Scotland at the end of the 18th century was a vastly different country from the Scotland of today. This book tells the story of changing times from those days in the words of Scottish men and women themselves. Several themes have been selected to illustrate the history of ordinary people doing everyday things, these are work, love, celebration, religion, sickness, shopping, and travel.
Here is William Cobbett visiting a peasant bothy outside Edinburgh in 1832; a first-hand account of the squalor of the Glasgow tenements between the Wars; middle-class affluence in early nineteenth-century Edinburgh; and life above and below stairs in the grand houses of the gentry in the 1950s.
The is reportage from the Clearances set beside the letters and diary entries of the first recreational explorers of the Highlands - the sportsmen and tourists. There is learning and playing, fishing and ploughing, suffering and praying, drinking and loving. In all these, the authors have an eye for the unusual, for the details which give the flavour of everyday life. This is the Scottish experience unadulterated and immediate.
Contents:
Illustrations
Glossary
1. Changing Times
2. Ordinary Homes
3. A Comfortable Life
4. At School
5. Starting Work
6. Fishing and Farming
7. Factory and Mine
8. Religion
9. Sex and Courtship
10. Drinking
11. Celebration
12. Leisure
13. Deprivation
14. Ill-Health
15. Crime
16. Travel
17. The Highlands and the Clearances
18. The Outsiders' Highlands
References
Index
