PREFACE.

THIS is a collection of Essays on Scottish Rural and Literary Subjects, which, it is hoped, will not prove uninteresting even to English readers.

The title is to be understood as expressive rather of something attempted than of anything done, to revive fading interest in the old Scottish fields of literature and rural industry.

The ‘Lament for the Language,’ the focus of this attempt, appeared in the author’s first book, which was published, without achieving publicity, some eight or nine years ago.

The other pieces are reproduced, in whole or in part, from the Scotsman, the Scottish Church, Macmillan s Magazine, and the Dundee Advertiser, by kind permission of the editors or proprietors, to whom due acknowledgment of indebtedness is here gratefully made.

The reader’s indulgence is begged for the ‘Holiday in Arcadia’ The holiday spirit was in the author’s imagination, and his pen ran while he wrote.

CONTENTS

Herds
Authorship of 'Christ's Kirk on the Green'.
Allan Ramsay
Robert Fergusson
Fergusson's Verse
The Farmer's Ingle
The Birth of Burns at Kilmarnock
The Old Harvest-Field
A Weet Hairst
Plea for Scottish Literature at the Universities
Lament for the Language
Scottish Proverbs
Holidays
A Holiday in Arcadia
The Queen's Holiday

In Scottish Fields
By Hugh Haliburton (1890) (pdf)