ABSTRACT
SOME OF THE MOST valuable materials available are not books but objects. The terrain and climate of Scotland, to those who know them well, are still today illustrations of forces that shaped her development. The names of Scottish hamlets and towns, the tracks upon the hills, the harbours and firths, the tideraces in the narrows off the north and west coasts, are all memorials of past events. Castles still stud the land; often in remarkably good preservation, for they were used later here than in more settled countries and by families who often could not afford to adapt them expensively to the taste of successive generations. Many of these have been studied, and their history and changing structure explained, particularly in the work of the late W.Douglas Simpson. In the older burghs of the country there are walls or houses of early date and distinctive style and, in the museums, household goods and weapons. Scottish silver in the Royal Scottish Museum in Edinburgh, or Scottish coins in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, provide artefacts that had a life of use as well as beauty. That the country benefited by ideas from elsewhere is borne out in the styles of her cathedral churches, the Dutch gables of houses in the eastern coastal towns, and the successful incorporation of the classicism of Diocletian’s empire in the stately houses designed by Robert Adam. And to the student prepared to get information by ear, the unique richness and depth of two streams of folksong, Gaelic and Scottish, is an illustration of the feeling of the nation.
