The heart is highland : memories of a childhood in a Scottish glen

Steven, Maisie2010

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Summary

Review: 'It is only a short four years since I had the pleasure of reviewing Campbell Steven's "Enjoying Perthshire"; now I have equal pleasure in reviewing a similar volume of highland reminiscences by his wife, Maisie.It is similar, but at the same time it is not all similar, since it concerns that part of Maisie's life before she met Campbell, i.e. her girlhood years in Glenurquhart in the 1930s and '40s. How much has changed in those few decades - the simple life which was then the norm has slipped from our collective fingers, lost for ever, no matter how many trips the modem car-borne visitor may make to the Highlands. Writers such as Maisie can recapture something of those times for us, but we can never truly share in them; the closest we can ever get is a poor second hand.The school pupils - the 'scholars' - of those times lived in a Gaelic community yet never spoke or heard a word of Gaelic in school. The school regime was wholly taken up with the priorities of the day, namely in providing a thorough grounding in the basics, which would act as a platform for progress in the world beyond. For all the expectation of disciplined application in school, those same scholars had the most wonderful of playgrounds right on their doorsteps they had the run of the fields, woods, moors and riversides of the agricultural environment of which they were part. That same agricultural environment brought in its train a great awareness - now largely lost - of the cycle of the seasons and the activities associated with each. The glen's social life followed that cycle, and simple pleasures were looked forward to with eager anticipation.' - amazon.co.uk