Scottish Folk Tales

by Lomond

384 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2014

Reviews

[Joseph R. · Rating 3 out of 5]

This collection has dozens of tales from unidentified authors (no editor is identified either!). Most of the stories involve supernatural creatures like fairies, brownies, merfolk, witches, and ghosts. Anthropomorphic animal tales, like "The Fox and the Wolf," are included along with the occasional poem. Some of the stories are written with a thick Scottish accent, making it a bit difficult for an American reader like me to comprehend what's being said. Saying lines out loud helped a bit but not always. I did have to look up some vocabulary for unfamiliar words like bairns (children).

The tales have a lot of typical folk-tale content. The protagonists generally get the better of the supernatural creatures, unless they are the sort of folk who are bad and deserve to be carted off to the fairy realm for seven years or more. The tales are mostly charming and humorous with a lot of the typical moralizing. My favorites were "The Brownie O' Ferne-Den," "Assipattle and the Mester Stoorworm," "Nuckelavee," and "The Tale of the Shifty Lad, the Widow's Son."

Mildly recommended.

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fun collection of Scottish folktales and myths to pass the time; would've been nice if there had been any mention of authors or references, so I could look into them further.

[Diantha · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fun collection of (sometimes very) short stories gathered from different sources. I would like to have seen included what those sources are, but there is no mention of authors or sources at all. Because the writing style of the stories differs greatly, I feel the lack of documentation on where the story was gathered from is a major missing element in this collection.

[John Ramage · Rating 1 out of 5]

Wow, talk about tarnishing sacred topics 😂 not even finished 10 pages and I feel a 4 year old wrote this. Full stops everywhere when it should be commas to break up a sentence. When you list items or such you also put AND between every one... you can list items like "Bread, Milk, Tea AND sugar" NOT "Bread AND milk AND tea AND Sugar.

Literally unreasonable and not been proof read, leave these topics to people who are native 1 and educated enough to write a basic book 2