Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 17

Project GutenbergProject Gutenberg · United StatesMar 2023

Rating 2.5
Word count
536K words
Chapters
54

Tags

Motivation and Growth Love EntanglementsLocal NarrativeLegendary TalesFolktalesShort Story CollectionPopular NarrativeLocal ColorFolk CustomsScottish FlavorLocal Customs

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 17 by Wilson and LeightonAuthor: ,Language: English, Class: PR: Language and Literatures: English literature, Release Date: Oct 19, 2008

Editor's review

This is Volume 17 of Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, a public-domain English-literature eBook prepared and released by Project Gutenberg. The value of such a collection lies not in the complete structure of a single long work but in gathering folk narratives, local characters, and regional legends of the Scottish Borders, bearing clear marks of oral tradition and local color. As one volume in a series, Volume 17 suits readers already interested in Scottish folk tales or nineteenth-century regional narrative, who can dip into it piece by piece. Being a public-domain electronic text, it carries no modern notes or background commentary; place names, dialect, and historical context may require readers to look things up themselves. There is no need to read it straight through; it works better as a collection to open at any time and put down after a story or two. For scholars of regional literature or folk narrative it is usable primary material; for the general casual reader, it calls for some patience with English and an interest in Scottish culture.

Who it's for

A good fit for

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Reading tips

  1. No need to read in order; start with pieces whose titles or openings draw you in.
  2. Jot down place names and dialect words as you go, then look up the background afterward.
  3. Read one or two stories a day to keep the loose rhythm proper to a collection.
  4. For research, make a simple index of pieces by character or theme.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39
  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43
  44. 44
  45. 45
  46. 46
  47. 47
  48. 48
  49. 49
  50. 50
  51. 51
  52. 52
  53. 53
  54. 54

FAQ

Can I read Volume 17 without having read the first sixteen? Volumes of such collections usually consist of relatively independent pieces, so Volume 17 does not presuppose the first sixteen. Regional background and narrative style may recur across the series; reading Volume 17 directly will not break the plot, though you will lack accumulated familiarity with the overall character.
Is the Scottish dialect in the book hard to understand? The materials provide no specific account of linguistic difficulty, but such regional stories often retain dialect expressions and old spellings. Gutenberg editions generally add no modern notes, so readers may need a dictionary or background sources. Those with a good foundation in English reading and a willingness to look things up will fare more smoothly.
Is this book suitable as English-learning material? It can serve as extended reading but is not well suited as a systematic textbook. Dialect, historical place names, and old-fashioned expressions in the stories add to the burden of comprehension, and there are no vocabulary lists or exercises. For study, it is better to read selected pieces with a teacher or an annotated edition than to read straight through.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Project Gutenberg Author

Project Gutenberg is not a single author but a nonprofit digital library founded by Michael Hart in 1971 and one of the world's earliest free ebook platforms. It relies on volunteers to digitize, proofread, and freely distribute public-domain works and is now operated by the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Its collection contains 2,692 works, mainly religious texts, epics, and story collections, including the King James Bible and the Douay-Rheims volumes, the epic Mahabharata, a literal translation of the Arabian Nights, and Danish editions of the Old and New Testaments. Public information is limited, and its nature is closer to a public-interest compiling and dissemination body; these texts are open to the public, easy to consult and circulate, and have had a profound influence on the spread of ebooks and the preservation of public-domain resources.