"Christmas Questions" SIR,—Not to be mistaken for a Scottish Nationalist
must be among the minor cares of all sensible Scotsmen. But I have an anticipatory misgiving about what may be the published solution to Question No. 18 (k) of the Six Fellows of St. John's (on whom be peace, according to their deserts): "About what English regions do the follow- ing novelists chiefly write-? . . . S. R. Crockett." I suspect that we may find the answer to be Galloway and Carrick. I was brought up largely on a diet of Crockett; I am Carrick-bred, Galloway-raised and Carrick-domiciled; I can think of no English region in which Crockett dabbled; and although the Lords of Galloway, which at one time included Carrick, sometimes supported the English against the kings of Scotland, neither the Province itself nor its umquhile component were ever part of England.
A similar irritation flaunted itself a few months ago in The Times Literary Supplement, when a book called English Travellers of the Seventeenth Century, or some such title, was reviewed there, and the greater part of the review devoted to the journeys of William Lithgow, who was entirely of Scotch descent (The word "Scotch," incident- ally, though good enough for William Lithgow, George Buchanan, Robert Burns and Walter Scott, has for some reason come into dis- repute among Nationalists, who use its hesitant synonyms of "Scots" and " Scottish " as a sort of badge, and thereby give rise to a lot of extra nonsense.) Good manners and accuracy alike require that neither Crockett nor Lithgow be described as English; and the Spectator, The Times Literary Supplement and Gentle Johnians who err all embarrass one, and strengthen the cause of the cranks, when they drop such bricks as these. I shall be confounded, of course, if I find that Crockett wrote a series of novels about (say) Wessex which I do not know about, or if I have risen to a fly deliberately cast.—Yours faithfully,
BERNARD FERGUSSON.
137 Boulevard de la Reine. Versailles, France.
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