The Watcher by the Threshold: Shorter Scottish Fiction

Canongate Classics #9

by John Buchan, Andrew Lownie (Editor)

This is the first ever complete collection of all Buchan's shorter Scottish fiction. Set largely in his beloved Borders, these stories and novellas show the full range and depth of Buchan's writing. Featuring shepherds, poachers, gamekeepers and drovers, they are worlds away from the tales of aristocratic adventure with which he is so often associated. Shot through with characters and places he returned to in his full-length fiction, the Buchan that emerges from this collection is a very different and much more complex writer than he is often held to be.

Genres: Fiction

427 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name.

John Buchan was a Scottish novelist, historian, and Unionist politician who served as Governor General of Canada, the 15th since Canadian Confederation.
As a youth, Buchan began writing poetry and prose, fiction and non-fiction, publishing his first novel in 1895 and ultimately writing over a hundred books of which the best known is The Thirty-Nine Steps. After attending Glasgow and Oxford universities, he practised as a barrister. In 1901, he served as a private secretary to Lord Milner in southern Africa towards the end of the Boer War. He returned to England in 1903, continued as a barrister and journalist. He left the Bar when he joined Thomas Nelson and Sons publishers in 1907. During the First World War, he was, among other activities, Director of Information in 1917 and later Head of Intelligence at the newly-formed Ministry of Information. He was elected Member of Parliament for the Combined Scottish Universities in 1927.
In 1935, King George V, on the advice of Canadian Prime Minister R. B. Bennett, appointed Buchan to succeed the Earl of Bessborough as Governor General of Canada and two months later raised him to the peerage as 1st Baron Tweedsmuir. He occupied the post until his death in 1940. Buchan promoted Canadian unity and helped strengthen the sovereignty of Canada constitutionally and culturally. He received a state funeral in Canada before his ashes were returned to the United Kingdom.

Reviews

[Lobstergirl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Many of these stories (twenty-nine in all, written from the late 1890s to about the 1930s) deal with the mystical relationship between man and nature - usually, specifically, the Scottish Borders, a region of lochs, burns, moors, heather, foothills, some steep crags. Here is a modern day view of Peebles, the town where John Buchan worked as a lawyer. It's an overview from Cademuir Hill:



In several of the stories, heavy rains from the North cause flooding and shepherds, lairds, and animals drown. You can picture a little burn like this one becoming a raging torrent sweeping away everything in its path:



Some of the stories, like No-Man's Land, venture into the paranormal or supernatural. The title story involves a Devil. Many of them are steeped in the uncanny: the characters can't really explain why, but certain locales just give them the creeps. Skule Skerry is a good example. Some of them are about simple folk - shepherds, drovers, gamekeepers, poachers. My favorite stories tend to be the ones where aloof, absurdly manly aristocrats flee from domesticity to vie with nature, and nature's wrath, contests which forge their manly souls into further aloofness. Fountainblue is such a story. When Buchan's characters aren't lowly shepherds, gamekeepers, or aristocrats, they tend to be businessmen or lawyers with inexplicable amounts of leisure time, enabling them to spend weeks at a go hunting, fly-fishing, and smoking pipes on the lawns of country estates with their buddies.

If you like this passage from Skule Skerry, a story featuring an ornithologist determined to brave the elements on an island unfit for human habitation, you will probably enjoy most of Buchan:

I can never find words to describe that curious quality of light that you get up in the North. Sometimes it is like looking at the world out of deep water - Farquharson used to call it "milky", and one saw what he meant. Generally it is a sort of essence of light, cold and pure and distilled, as if it were reflected from snow. There is no colour in it, and it makes thin shadows. Some people find it horribly depressing - Farquharson said it reminded him of a churchyard in the early morning where all his friends were buried - but personally I found it tonic and comforting. But it made me feel very near the edge of the world.

There was no inn, so I put up at the post office, which was on a causeway between a fresh-water loch and a sea voe, so that from the doorstep you could catch brown trout on one side and sea-trout on the other.

Andrew Lownie did a fine editing job. Each story is introduced with a little blurb situating it in the context of Buchan's other works.

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.55⭐

On Cademuir Hill 3.25⭐
Afternoon 5⭐
An Individualist 4.25⭐
A Journey of Little Profit 4⭐
Politics of the May-Fly 3⭐
The Herd of Standlan 2.5⭐
Streams of Water in the South 4⭐
At the Article of Death 3.5⭐
At the Rising of the Waters 2⭐
Prester John 4⭐
The Moor Song 2.5⭐
A Reputation 3.25⭐
Comedy in the Full Moon 3.75⭐
The Earlier Affection 3⭐
The Black Fishers 2⭐
Summer Weather 4⭐
The Oasis in the Snow 2.25⭐
Gideon Scott 3.5⭐
No-Man's Land 4.25⭐
The Far islands 4⭐
The Watcher by the Threshold 4.5⭐
Fountainblue 4.25⭐
The Outgoing of the Tide 3⭐
The Knees of the Gods 3.25⭐
The Green Glen 3.25⭐
The Riding of Ninemileburn 4⭐
Watches of the Night 3.25⭐
The Frying-pan and the Fire 4.5⭐
Skule Skerry 5⭐

[Bridget Carroll · Rating 5 out of 5]

These stories capture the terrifying beauty of Scotland, its mystery and lore. I would recommend this book to anyone who likes George MacDonald or Oscar Wilde. I look forward with pleasure to reading more Buchan.

[Suzanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't typically read short stories but truly enjoyed this set. I appreciate Buchan's ability to set the scene and establish mood. I found myself getting involved in each story and its characters.