Scotland the Strange - Weird Tales from Storied Lands

Scotland the Strange - Weird Tales from Storied Lands, edited by Johnny Mains / ISBN 9780712354547 / an attractive 307-page hardback published in 2023 by the British Library

***

Something was coming down the tide. It came down as quiet as a sleeping bairn, straight for him as he sat with his horse breasting the waters, and as it came the moon crept out of a cloud and he saw a glint of yellow hair.

From misty moors, crags and clifftops comes a hoard of eighteen strange tales gathered by Johnny Mains, award-winning anthologist and editor of the British Library anthology Celtic Weird. Sourced from Scotland’s storied literary heritage and bustling with witches, ghosts, devils and merfolk, this selection celebrates the works of treasured Scottish writers such as John Buchan, Robert Louis Stevenson, Dorothy K. Haynes and Neil M. Gunn alongside rare pieces by lesser-known authors – including two tales translated from Scots Gaelic.

Brooding in the borderlands where strange folklore, bizarre mythology and twentieth-century hauntings meet, this volume promises chills and shivers as keen and fresh as the wind-whipped wilds of Scotland.