Highways and Byways in Galloway and Carrick. By the Rev.
C. H. Dick. With Illustrations by Hugh Thomson. (Macmillan and Co. 6s. net.)—Most English people, as Mr. Dick says very truly, know nothing of Galloway except through the novels of S. R. Crockett. Yet, as his book shows with the help of many exquisite sketches by Mr. Hugh Thomson, the south-western corner of Scotland abounds in wild hills and lochs, delightful old towns like Kirkcudbright or Newton Stewart, grim castles like Thrieve or Dunure, and stately ruined abbeys like Sweetheart or Croasraguel, and is wonderfully rich in history, folk-lore, and legend. The feuds of the Kennodys of Carrick, to which Mr. Dick gives a chapter, would fill a book ; there is nothing more horrible in Scottish history than the roasting of Allan Stewart, the lay Commendator of Croasraguel, at Dunure by the Earl of Cassilis, who had been ousted from the abbey lands by the King, but forced Stewart by torture to give them up. Bruce and the Douglas line, the Covenanters and the smugglers, and, of course, Burns in his connexion with Kirkoswald and Dumfries, fill many of Mr. Dick's pleasant pages. As an example of his accuracy in dcacribing a place and recalling its historic associations we should single out the excellent chapter on the Loch Trool country, which is as impressive a piece of wild nature as can be found in Britain. Mr. Dick's book is worthy of Galloway and of the admirable series in which it appears.
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