Author: [STEWART (William Grant)]:
Title: The Popular Superstitions and Festive Amusements of the Highlanders of Scotland.
Description: Edinburgh: Printed for Archibald Constable and Company; and Hurst, Robinson, and Co. London. 1823. FIRST EDITION. 12mo, 178 x 101 mms., pp. xviii, 293 [294 blank, 295 - 296 adverts], including half-title, engraved frontispiece (foxed), uncut, original boards, paper label on spine; front hinge cracked, with autograph of W. A. Stables on top margin of recto of front free end-paper and in pencil on the top margin of the title-page, Sir George Nugent. Nugent is probably the illustrious military commander (17757 - 1849), the illegitimate son of Lieutenant-Colonel the Hon. Edmund Nugent, 1st foot guards, who died unmarried in 1771. In his History of British Folklore (1999) Richard Merser Dorson comments that Stewart's work was an attempt to carry out more systematically an attempt to classify supernatural beings. The Grimms relied heavily on Stewart's work in their translation of Croker's work on Irish fairy legends. Stewart tried to distinguish between, for example, fairies and witches, since many tales derived from oral traditions, which conflated all supernatural beings. By a curious coincidence, Sir Walter Scott wrote to his publisher, Constable, in March, 1823 saying, "I am thinking of a thing in the way of a supernumerary exertion which is revising and putting together what I have had by me for some years - a dialogue on Popular Superstitions. An Essay was read on this subject in the royal Society which put me in mind that I had some sheets on the subject...." Constable was ready to offer £500 for the copyright of this work, but Scott seems to have abandoned the project.

Keywords: superstition entertainment prose


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