Scotch Songs and Ballads

Illustrated and Translated

Featuring 12 full page illustrations by various artists

First published in 1893, “Scotch Songs and Ballads” is George MacDonald’s only collection of poems written exclusively in his mother tongue. Now fully translated for English speakers, this volume shows all that is best in his writing, with certain sidelights of humour and pathos that come less to the fore in his English works. At times it reminds one of his great countryman Robert Burns* but with the same deep-planted spiritual roots that are found in The Diary of An Old Soul. Indeed readers of the latter may well be delighted to learn that there is more of MacDonald’s poetry worth their discovering, and that “Scotch Songs and Ballads” (together with the recently published “Essential Poems”) is a worthy counterpart to that more celebrated offering.

*The Deil’s Forhooit His Ain, for instance, captures something of the essence of Address to the Deil and The Laverock is not unlike To a Mouse in its sympathy with nature.