Rich in legend and song

There is an immediate problem for anyone producing a guide to places in Scotland with literary connections: as Walter Scott wrote in Marmion, ‘Nor hill, nor brook we paced along/ But had its legend or its song.’ Many years ago when the Scottish Borders was marketing itself as the ‘Land of Creativity’ I assembled a database of references which stretched to well over 1,000 entries — for example, the village of Yetholm crops up in a strange extended simile in Malcolm Lowry’s posthumous October Ferry to Gabriola.

Then there is Scotland’s propensity for memorialising its own writers. The Scott Monument is only the most obvious example. Within a few miles of where I live there is a memorial plaque to Henry Francis Lyte, writer of ‘Abide With Me’ on Ednam Bridge, a stone’s throw from an obelisk to James Thomson, the poet of The Seasons; a gothic folly on Denholm Green to Scott’s friend and collaborator John Leyden, next to a tablet commemorating James Murray, the first editor of the OED. Depending on the level of granularity, a guide could be as short as a pamphlet or as long as the Chilcot Report.

Finally, this is a crowded field with a long history. Robert Chambers, born in Peebles, was the author of Illustrations of the Author of Waverley in 1822, before he wrote the Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation; Professor Alan Riach of the University of Glasgow produced Literary Scotland in 2011; the City of Literature Trust in Edinburgh has produced maps and apps and suchlike.

Garry MacKenzie’s book is cogent and lucidly written and is, I suspect, aimed at readers interested in coming to Scotland rather than students of Scottish literature. The chronology of Scottish literature is broad but accurate.