It was 249 years ago that James Boswell and Samuel Johnson, famous writers from England, traveled for several months in Scotland: August-November, 1773. In 2015, I wrote a Books & Beyond about Mendelssohn’s trip to Scotland in 1829. That’s the year he began to write his “Scotch” Symphony; it was first performed in Leipzig, Germany, in 1842.

I wanted to read more about Scotland, since my ancestry examination confirmed that I’m 53% Scottish. I knew my mother’s father’s ancestors (surnames Blake and Campbell) did come from Scotland. The book I’ll write more about discusses the 1850s when some Scots immigrated to America, some settling in South Carolina.

The singer Glen Campbell (1936-2017) is described as Scottish. The actor Sir Sean Connery (1930-2020) was Scottish. A well-known Scottish actress is Rose Leslie. She was in the television show “Downton Abbey.”

First I want to tell you about two children’s books I read. “Loch Ness Monster,” c 2011, is by David Schach. He writes about a man named Tim Dinsdale who was in Scotland in 1960, looking in the lake for the monster. Loch is the Scottish word for lake. On the sixth day he was there he saw a large shape moving in the water, probably 16 feet long, 6 feet wide, and 5 feet high. The book has photos people have taken in 1934 and 1977. In 1996, “Local resident Gary Campbell sees a large black hump rising above the surface of Loch Ness,” (pp. 12-13).

“Loch Ness Monsters: Are They Real?” Is a 24 page paperback with photographs and a short text on every page. This book tells about the possibility of Edna MacInnes seeing a “huge, dark shape in the water” (p. 4). The last page of the book has a glossary, two websites where you can learn more about possible sightings, and two more book titles.

The deep historical book I will review is “Whisky, Kilts, and the Loch Ness Monster: Traveling through Scotland with Boswell and Johnson,” written by William W. Starr, c 2011. Each one of the 23 chapters in the book begins with a small map with the towns shown that Starr visited.

It was interesting to me that Starr didn’t write that much about the Loch Ness Monster. My imagination tells me that in his first copy he did, but either he or the publisher, University of South Carolina Press, decided to leave that section out of the book.

Here’s basic information from Wikipedia: The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (UK), since 1922, comprises four constituent countries: England, Scotland, and Wales (which collectively make up Great Britain), as well as Northern Ireland, (variously described as a country, province, or region).

One ever-present subject I want to remember is castles. I did discover that Scotland isn’t the only country with castles. Even the United States has castles. One site you can look on for this information is www.theculture trip.com. There are thirteen U.S. castles pictured and described, though none of them are in the Midwest.

Whenever Starr stops his traveling, it’s usually to visit a castle. On his way to visit a castle, in the town he would go to a cafe, a bookstore, and a post office. In the town of Inverary, Starr stays in a hotel where Boswell and Johnson stayed. They got there on horses; Starr is driving his car, often on one-lane roads. This hotel had been there since 1755. Robert Burns had stayed there in 1787.

So yes, I got the Robert Burns book off our library shelves. The book includes a memoir, poems, songs, epigrams and epitaphs, and general correspondence. Here’s a verse from “Grace after Dinner:”

O Thou, in whom we live and move,

Who madest the sea and shore;

Thy goodness constantly we prove,

And grateful, would adore. (p. 188).

When I spent more time with this book, I found his poem “Halloween.” It’s 29 stanzas. One of his most well-known poems is “Tam o’ Shanter.”

Robert Louis Stevenson was born in Scotland. One of his poems I remember reading from my younger days is “The Swing.” It’s one of the poems in the book A Child’s Garden of Verses:

How do you like to go up in a swing,

Up in the air so blue?

Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing

Ever a child can do! (p. 46)

I cut out a brief article from the Oct. 10, 2022, Independent. It starts “The leader of the Scottish government said Sunday that she will push on with her campaign to take Scotland out of the United Kingdom…”

Many of the books I’ve referred to are available at Marshall-Lyon County Library. You will also find books to read about your genetic background and there is free access to Ancestry.com and Fold3 in the library. marshalllyonlibrary.org