Music Monday

by Kerry Dexter

Destination: Scotland

Music: Acquaintance, by Jim Malcolm (Beltane Records)

There’s a statue of him in Canberra and a town named after him in Oregon, his words have inspired writers in India and musicians in Russia, and every year at the end of January, people across the world gather to remember the birth and life of this poet. More than two centuries after his time, his work is widely known by those who love poetry and Scotland, and those who don’t know a thing about either. This is Scotland’s national bard, poet and songwriter Robert Burns.

Robert Burns Statue

 Jim Malcolm is a Scot, too, and a musician, from Highland Perthshire. He’s been honored  for both his writing and his singing. Still, given Burns’ prolific output (he wrote or revised more than three hundred songs and poems) and his well-known presence in all thing Scottish, it’s a challenge for any musician from Scotland to find an approach and choose a program of songs that adds his or her own stamp to the ploughman poet’s work. It’s a challenge Malcolm meets well in his album Acquaintance.

His approach is conversational and low-key (this is the man who has been called the James Taylor of Scotland, after all), with at times a dash of humor and at times an honoring of the poet’s lyrical side. Malcolm opens the collection with Rantin’ Rovin’ Robin, a lively piece that’s a bit of a Burns autobiography. Another side of Burns, the political one which included belief in the value and equality of all, comes out in A Man’s a Man for A’ That. You can almost laugh along with the farmer’s wife and  see him dancing in  The Ploughman. Jim Malcolm and Robert Burns both show their senses of humor in The Shepherd’s Wife, as well.

Malcolm’s own wife, Susie, who is a very fine singer in her own right, joins in for a duet on that one. Westin Winds is a lyrical vignette of the Scottish landscape, and Malcolm’s own song, Killikrankie, stands in good company alongside the writings of Robert Burns.

Whether you are recalling a trip to Scotland or dreaming of one, Jim Malcolm’s album makes a fine traveling companion. If you’re still  a bit foggy on just who Robert Burns was and why his name sounds familiar — the album is called Acquaintance, and the closing song on it is Auld Lang Syne.

You might like to read about two other great contemporary takes on Robert Burns music, one by Eddi Reader and the other by Emily Smith and Jamie McClennan. You might also like to see Jim and Susie Malcolm singing his own song Fields of Angus.

As a policy of A Traveler’s Library, we tell you about affiliate links. The links included here may make it possible for you to listen to excerpts of the music, and the ones to Amazon in this post are affiliate links. If you buy anything through the affiliate links in this post, you will be supporting the site Music Road. Thank you. The  photographs are by Kerry Dexter and are copyrighted. Thank you for respecting this.

In keeping with Kerry’s celebration of the New Year and it’s famous bard, the giveaway book today is a British comic novel about Christmas, Comfort & Joy by India Knight. (England is as close to Scotland as I could get, sorry!). Today’s prize goes to one person who comments, subscribes, tweets or mentions us on Google+ before the deadline. See the review of Comfort and Joy here. (You can comment on this post or on an earlier post. Just do it before Tuesday, January 10, 3:00 a.m. MST. If you already subscribe by e-mail and want an extra entry as a subscriber, be sure to tell me that in the comments. See complete contest rules here.)

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Kerry Dexter

We’re kicking off this month’s Contributor’s week by interviewing my friend Kerry Dexter.  She’s your friend, too, if you read A Traveler’s Library Great American Road Trip last year, because she provided the musical accompaniment for each and every place we visited.  I enjoyed that partnership with Kerry so much and also am always delighted by her thoughtful posts at Music Road. Even before we partnered on the road trip, I had picked her brain about music while traveling, so it seemed only natural to ask her to use her music travel expertise and contribute Music Travel Monday to A Traveler’s Library.  Last month she took us to Nova Scotia for the Celtic Colours Music Festival at Cape Breton Island.

Kerry Dexter: Are we not all born travelers?  As I was growing up, there were people in my family and in my neighborhood from other parts of the world  I always knew there was a wide world, and that it was made up of real people with real lives.

Cathie Ryan

I could talk about hours and days and years immersed in the music in various ways, about academic study in history and visual arts, about time spent in Ireland and Scotland. The truest and best way to answer, though,  is through Irish American musician Cathie Ryan’s  words:  “In my tribe, music is blood memory.”

ATL:  You mention poetry as being part of your travel kit. Who are some of your favorite poets? What poets would you recommend for travelers to read?

Robert Burns Statue

KD: Robert Burns wrote widely on all sorts of subjects with command of language and insight that always offers something new for travelers and armchair readers. Two of my favorites are Westin Winds, which is a reflection on nature, and a gently funny one about marriage, The Plooman. I’d also recommend the Bible. Whether it represents any part of your faith or not the language will get you seeing the world in new ways. King James version for me, but this idea works in many translations. Though it is not strictly speaking a book of poetry, I’d also recommend The Fireside Book of Folksong, for the same reason.

Works by early Christian Irish poets, and also the ancient Irish cycles of myth, which mix poetry and prose are eye openers for the traveler, too, whether or not you’re going to Ireland. Shakespeare. Walt Whitman. Robert Frost. Coming up to more recent times, Wendell Berry, whose work is  based in American landscape. Carrie Newcomer is better known as a musician, but she is a very fine poet as well.

KD: Your question was about places I have not yet been, after all.

Moscow: do you remember that scene at the end the movie Dr. Zhivago where Lara disappears in to the streets of Moscow? Moscow — all of Russia, really — has always struck me as enigmatic and very far away. There’s the sound of the balalaika, too.

Ann Arbor has, I’m told, a great food scene, and I know it has a top folk music venue, The Ark. There’s the university as well. I’ve a number of friends in the midwest and we don’t get to see each other often enough. Ann Arbor would be a good crossroads for us all to gather together and explore all that.

Salzburg: the music of course, both Mozart and the traditional music of that region of Austria. I also have to put some of my interest in Salzburg at the doorsteps of Julie Andrews and Samantha Brown. Julie, because how could you watch the opening sequence of Sound of Music and not want to explore those mountains? Samantha because on an episode of Passport to Europe she went to Salzburg in the middle of winter. It looks wonderful and intriguing then too.

ATL: How can travelers get the most out of the music of a place they are visiting?

A View from Kerry's window in Ireland

KD: Listen — to the music, and to the speech of the people you meet, the sound ofwind and water, to sounds of street and countryside, the stories people tell. All these are part of the sound of  place and people as much as is the music. As I am also a photographer, I’d add that you can often hear the music of a place through what you see.

Be aware that every country and every culture has more than one sort of music. And that every person hears music differently.

Allow time for what you hear to sink in.

What lovely ideas to take with us as we travel. And a good reminder–”allow time for what you hear to sink in”–that could apply to words as well as music, I think.  Thanks so much Kerry for your thoughtful replies. And please note, Kerry Dexter owns the copyright to all photos here. Please do not reuse without express permission.

My most special musical moment when traveling came when I went to the New Zealand Biennial Arts Festival in Wellington.  We attended a Maori sing at their old wooden-floored town hall, and the audience was nearly all Maori who chanted and stomped along.  Then we went to a jazz concert and I found myself filled with pride that this native American music was so popular so far away from our shores.  What special musical experiences have you had while traveling?

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Boggy field, Culloden, Scotland

Destination: Scotland

Inspiration: Museum at Culloden Visitor’s Center

By Dr. Jessie Voigts

Imagine the moors of the Scottish Highlands – it’s a rainy, misty day, with a bit of a chill in the air. The sunken bogs are wreathed in fog, and human noise is eerily absent – just a raven’s caw in the air. You almost feel as if you’ve stepped back in time – maybe you have?

You’re at Culloden, the site of the battle that changed the course of Scottish, British – well, truly, world history. On April 16, 1746, the Jacobite army fought the British army, to reclaim the throne of Britain for Bonnie Prince Charlie. It was an incredibly uneven battle – the Jacobites weren’t fully prepared, were starving and cold. A surprise night attack plan failed, and in the day, the exhausted Jacobite soldiers surged to their death.

Culloden tower, Scottland

As the National Trust for Scotland web site says:

Towards one o’clock, the Jacobite artillery opened fire on government soldiers. The government responded with their own cannon, and the Battle of Culloden began.

Bombarded by cannon shot and mortar bombs, the Jacobite clans held back, waiting for the order to attack. At last they moved forwards, through hail, smoke, murderous gunfire and grapeshot. Around eighty paces from their enemy they started to fire their muskets and charged. Some fought ferociously. Others never reached their goal. The government troops had finally worked out bayonet tactics to challenge the dreaded Highland charge and broadsword. The Jacobites lost momentum, wavered, then fled.

Hardly an hour had passed between the first shots and the final flight of the Prince’s army. “Although a short battle by European standards, it was an exceptionally bloody one.

Before we headed to Scotland, I taught our daughter the history of Scotland, the political and personal struggles, the way that the conquering English (and earlier, the Vikings, Romans, Dál Riatans from Ireland) changed everything. She was fascinated, and wherever we were in Scotland, she wondered what happened in history there.

One of the best places to learn about and experience Scottish History is the Culloden Visitor Centre, located just south of Inverness, Scotland.

Opened in 2007, the Culloden Visitor Centre is run by the National Trust for Scotland. It’s a low-slung building made of local stones, and doesn’t impact the landscape as much as enhance it.

Once inside the visitor centre, we learned the small details of history – the spent and flattened bullets, found on the moors decades later; clothing; maps showing troop movements; weapons; an interactive battlefield map; costumed troops wandering the halls; voices and videos.

Leanach Cottage Scotland

And then…we went outside. We took along the personal audios available from the desk at the door. We walked into the misty rain, along clear paths through the battlefield. We saw Leanach Cottage – an original cottage, still on the battlefield hundreds of years later. I was surprised by the closeness of the sheep, grazing in the farmland nearby.

We wandered the paths, avoided slugs stretched out, listened to history, and FELT the spirit of Culloden, surrounding us. I teared up at the Clan grave markers, gazed at the wet marsh off the path (wondering HOW those soldiers were able to fight there), and honored those that had fought so hard for their country and beliefs. Our daughter stretched her time out, going back to certain parts of the long battlefield, looking off into the hills while listening hard. She did NOT want to leave. We closed the place down, the very last ones to leave – and we had a difficult time exiting. Culloden had a firm hold on our souls.

Clan Fraser Marker, Culloden Scotland

Jessie Voigts, of Wandering Educators, is a regular Contributor to A Traveler’s Library, bringing us cultural inspirations for travel.

All of the photos in this post are the property of Jessie Voigts. Please do not use without permission.

Note from Vera Marie: I have frequently been inspired by a museum to look more deeply into a place. For instance, when I went to Ireland, I was inspired by the  Blascaod Centre in Dún Chaoin (Dunquin) on the Dingle Peninsula and learned about the people of the Blasket Islands.  Have you visited a museum that enriched your travel? Please share, so we can visit, too.

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Book Cover, Scottish Miscellany

Destination: Scotland

Book: Scottish Miscellany: Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Scotland the Brave
by Jonathan Green (2010)

A GUEST POST by Kerry Dexter

Imagine sitting in a pub of a rainy afternoon with an erudite gent who knows a lot about customs and history of Scotland. The conversation might range from why Scots celebrate Burns Night — and just who was Robert Burns anyway?– to who was the real Macbeth, and how to make haggis.

The experience of reading Scottish Miscellany is a bit like such a conversation. There are thirty- four questions, each with its own short chapter, and each with answers which usually ramble quite a bit away from what’s first being asked. Each chapter has many side bars, as well, which are headlined Did Ye Ken? and offer related — occasionally quite tangentially related — information on the ideas at hand in the main chapter.

It is sort of an odd lot of questions, really, which has its moments of being rather charming and will likely add to the book’s appeal as a gift, as will the many illustrations. Johnathan Green, a teacher who has written a number of popular books for children and who lives in England, offers his answers to the Loch Ness monster question, for example, as well as telling the differences between the sports of curling and shinty.

If you’ve spent a good bit of time in Scotland, as I have, you  will likely find things you think could have been handled differently. Placing the massacre at Glencoe in a passing sentence in a chapter on the McDonald’s hamburger chain struck me as quite jarring, for instance, and I found the chapter on what is Gaelic rather textbook in style. Occasionally at other times, history seems to be condensed rather too much to give a good idea of what happened, or why it matters today. .

That said, Scottish Miscellanycould make  a reasonable travel companion. It is easy to read in bits and bites,and perhaps a good nudge to explore further on the topics Green covers, as well as other aspects of Scottish life and history.

Kerry Dexter suggested songs for Scotland last year; Robert Burns music recently,  and she gives us music to accompany the Great American Road Trip each Wednesday over at Music Road. Thanks, Kerry. Always glad to have you come back and talk about your favorite places. (The book Scottish Miscellany was provided by the publisher, Skyhorse Publishing in hopes that it would be reviewed.)

You might also want to read about this Braveheart, mystery books set in Scotland, a post that listed many books on Scotland, plus more in the comments section.

Now it is your turn.  Do you like to read these books packed with facts–minor and major–about a place you want to visit? Or do you prefer a narrative to go with the information? And while you’re thinking about your comment, click on one of those buttons to tell others about this book review. Thanks!

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Celtic Cross

Destination: Ireland and Scotland

A GUEST POST by Jessie Vogts

Jessie writes: For our upcoming trip to Ireland and Scotland, I contacted several of my favorite travel writers and asked them for their top tips.   Here are  Favorite Books about Ireland and Scotland.

The Good Night and God Bless series provides a wealth of information on cheap, clean, safe and well located accommodation in the convent and monastery guesthouses of both countries (and England too). Also included are tourist activities, things to do and see and suggestions on where to eat (and drink). Trish Clark

Mozart’s (Jeanne’s daughter) favorite books about Ireland was a wonderful historical fiction series that starts with Under the Hawthorne Tree by Marita Conlon-McKenna. Jeanne, Soultravelers3

A Sense of Belonging to Scotland by Andy Hall. And my battered, years-old copy of Let’s Go: Ireland, probably, said Kerry Dexter, Music Road.

The Princes of Ireland: The Dublin Saga by Rutherford. Chris Christensen, Amateur Traveler

Tales of Old Ireland by Malachy Doyle is a lovely collection of favorite Irish folk tales that take on a modern sensibility without losing the tradition. And, though this is a children’s book, parents and kids alike will both fall for the whimsical and luminous illustrations. These are stories and images that can be enjoyed over and over again. Jeanine Barone, J, The Travel Authority

Ring Fort, Aran Islands

If you’re going to the less-visited Beara Peninusla, read about the old mines near Castletownbere in Daphne du Maurier‘s Hungry Hill.  For the Aran Islands, read a memoir by the people who lived there, like Peig, by Peig Saylors. Or read the memoir The Aran Islands by John Synge, or his plays based among the fisher folk of the islands. Vera Marie Badertscher, A Traveler’s Library

I love the Sawdays books – Special Places to Stay, which are excellent for finding quality & at times quirky accommodation to suit all budgets. Zoe Dawes

Top ten Irish writers to read:
1. William Butler Yeats
2. John Millington Synge
3. Brian Friel
4. Seamus Heaney
5. James Joyce
6. Colm Toibin
7. Roddy Doyle
8. Maeve Binchy
9.  Sean O’Faolain
10. Sean O’Casey

R. Todd Felton, author, A Journey into Ireland’s Literary Revival

Other tips that Jessie shared before her trip to Ireland and Scotland included:

Favorite Places in Ireland

Favorite Places in Scotland

Favorite Places To Eat in Ireland and Scotland

Since Jessie and her family returned from their trip, she has shared some of their experiences at Wandering Educators.  See this entire article in its original form to get links to many more helpful travel tips, by going to Wandering Educators. There you will also find many posts by Jessie describing her trip to Scotland and Ireland–accommodations, food, and travel.

I’m so glad that Jessie had a wonderful trip to these two countries. A Traveler’s Library has talked about Scotland and Ireland several times before (check the search box, or click on Destinations). I loved southwestern Ireland, but have much more of the country to see. And I’ve NEVER been to Scotland.  Working with Marie of Scotland Made Easy through her other identity as France Made Easy convinced me that one of these days, I’m going to have to ask her help me plan an Independent trip to Scotland.

The pictures above are the property of Vera Marie Badertscher. Please do not reproduce without permission.

What books (or movies) would you like to add to the list above?

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Album Cover

Destination: Scotland

Musical Album: Adoon Winding Nith (Whitefall Records) recorded by Emily Smith and Jamie McClennan

A GUEST POST by Kerry Dexter

Today, as I settle in to my Paris apartment, Kerry Dexter brings us musical travel to Scotland with the Scottish National poet, Robert Burns.

Toasting the New Year with Auld Lang Syne: when the name of Robert Burns comes up, that might be what you first call to mind . A well known song indeed, and he wrote a few others you likely know, among them My Love is Like a Red Red Rose and Comin’ Through the Rye. When Emily Smith and Jamie McClennan started thinking about doing an album of Burns songs, though, they wanted to go beyond the expected.

McClennon and Smith

They did that, in several ways in Adoon Winding Nith. Smith, award winning Scots Singer of the Year, and McClennan, who plays fiddle, guitar, and other instruments,  began building the album around songs connected with Dumfries and Galloway, an area in the southwest of Scotland which was the poet’s home for much of his life. It is also where Smith grew up, and in her own writing,  a landscape she often explores. The pair added several lesser known Burns songs, and a few well known ones, Smith says, “just because we like them!”

The result is a balanced and engaging program, which serves the Scottish national bard’s work well and showcases Smith’s and McClennan’s individual gifts and their creative work as a duo.

• The opening cut, Adoon Winding Nith, is an upbeat treatment of a happy song in which Burns moves quickly from musing on the charms of the River Nith to the charms of a lovely lady. It will have you taping your foot to the beat as the story unfolds.
• Silver Tassie is  a reflective ballad of a man heading off to war and leaving his beloved, which Smith and McClennan handle with gentleness and grace.
• You can almost see the lively farmer and his happy wife dancing along  in The Plooman.
• The eleven tracks wind to a quiet yet powerful close with Burns’ song of brotherhood and equality, A Man’s a Man for a’ That.

Smith and McClennan invite you in to the songs with singing and playing which, while staying true to spirit and tradition, make the music sound as fresh as though the songs were written yesterday. You have to think Robert Burns would approve.

Kerry Dexter suggested songs for Scotland last year, and she gives us music to accompany the Great American Road Trip each Wednesday over at Music Road. Thanks, Kerry. I love Robert Burns down to earth poetry, and I’m sure I’ll like the musical version as well.

What music do you listen to that reminds you of a country you’ve visited? Remember that your comments enter you in the Bella Italy Contest. And please share this interesting post with friends on Twitter or Facebook (handy buttons below).

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Mel Gibson, Braveheart Poster in Julie's Office

Destination: Scotland

Movie: Braveheart

Chasing Mel

A Guest Post by Julie Sturgeon

My husband is the one who chose to see the newly opened movie Braveheart that weekend in May 1995, and I went along knowing absolutely nothing about the story other than it was a Mel Gibson film. With looks like that, he could read legal proceedings and I’d sit there counting it money well spent.

I walked out 3 hours later with a new obsession.

I couldn’t get enough information about this William Wallace and his Scotland. I expressed it in the usual ways: saw Braveheart 5 times in the theater, bought the letterbox version of the movie, snagged the cutout stand from a local video store, custom framed the full-sized movie poster in my office. And then I joined a Braveheart discussion board and virtually met people from around the world who counted themselves as “big fans” to say the least.

One of the couples living in Scotland decided to host a convention in 2000, complete with an historian who would lead the group to Wallace historical sites, a private showing of the movie, and a feast with dancing at Stirling Castle. The same day I learned the dates, my mailbox spit out an ad for an Indiana University alumni travel trip to Stirling, Scotland over those same dates. Translation: awesome travel package price.

When God hits me on the head with a hammer that hard, I usually get the message .

I told my husband to enjoy studying for his master’s degree, grabbed my passport and spent three days devoting every waking moment to Braveheart. The IU Scotland group, of course, had a daily agenda like all group travel plans. I simply didn’t show up for their program. .

Instead, I walked through the church where they believe Wallace lived as a child, and stood at the well outside Glasgow where he was likely betrayed. We climbed every one of those winding staircase steps to the top of the Wallace Monument. I danced with cast members James Robinson II (young William Wallace) and Andrew Weir (young Hamish), now teenagers, in a medieval costume to the sounds of a Scottish pipe band.  A Paramount film crew captured much of it on tape, with excerpts shown on The Discovery Channel.

I wound up my travel weekend at a private showing of Braveheart, in an audience that included John Murtaugh, whose mug as Lochlan was larger than life on the screen in front of us. We had a nice conversation over lunch, although to be honest, I was so starstruck, I don’t remember a word of it.

My only regret is that Mel Gibson didn’t drop in as a surprise guest. I had my camera ready, even if I doubt I could have found the words to ask for a photo.

Julie Sturgeon

Julie Sturgeon is a 25-year journalist who is now putting her research skills to work as a travel agent finding vacation deals. When she is not chasing Mel Gibson,er-ah, William Wallace, you can also find her blogging at Curing Cold Feet.

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Music: Eddi Reader Sings Robert Burns (Eddi Reader) and Cuilidh, (Julie Fowlis)

When I travel to a place, I frequently buy music along the way, and when I get home, the music takes me back. I like to put New Orleans jazz on while I’m writing, or listen to bouzoukis when I’m writing about Greece. So I sought the advice of musicologist and traveler Kerry Dexter when I was planning a trip to Ireland last year.  Who should I listen to? Where were the best places to hear traditional music?  What should I buy?

It suddenly occurred to me, that if I am interested in music of a destination, perhaps the travelers who visit A Traveler’s Library would also like some musical advice. So I turned to Kerry Dexter again. She writes here about music for the traveler to Scotland, and tomorrow she will write about music for a traveler to Ireland. You can read more of her recommendations at Music Road, her blog about music and travel.

Kerry says, “As a musician and a writer, I’m most often following the music when I travel. Sound really brings you into a place, I find, whether that be  a place you’ve visited often or one where you’ve yet to travel.”

Sounds of Scotland

Eddi Reader singing at Celtic Connections in Glasgow

When Eddi Reader was growing up in Glasgow, she thought the poetry of Robert Burns she had to read at school — he is Scotland’s national bard — was not for the likes of her, that it was set apart and too fancy. But as a Scot, and as a musician, she began to be drawn to his writing of daily life, of laughter, of love, of the Scottish landscape. Asked to do a couple of Burns songs with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Reader agreed. It wouldn’t be your usual orchestral concert, though.

“I wanted it to be a bit of a rough diamond,” she says, “so it’d sort of have that band in bar sound, circa 1787.”

Working with classical arranger Kevin McCrae and folk fiddler and producer John McCusker, she came up with a set of songs which bridged the two ideas. This music became the core of the album Eddi Reader Sings Robert Burns. [Note you can buy, or sample her songs at this Amazon link.] From the inviting Jamie Come Try Me through a quiet take on the familiar Auld Lang Syne, and as well with six bonus tracks added to the original release for the year of Homecoming Scotland, Reader invites the listener in to a musical experience at once conversational and reflective.

There’s  a rollicking Charlie Is My Darlin’, a passionate plea for social justice in Ye Jacobites,  affirmation of friendship in Willie Stewart, and a celebration landscape and reflection on change in Leezie Lindsay, a song which Reader developed from a fragment of  a chorus left by Burns. There’s also Wild Mountainside, by John Douglas, which sets love and trust in Scotland’s highland landscape, and several new jigs and reels interweaving the songs. It’s a set you have to think Robert Burns himself would enjoy.

Julie Fowlis at Celtic Connection, Glasgow

Julie Fowlis knows a bit about history in song too. She sings in Scottish Gaelic,  which she grew up speaking in North Uist in the Western Isles off the north coast of Scotland. No museum pieces on her album Cuilidh,[Note: sample or buy at Amazon at this link] though — even though some of the songs go back centuries, they tell of life and love and work, laughter and humor and what’s for dinner? Whether you understand Scottish Gaelic or not, you’ll hear all those things, along with rhythms of the sea, stories of history, ideas of change, and a taste of how people lightened their lives with song in earlier days, just as we do today.

“The weather was extreme, and the conditions were hard,” Fowlis says. “But they were very expressive people. They were always singing and writing poetry. It could be something light-hearted, like the food on the table or what washed up on the beach, or it could be something completely beautiful.

Hug Air a’Bhonaid Mhor, in English called Celebrate the Great Bonnet, makes a fine and lively opener, and ‘Ille Dunn,’S Toigh Leam Thu, My Brown Haired Boy, is a thoughtful ballad. There are English translations of the twelve songs in the liner notes for Cuilidh (that word means treasure or hidden, and is pronounced cooley), but really, just listen.

***

Kerry Dexter is an independent writer, editor, and photographer. She’s the former folk music editor at VH1.com and at Barnes and Noble Music, and a long time contributing writer to world music magazine Dirty Linen. Her work has  appeared in Strings, Ireland and the Americas, CMT, CBC, Symphony, The Music Hound Guides, and The Encyclopedia of the World History, among other publications. She writes about Irish, Scottish, and other sorts of music, and the creative practice of being a musician, at  Music Road.

Photographs by Kerry Dexter.

If you want to see more about Scotland: Books Suggested by a Reader and Mysteries  Set in Scotland and Kerry Dexter on more Scottish music at Music Roads. And don’t miss Kerry’s  recommendation on Irish Music.

Thanks, Kerry. Kerry will be checking in to reply to any questions or comments you have about her recommendations for Scottish music.

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Authors: Ian Rankin and Alexander McCall Smith

Nope, we’re not talking Loch Ness Monster here.  Some readers recommended some good mysteries for the traveler to read on the way to Scotland.

The British Isles seem to produce enormous numbers of mystery writers. But although Agatha Christie may have been the mother of the cozy mystery, Conan Doyle was not the first mystery story writer.  That distinction belongs to Edgar Alan Poe.

But back to Scotland, where some writers have attracted our readers’ attention.

Ian Rankin, chosen by reader Coleen, has an intriguing website that includes a map of Edinburgh with pinpoints for locations in his series of Rebus mysteries.  Rankin wrote a book a year about his popular detective from 1987 to 2007. The web site describes the importance of Edinburgh to the books. “Edinburgh plays an important role throughout the Rebus novels: a character intself, as brooding and as volatile as Rebus.” WELL! Surely a traveler to Scotland must read those books!

Alexander Mc Call Smith, says Jessie Voights. I have to agree that he is a fun, light read. I have only read one of his Scotland mysteries, in the Philosopher Club Series starring Isabel Dalhousie.  He has a second group of mysteries, the 44 Scotland Street series. The 44 Scotland Street cast of characters live in an apartment house, giving the writer plenty of room to develop characters and plots. It sounds like it is made for television. I first met him through reading his mysteries set in Africa, The Ladies’ Number One Detective Agency, which is guaranteed to make you fall in love with the characters and laugh all the way to the last page. Don’t miss Mr. McCall’s web site. It is a much fun as his books.

I’m sure there are many more mystery writers in Scotland and their fans will speak up. We’re listening….

And more about books for Scotland here: Books on Scotland Suggested by a Reader and Sounds of Scotland.

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Destination: Scotland

The Scottish Flower, Thistle

Books by: H. V. Morton, George Blake, Edwin Muir, Kathleen Jamie, and others.

When I asked for suggestions for books for travelers to ten specific destinations, I put Scotland on the list. Alasdair Pettinger, who edits the valuable Studies in Travel Writing web site, had some definite ideas about Scottish travel literature, and literature about Scotland for travelers.

“I find the most engaging travel books were written in the 1920s and 30s: H. V. Morton, In Search of Scotland (1929) and In Scotland Again (1933); George Blake, The Heart of Scotland (1934); and Edwin Muir, Scottish Journey (1935).” He goes on to explain,  “They proceed from an imaginative documentary impulse that is missing from recent travelogues which tend to be more introspective and inclined to dwell on cultural identity.”

I learned that H. V. Morton was one of the most popular (or THE most popular, according to the speaker) travel writers of the twentieth century in the British Isles.  He traveled around the world and wrote 50 books, many of them titled “In Search of….” He gave practical information along with descriptions of the country or city he was visiting, and appealed to the middle class reader. Perhaps it is not fair, but I picture him as kind of an early Rick Steves, encouraging people to travel, in an age when Scotland was practically unknown to the average Englishman.

Muir, on the other hand, was known as a novelist and poet. According to reviewers of his only travel book, he  writes beautifully but politically about his subject. I could find very little about Blake, and my local library does not have his books, so it will be some time before I can read him. Perhaps Mr. Pettinger or another reader can enlighten me.

Despite his predilection for the earlier writers, Pettinger  lists some more recent books by Scotsmen either returning to their country, or rediscovering Scotland.

Invisible Country (1984) by James Campbell

A Search for Scotland (1989) by R. F. MacKenzie

Four Scottish Journeys (1991) by Andrew Eames

Native Stranger (1995) by Alistair Scott

In Waiting (1998) by Michael W. Rusell

He also mentions an Englishman, Charles Jennings, whose Faintheart: An Englishman Ventures North of the Border (2002) is a Bill Bryson-type book. “(the book)hides some perceptive observations behind its self-deprecating humour. And I would rate it more highly than the Scottish sections of round-Britain accounts by Bill Bryson and Paul Theroux,” says our Scotland contributor.

Pettinger saves his highest praise for a contemporary Scottish writer, Kathleen Jamie. “But no one captures the intensity of the lived moment indoors or outdoors better than Kathleen Jamie in Findings, 2005” A new edition of the book, whose subtitle is “Essays on the Natural and Unnatural World” came out in 2007.

I have found some quotes from this book, “Once, on a flawless sandy beach in Donegal, I found five silver fishes, freshly abandoned by a wave, glittering and bright as knives presented in a canteen,” that make me most eager to read it. She is a poet, even when writing prose, and her sharp observations remind me of Ann Morrow Lindbergh’s Gift From the Sea.

See more about Scotland in Music of Scotland and Mystery books in Scotland. If you like Scotland, you may also want to look at the posts on Ireland. I have written about McCarthy’s Bar, the Beara Peninsula, and the Blasket Islands. And don’t miss R. Todd Felton’s book on Literary Ireland.

Well, there you have it, from a between-the-wars perspective, through home-coming books, and humor, to the observations of a poet.  Do you agree with Alasdair’s leaning to the writers from early 20th century? Can you add to my very sketchy research about them? Let’s talk.

Photograph courtesy of John Haslem of Scotland,  “foxypar4″ via flicker.

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©2012 A Traveler's Library. All Rights Reserved.