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I like to have quotations ready for every occasions - they give one's ideas so pat and save one the trouble of finding expression adequate to one's feeling.

Robert Burns

Statements in prose and verse which reflect all aspects of Scottish life and outlook from the 1^st century to the present day.  New quotes added every week.  The quotations are not restricted to native Scots but include observations from abroad which help us, in the words of our National Bard, Robert Burns, "To see oursels as others see us"    

Robert Burns (1759-1796)

Edina! Scotia’s darling seat!
   All hail thy palaces and tow’rs,
Where once beneath a Monarch’s feet
   Sat Legislation’s sov’reign pow’rs!

(Address to Edinburgh 1786)

Professor Richard Demarco

I thank God for the Edinburgh Festival. It gives Edinburgh a sense of its true destiny as a city worthy of comparison with all those Italian cities that first gave meaning to the word ‘civilised’.

(1988)
 

Joan Lingard

And [Edinburgh’s] Princes Street with its split personality: on the northern side plate-glass windows offering gowns and green-grocery, settees and shortbread, books and bales of cloth; and a historic, jagged skyline flanking its southern side with smoke puffing up from the trough of the gardens against the black silhouette of the castle and rock.

(The Prevailing Wind 1964)

Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832)

If I were to choose a spot from which the rising or setting sun could be seen to the greatest possible advantage, it would be that wild path winding around the foot of the high belt of semi-circular rocks, called Salisbury Crags, and marking the verge of the steep descent which slopes down into the glen on the south-eastern side of the city of Edinburgh.

(The Heart of Midlothian 1818)

Robert Southey (1774-1843)

Well may Edinburgh be called Auld Reekie! And the houses stand so one above another, that none of the smoke wastes itself upon the desert air before the inhabitants have derived all the advantages of its odour and its smuts, You might smoke bacon by hanging it out of the window.

(Journal of a Tour in Scotland in 1819)

Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson (1850-1894)

I saw rain falling and the rainbow drawn
On Lammermuir. Hearkening I heard again
In my precipitous city beaten bells                        [Edinburgh]
Winnow the keen sea wind.

(To My Wife, dedication of Weir of Hermiston)

Robert Garioch Sutherland, “Robert Garioch”

In simmer when aa sorts foregather
in Embro tae the ploy,
folk seek oot freens tae hae a blether
or foes they’d fain annoy.
Smorit wi British Railways’ reek
frae Glesca or Glen Roy
or Wick, they come tae a week
o cultivated joy
                                       or three
at Embro tae the ploy.

(Embro tae the Ploy)

Flagnote:  According to the poet Douglas Young this byous poem on the Edinburgh Festival by one of Edinburgh’s favourite poets was first printed in his publication ‘Scottish Verse 1851-1951 selected by Douglas Young’ in 1952.

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SONGS AND BALLADS
from The Blairgowrie Festival - 1968

Twenty-one Scottish songs, as sung by a variety of traditional singers at the Blairgowrie Festival in August 1968 and published by The Traditional Music and Song Association of Scotland, priced 1/- (5p).

 THE HEALTH TO ALL TRUE LOVERS
Traditional as sung by Dave Cochrane

Now here’s the health to all true lovers
For here’s the health to where she be
For this very night I will go and see her
Although she lives many miles from me

Oh let this night be as dark as dungeon
And not one star to e seen above
I will walk every step without stumble
Safe into the arms of my own true love

When I arrived at my true love’s window
I dearly knelt upon a stone
And peering through a wee hole in the window
Cried “Hey bonnie Annie dae ye lie alone”

She lifted her head from her snow white pillow
She layed her hand on her lily-white breasts
And cried “Who is that at my bedroom window
Disturbing me from my long night’s rest”

“Tis I your love your ane true love laddie
Open the door and let me in
For I am tired of a long night’s journey
And besides I am drenched to the skin”

She opened the door with the greatest of pleasure
She opened the door and let me in
We both shook hands and embraced each other
Until the night was well spent in

The cocks may craw but I maun leave ye
The burns may row frae bank tae brae
But remember that I am just a plooman laddie
And the morn’s not an idle day

Flagnote:  A night-visiting song which appears under several titles and in varying forms which was very popular during the Scottish Folk Song Revival.

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SCOTTISH FOOD, TRADITIONS AND CUSTOMS 

" The Federation chose the bicycle as its emblem, because the first pedal driven bicycle was invented in 1839 by a young blacksmith called Kirkpatrick McMillan, who lived at Courthill Smithy, Penpont, near Thornhill. The front wheel was 32 inches in diameter and the rear wheel 40 inches. The machine weighed 57 lbs.

In 1842 he decided to visit his brothers in Glasgow, and travelling at seven miles per hour, he took sixteen hours to reach Old Cumnock, and five hours the following day to reach Glasgow. News of his arrival had spread before him, and people everywhere turned out to watch this 'Devil on Wheels'. Unfortunately he knocked down a little girl in Glasgow, and was fined five shillings, the first of its kind. The Magistrate, after being given a demonstration of the bicycle, was so impressed that he paid the fine himself. Since no copyright had been taken out to protect his invention, copies of his machine were built and sold by men who had seen him pass by on his epic journey.

Kirkpatrick McMillan worked with his father in the Smidy at Courthill until the latter died in 1853. He married in 1854, and, of his six children, only two survived. His wife died in 1865, aged thirty-two and he died in 1878, aged sixty-five."