, James Graham of Claverhouse, whom the Covenanters dubbed “Bloody Clavers” for his enthusiastic prosecution of the sequestrations, fines, imprisonments and hangings which feed into the slow descent by Ringan into a haze of self-righteousness and moral zeal. A minor drawback of this is that most of the battles mentioned in the book take place off-stage since neither his grandfather nor Ringan himself were present at them. (Exceptions are Drumclog, Rullion Green in the Pentlands, and Killiecrankie, in all of which Ringan took part.)
The final vindication of the Covenanting resistance was the outcome of the “Glorious Revolution” of 1688 - here Galt has Gilhaize believe in the false propaganda that a man child was palmed off on the nation as the lawful son of James VII (and II,) known to Covenanters as “the Tyrant,” and his papistical wife - which secured the Protestant ascendancy in the form of William and Mary.
Two hundred year-old fiction is problematic for the modern reader at any time - patterns of language have changed, writers no longer need to pad out stories to reach a required word count, sentences tend to be less laboriously constructed - but the remoteness here is compounded by the dense nature of the history, the numbers of historical figures, the intensity of the religious discourse. Throughout, the book rings with Biblical imagery and allusions.
Though in their particulars its concerns have now passed into history in Scotland (except for their remnants being attached to a certain football rivalry) Ringan Gilhaize, as an examination of the mindset of the religious zealot, the firm believer in a higher calling, is salutary, and still has resonance for the present day. I’m glad I read it even if the prose does not always flow as smoothly as I might have wished.
December 21, 2025
Possibly a 4.5
Not so much a review, more of a reaction - or mental spew really.
After finally finishing this book, I think it’s nearly criminal that Ringan Gilhaize: or The Covenanters isn’t held the same regard as Walter Scott’s Waverley Novels, but in the same breath I completely understand why it isn’t. Galt’s novel doesn’t tend to romanticize its tragedies, the dialogue is in Scots, probably making it less accessible for readers unfamiliar with certain words or phrases. It is also a dark and unrelenting story that offers little in the way of reprieve, and if I’m to be utterly cynical it’s certainly not a book our fine and restrained tourist industry or a publishing house can spin into a much of a marketable commodity.
I’m not going to lie, I found this a very difficult book to get into at first. The Scottish Reformation period is one of my least favourite eras in history and the second John Knox’s name came across the page my brain would just reset itself, forgetting everything it just read, such is my dislike for the individual himself - although there was far from a cornucopia of heroes to choose from around that time. It also didn’t help that despite one of the themes of the novel highlighting the ease of how idealism can quickly turn into fanaticism, Galt’s admiration for Knox came through the pages a bit too keenly for my liking.
Once I got past that though, Knox’s presence, like all the other historical characters the fictional Gilhaize family have direct and indirect dealings with, is downright ghostlike; shunted to the side and more a stage piece than anything else.
Beginning during Regent Mary of Guise’s reign and recounted by the third Gilhaize right up until the rule of Charles the Second, The Covenanters is an epic multigenerational story of revenge, cruelty, righteous justice, rebellion and religious fanaticism. It is also mostly a very internal affair early on in the book, bypassing familiar trappings one would expect from a novel set in Scotland starting in the 1550’s.
Galt’s use of language was also impressive; understated and direct for a lot of the novel, his occasional switch to a more poetic, foreshadowing style while describing certain events was devastating. In some places, I swear let out a hiss a few times; Queen Mary’s arrival at Leith was particularly brutal. The real meat of the novel, however, is when the story final catches up to Ringan and his life, persecution as a Covenanter, descent, rebellion and losses. It’s a merciless ride.
Ultimately, I’m glad I chose to give this book a go even though it appeared to be something I wouldn't be interested in. While I’m not sure if I can call it a personal favourite, I feel that Ringan Gilhaize is an important and downright brilliant book that deserves more readers.
Will be looking out for more of Galt’s works at any rate.
Not so much a review, more of a reaction - or mental spew really.
After finally finishing this book, I think it’s nearly criminal that Ringan Gilhaize: or The Covenanters isn’t held the same regard as Walter Scott’s Waverley Novels, but in the same breath I completely understand why it isn’t. Galt’s novel doesn’t tend to romanticize its tragedies, the dialogue is in Scots, probably making it less accessible for readers unfamiliar with certain words or phrases. It is also a dark and unrelenting story that offers little in the way of reprieve, and if I’m to be utterly cynical it’s certainly not a book our fine and restrained tourist industry or a publishing house can spin into a much of a marketable commodity.
I’m not going to lie, I found this a very difficult book to get into at first. The Scottish Reformation period is one of my least favourite eras in history and the second John Knox’s name came across the page my brain would just reset itself, forgetting everything it just read, such is my dislike for the individual himself - although there was far from a cornucopia of heroes to choose from around that time. It also didn’t help that despite one of the themes of the novel highlighting the ease of how idealism can quickly turn into fanaticism, Galt’s admiration for Knox came through the pages a bit too keenly for my liking.
Once I got past that though, Knox’s presence, like all the other historical characters the fictional Gilhaize family have direct and indirect dealings with, is downright ghostlike; shunted to the side and more a stage piece than anything else.
Beginning during Regent Mary of Guise’s reign and recounted by the third Gilhaize right up until the rule of Charles the Second, The Covenanters is an epic multigenerational story of revenge, cruelty, righteous justice, rebellion and religious fanaticism. It is also mostly a very internal affair early on in the book, bypassing familiar trappings one would expect from a novel set in Scotland starting in the 1550’s.
Galt’s use of language was also impressive; understated and direct for a lot of the novel, his occasional switch to a more poetic, foreshadowing style while describing certain events was devastating. In some places, I swear let out a hiss a few times; Queen Mary’s arrival at Leith was particularly brutal. The real meat of the novel, however, is when the story final catches up to Ringan and his life, persecution as a Covenanter, descent, rebellion and losses. It’s a merciless ride.
Ultimately, I’m glad I chose to give this book a go even though it appeared to be something I wouldn't be interested in. While I’m not sure if I can call it a personal favourite, I feel that Ringan Gilhaize is an important and downright brilliant book that deserves more readers.
Will be looking out for more of Galt’s works at any rate.
October 26, 2014
I found this to be a really fascinating and absorbing book. It covers the period from about 1540 to 1690, or roughly the period of the Scottish Reformation. The author uses three generations of the fictional Gilhaize family interacting with real-life characters to provide an insightful, ground-up perspective of this turbulant time. Most of the events and most of the characters depicted are real, or at least are based on actual people and events, and ultimately lead to the death of John Graham of Claverhouse.(Known to Robert Burns fans as "Bonnie Dundee.)
I did find it significant that the author never strayed from his view that this period was forever represented by the conflict between the reformers, or the true believers and the "Idol Worshipers." He uses hyperbole relentlessly to maintain this separation. It is made quite clear that being a Presbyterian or a Covananter is most honorable and being a Catholic or Papist is less so. Unfortunately, his "honorable" characters seem to reach for a bible when a rifle would more suit the situation so the downside of being a dead martyr takes some time for them to absorb. Ringan himself finally has a personal epiphany, but only after he has lost absolutely everything he can lose.
One other separation should be noted. This quote is taken from the postscript:
"The English are a justice-loving people according to charter and statute; the Scotch are a wrong-resenting race, according to right and feeling; and the character of liberty takes its aspect from that peculiarity."
The Scottish Reformation is often cited for having provided the seeds of the American experiment, and after reading this novel, I can see how our pecularly American values and ideas of freedom, especially from oppressive government took shape in that time and in that place.
"Ringan Gilhaize" is a far more important novel than is its place in literary history.
.....................................................
Note: This story is told in first-person, and Ringan talks freely in Old-Scots, so be prepared to consult the glossary frequently.
I did find it significant that the author never strayed from his view that this period was forever represented by the conflict between the reformers, or the true believers and the "Idol Worshipers." He uses hyperbole relentlessly to maintain this separation. It is made quite clear that being a Presbyterian or a Covananter is most honorable and being a Catholic or Papist is less so. Unfortunately, his "honorable" characters seem to reach for a bible when a rifle would more suit the situation so the downside of being a dead martyr takes some time for them to absorb. Ringan himself finally has a personal epiphany, but only after he has lost absolutely everything he can lose.
One other separation should be noted. This quote is taken from the postscript:
"The English are a justice-loving people according to charter and statute; the Scotch are a wrong-resenting race, according to right and feeling; and the character of liberty takes its aspect from that peculiarity."
The Scottish Reformation is often cited for having provided the seeds of the American experiment, and after reading this novel, I can see how our pecularly American values and ideas of freedom, especially from oppressive government took shape in that time and in that place.
"Ringan Gilhaize" is a far more important novel than is its place in literary history.
.....................................................
Note: This story is told in first-person, and Ringan talks freely in Old-Scots, so be prepared to consult the glossary frequently.
February 5, 2017
Ringan Gilhaize is, to quote the cover notes, "a compelling psychological portrait of how idealism can turn to fanaticism."
The novel has all the elements that have become the everyday language of today's news broadcasts - invading armies, sectarian violence, murder, rape, imprisonment, rape, displacement of civilians, extraordinary rendition, and summary executions.
But this is not Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria or Palestine but seventeenth century Scotland.
A fascinating read!
Note that seventeenth-century extraordinary rendition consisted of transporting the "enemy combatants" to the colonies in North America to work as slaves.
The novel has all the elements that have become the everyday language of today's news broadcasts - invading armies, sectarian violence, murder, rape, imprisonment, rape, displacement of civilians, extraordinary rendition, and summary executions.
But this is not Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria or Palestine but seventeenth century Scotland.
A fascinating read!
Note that seventeenth-century extraordinary rendition consisted of transporting the "enemy combatants" to the colonies in North America to work as slaves.
November 27, 2017
Galt’s historical novel, well worth reading, now unjustly forgotten.
The hideous events of the “Killing Times” should be fertile territory for historical fiction.
Galt’s flawed hero/narrator is complex, idealistic. Galt is a far superior writer to Walter Scott, who squeezed out all others as he courted royalty, invented a spurious Scotland, for better for worse.
Neither are much read nowadays; and we should thank Scott for his influence on Balzac and so many others, for his invention of the modern kilt, rehabilitation of Highlanders, and establishing the Scots tourist industry.
Galt has no monument on Princes Street (the Gothic rocket), but he’s still a better writer
The hideous events of the “Killing Times” should be fertile territory for historical fiction.
Galt’s flawed hero/narrator is complex, idealistic. Galt is a far superior writer to Walter Scott, who squeezed out all others as he courted royalty, invented a spurious Scotland, for better for worse.
Neither are much read nowadays; and we should thank Scott for his influence on Balzac and so many others, for his invention of the modern kilt, rehabilitation of Highlanders, and establishing the Scots tourist industry.
Galt has no monument on Princes Street (the Gothic rocket), but he’s still a better writer
October 3, 2018
It was a page turner but I found it hard to pick it up once laid aside. There was so much happening at once and at the same time nothing at all that I found it hard to recall what had happened the last time I had read in the book. I can recommend it, however, as a thorough account of the Covenant Conflict.
March 15, 2023
A compelling story of suffering and revenge, and how the desire for this turns an ordinary man into a bloodthirsty fanatic. Galt's greatest achievement is in the subtlety with which he narrates the story as Ringan, adopting the tone and language of a bitter Covenanter who is slowly turned into an obsessed avenger by his trials.
December 30, 2022
Ringan Glihazie by John Galt, 1823, Canongate, Edinburgh, 1995, paperback, 510 pages.
This 1823 historical novel about the Covenanters during the killing times is written in beautifully descriptive prose. The subject matter is not for the faint-hearted.
There was the time when Ringan Gilhaize was guided into an overcrowded prison cell of fellow Covenanters in Edinburgh.
“I entered among them, as if I had come into the dark abode of spectres, and manes, and dismal shadows. The prison was crowded overmuch, and though life was to many not worth the care of preservation, they yet esteemed it as the gift of their Maker, and as such considered it their duty to prolong for his sake. It was therefore a rule with them to stand in successive bands at the windows, in order that they might taste of the living air from without … At that moment a shriek of horror rose from all then looking out, and every one recoiled from the window. In the same instant a bloody head on a halbert was held up to us. – I looked I saw the ghastly features and I would have kissed those lifeless lips; for, O! they were my son’s.
“I had laid that son, my only son, on the altar of the Covenant, an offering unto the Lord; but still I did hope that maybe it would be according to the mercy of wisdom that He would provide a lamb in the bush for the sacrifice; and when the stripling had parted from me, I often felt as the mother feels when the milk of love is in her bosom, and her babe no longer there.” Pgs. 390-92.
I was thankful for the eleven pages glossary at the back of the book that helped me with some of the old Scots words whose meaning I struggled with. I also appreciated the inclusion of an English translation of the 1320 Declaration of Arbroath and also the following contained in the Postscript:
“It does not seem to be, as yet, very generally understood by the critics in the South, that, independently of phraseology, there is such an idiomatic difference in the structure of the national dialects of England and Scotland, that very good Scotch might be couched in the purest of English terms, and without the employment of a single English word.
“In reviewing the Memoirs of that worshipful personage, Provost Pawkie, some objection has been made to the style, as being neither Scotch nor English, – not Scotch, because the words are English, – and not English, because the forms of speech are Scottish. What has thus been regarded as a fault, others acquainted with the peculiarities of the language may be led to consider as a beauty.” p. 448.
This 1823 historical novel about the Covenanters during the killing times is written in beautifully descriptive prose. The subject matter is not for the faint-hearted.
There was the time when Ringan Gilhaize was guided into an overcrowded prison cell of fellow Covenanters in Edinburgh.
“I entered among them, as if I had come into the dark abode of spectres, and manes, and dismal shadows. The prison was crowded overmuch, and though life was to many not worth the care of preservation, they yet esteemed it as the gift of their Maker, and as such considered it their duty to prolong for his sake. It was therefore a rule with them to stand in successive bands at the windows, in order that they might taste of the living air from without … At that moment a shriek of horror rose from all then looking out, and every one recoiled from the window. In the same instant a bloody head on a halbert was held up to us. – I looked I saw the ghastly features and I would have kissed those lifeless lips; for, O! they were my son’s.
“I had laid that son, my only son, on the altar of the Covenant, an offering unto the Lord; but still I did hope that maybe it would be according to the mercy of wisdom that He would provide a lamb in the bush for the sacrifice; and when the stripling had parted from me, I often felt as the mother feels when the milk of love is in her bosom, and her babe no longer there.” Pgs. 390-92.
I was thankful for the eleven pages glossary at the back of the book that helped me with some of the old Scots words whose meaning I struggled with. I also appreciated the inclusion of an English translation of the 1320 Declaration of Arbroath and also the following contained in the Postscript:
“It does not seem to be, as yet, very generally understood by the critics in the South, that, independently of phraseology, there is such an idiomatic difference in the structure of the national dialects of England and Scotland, that very good Scotch might be couched in the purest of English terms, and without the employment of a single English word.
“In reviewing the Memoirs of that worshipful personage, Provost Pawkie, some objection has been made to the style, as being neither Scotch nor English, – not Scotch, because the words are English, – and not English, because the forms of speech are Scottish. What has thus been regarded as a fault, others acquainted with the peculiarities of the language may be led to consider as a beauty.” p. 448.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews