Uist

North Uist in History and Legend Like all the Hebrides, North Uist has a fascinating history, and a landscape scattered with historic sites, from Neolithic burial chambers and Iron Age forts, though medieval churches and battle-sites, to townships forged in the days of kelp trade, and the subsequent traumas of clearance and emigration. Of all the Western Isles, none has closer links with the turbulent history of Clan Donald than North Uist, and stories of their chiefs and battles are linked with sites all through the island, all set in a landscape which is one of the most varied and beautiful in the Hebrides. Bill Lawson has woven a tapestry of stories about the island and its people, drawing on formal recorded history and also the rich tradition of story and song in which the informal history of the people was passed down, but also incorporating many of his personal reminiscences of his travels through the island, to give a unique insight into North Uist and the life of its people through the ages.

A School in South Uist These are the memoirs of a teacher from England who became headmaster of Garrynemonie School in South Uist in the 1890s. At that time, the Hebrides were as remote and forbidding to mainlanders as the Antarctic is in the late-1990s. In the 1890s this island was one of the poorest districts in the Outer Hebrides. Roads were no more than rough tracks. Gaelic was the majority language, although children had to learn their lessons in English and few allowances were made for bilingual teaching. Epidemics were frequent and the school had to close its doors because of outbreaks of smallpox, whooping-cough, scarlet fever, mumps and measels. Rea's memoirs show how he strove to meet these difficulties. His pupils recall him as a sincere, hard-working man and an excellent teacher. This work reveals his powers of observation and his interest in the unfamiliar scenes and events he witnessed and recorded.

Stories from South Uist This collection includes every type of tale found on the island of South Uist, from Fingalian heroes and ghost stories to international folktales and humorous and historical anecdotes.

North Uist A stranger, upon landing at Lochmaddy, the principal harbour of North Uist, is apt to receive an unfavourable impression from the vast expanse of bogs occupying its east side, which is also absolutely treeless and relieved only by a few hills of no great elevation and by the tortuous recesses of salt water lochs penetrating its seaboard. Thus Erskine Beveridge opens his classic account of the archaeology and topography of North Uist, the island where he spent much of his life. Published in a limited edition in 1911 the book fetched extraordinary prices in the antiquarian market. The book was reprinted as a limited edition in 1999 by Birlinn and these are the last few copies of this reprint. The range and quality of Beveridge's work was not surpassed until the most recent series of Royal Commission inventories of the 1970s and 1980s and it is all the more extraordinary that this level of expertise and range of knowledge should be combined in one individual. Adding to the fascination of the book are more than 150 plates showing the island and its sites in a condition from which many have greatly changed. With sections from earliest times to the post Reformation times, sections on clan history, climate, topography, place names and much else besides, this is not simply the most important book ever written on North Uist but one of the finest works of scholarship ever produced on a Hebridean island.

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