Book reviews: The Lore Of Scotland | Scottish Ballet

Published on Friday 1 January 2010 17:52

THE LORE OF SCOTLAND EDITED BY JENNIFER WESTWOOD AND SOPHIA KINGSHILL (Random House, £25)

WE don't exactly go short of light and frothy treatments of Scotland's traditions, while one of those traditions – sentimentalising our mythic past – is anything but dead. Readers after something a bit more serious have had the option of working their way through dusty tomes in dimly lit libraries, but few of us have the time or motivation for do-it-yourself scholarship of this kind.

This superbly organised and handsomely presented book bridges the gap between the trivialising and the utterly forbidding, offering clear, concise and up-to-date information on Scottish legends, on a place-by-place basis.

From the Guidman of Ballengeich to the Wizard of Balwearie, from Old Red-Cap of Kirkpatrick-Fleming to Yellow Foot of Skye, we are introduced to a country whose every contour resonates with ancient wisdom and with deep magic.

Sadly, the distinguished folklorist Jennifer Westwood died before her work on this wonderful reference companion could be completed. But her collaborator Sophia Kingshill saw it through in the utmost style.

SCOTTISH BALLET

BY MARY BRENNAN

(Saraband, 25)

SO unassailable is its status at the very centre of the country's cultural scene, you'd never imagine that Scottish Ballet started life in Bristol.

In the 1950s, though, when the Western Theatre Ballet was born, British ballet was bounded in the north by Sadler's Wells and in the south by Covent Garden: South-west England? Scotland? Same difference.

But the funding was in Scotshire, so a carpet-bagging company came north under the now legendary leadership of Peter Darrell; over the decades that followed, it developed a new identity as a genuinely and inseparably "Scottish" Ballet.

This inspiringly written, stunningly illustrated celebration follows a very special company through one of the great artistic adventures of our time.