THE PEAT FIRE FLAME By' Afasdair Alpin MacGregor
Mr. MacGregor claims that " the great bulk " of his collection of Highland folk-tales (Moray Press, rzs. 6d.) " con- sists of fresh, unpublished material " ; any reader familiar with Martin, Pennant; Scott, Campbell, and other travellers and folk-lorists will, however, recognise a number of old friends which gain little from Mr. MacGregor's re-telling. His language is tiresomely mock-poetic (" In sooth," " in this wise," &c.), and he is an expert in the comment that adds nothing to the story : " Truly, this is a ghost tale, and a tale of the ` second sight.' " He has grouped his material by subject-matter—Faery Music, The Brownie, The Seal-Folk, Well Lore, Folk Tales of the '15 and the '45, and so on ; he has not applied any critical standards, and ignores such questions as what constitutes reliable evidence about supernatural apparitions. The book is illustrated with the author's own 'excellent photographs of the High- lands and Islands, which, however, suffer from being doubled up two to the page.
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