Cultural Crofter is a very apt description for Nancy Nicolson - she is a Sottish folk singer and a tradition bearer, a songwriter and a storyteller and a melodeon player. Brought up on a croft in Caithness, the former Edinburgh teacher has worked with the BBC, Celtic Connections, and the New Makars Trust. It was high time that her songs were collected and published, and Grace Note Publications has done just that, to coincide with her 75th birthday in 2016. They sent a Wumman: The Collected Songs of Nancy Nicolson contains an autobiographical piece by Nancy herself, as well as contributions by her fellow-Caithnessian writer George Gunn, by singer, songwriter, actor and director Gerda Stevenson and the folk singer, songwriter and publisher Ewan McVicar. But the focus is, as editor Paddy Bort writes in his introduction, firmly on the songs, in all their glorious diversity. Like few others, Nancy Nicolson has the gift - as writer, singer and storyteller - to communicate the life and culture of Scotland, with rare warmth and energy and her very own brand of wit and wisdom. As can be seen in this volume, Nancy Nicolson covers (nearly) every subject under the sun - from bootleg whisky to the Miners' Strike, from bairns' play to the grim and cruel games of war, and from 'hauf-hinget' Maggie to 'Maggie's Pit Ponies'. Some of her songs have assumed almost 'traditional' status by now - among them Nancy's greatest hits: "Listen tae the Teacher', 'The Moon in the Morning', 'The Brickie's Ballad' and, of course, 'They Sent a Wumman'. Among others, Gerda Stevenson, The McCalmans and Ed Miller have recorded her songs.

George Gunn's writing is distinctive, with an urgent sense of people and place. This selection from his previously published poems plus eleven new ones continues to reveal an imagination that, while rooted in a physical and metaphorical Northerly Land, roams widely and forages keenly across a local, national, international, global and ultimately cosmic territory of natural beauty, personal relationships, social injustice and political idiocy. The powerful new work that closes the collection includes poems for Osip Mandelshtam (1891-1938), Alexander Hutchison (1943-2015), Derek Walcott (1930-2017) and the people of Aleppo.

THE GREAT EDGE brings together lives - ancient and modern - on the northern plateau where Scotland stops and starts, where history and myth fuel everyday reality, and where nothing is as it seems. When an archaeologist comes to Caithness to research an early Christian chapel, she must reckon with a crisis that is global and contemporary as well as local and ancient. Adopted by Fracher, a retired roughneck and local fisherman, Mags is spun into a galaxy of characters and events that force her to a profound understanding of the relationship between Past, Present and Future. Meanwhile, in 21st-century Atomic City, the decommissioning of a national nuclear icon brings several dreams to an end. THE GREAT EDGE is a story of science, engineering and geology; of Picts and Irish monks, Norse mythology, and Celtic civilisation. Through the eyes of a Norse skald, we begin to see there is little in the 21st century that hasn't been experienced before. As we witness global warming and Arctic ice-melt, are we all waiting for the wave? In THE GREAT EDGE the wave duly arrives.

This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishing's Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone

And Notes Upon The Kirk-Session Records Of The Parishes Of Bunkle And Preston, With A Memoir.

And Notes Upon The Kirk-Session Records Of The Parishes Of Bunkle And Preston, With A Memoir.