Sir Walter Scott's novel The Pirate was based on the adventures of a Scottish/Orkneyan sailor named John Gow. I could not find a copy of this book in The Jacksonville Public Library and it was not available on Project Gutenberg for a download. Happily google books had a copy and I used ecalibre to make copies available to my Nook and my wife's Kindle. First editions are nice to own but not carrying around in a book bag for reading.
Today was the annual celebration of Scott's birthday with a film, shepherd's pie and dance. The best film I could find was about a Scottish pirate named Captain Kidd. Not the same as John Gow, but their end was the same. Well almost. Gow apparently requested that his end be quick so the hangman grabbed Gow's legs for a quick dispatch but with the effect of snapping the rope and requiring Gow to be hung again.
A good read but apparently The Book Wraith can soon claim this book for his own unless someone puts it back on the library shelf or in the book store.
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- Book Wraith
- This blog will present Scottish books of influence for discussion. Read them now before they disappear into the mists of time.
Scottish Culture
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3 comments:
I haven't finished reading it yet but it would be too bad if the book wraith claimed it. Maybe it will show up on project gutenberg or manybooks.net. I hold out no hope that it will be printed in book form again, but it could survive digitally.
The Edinburgh edition was printed in 2001 so there is a fairly new edition available just not in the Jacksonville Public Library. This edition has excellent supplementary material and one of the editors is Alison Lumsden of Aberdeen whom I believe was present at the Sir Walter Scott Conference in Wyoming last year.
This book is fairly unique for Scott because there is no mention of an actual historical character. The Scottish/Orkney pirate John Gow was an inspiration for a character, but the novel's strength is its depiction of the Orkney culture.
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