This work is not, strictly speaking, occult in the main sense- however, folklore is often spiritual to an extent, and with this work, that is definitively the case. Written at the end of the 19th century, it contains anecdotal stories by the author- tales he heard or things he witnessed as a youth in Scotland. Some of the tales are hilarious, some bizarre, and a few touch on occult or cryptozoological topics such as the tendency of the old to tell spooky stories of kelpies and hags to small children (which the author- apparently a Reverend- deemed to be dismaying and bad for their spiritual development.) There's one oddball tale here involving the local madman forcing a schoolboy to march around the town reciting a Bible story, at the hazard of a beating. The Christian nature of many of the stories (and the author) gives the work a decidedly pseudoreligious bent.
As I state in the foreword, some passages are in Scottish language- which is not fully the same as modern English (substantial numbers of terms are used that the average English or American reader would not understand.) For these passages I suggest sounding them out, and they can be more easily understood than simply reading them. Sometimes the context of the terms together makes the meaning clear. Altogether a good work, if a bit on the strange side.
170 pages.
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