 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Blaeu's Orkneys and Schetland
 | Price: £14.95 Supplier: James M Irvine |
The fifth volume of Joan Blaeu's Atlas Novus was the first comprehensive atlas of Scotland. Published in 1654, it contains the well-known map of Orkney and Shetland by Timothy Pont that includes more place-names than any subsequent map until the Ordnance Survey of the 19th century. It also contains eight descriptive texts of these islands in Latin. These texts, first translated into English in 2004, are available on the National Library of Scotland website but without local editorial comment.
This volume reproduces the map and the translated descriptions of Orkney and Shetland with editorial footnotes, and explores their provenance, reliability and local significance.
Stewart's 'New Description of the Orkneys' gives us perceptive insights into rural life and the health and character of 'the common people' and fascinating glimpses of social life in Kirkwall in the relatively affluent period between the disastrous famines of the 1630s and the Cromwellian austerity of the 1650s.
Hardback, 64 pages
Published 2006
ISBN 0954457129
Please contact us if you would like to know more about this item. We will answer your questions promptly and may use your input to improve the description.
In their daily life the common people, especially in the countryside, still retain much of the old parsimony. And so they enjoy great and almost continuous health of mind and body; diseases are rare among them, and many die weakened only by old age. Ignorance of luxuries, deriving from honourable poverty, does more among them to safeguard health or to restore it if lost, than does the art of physicians (of whom they have none) among other peoples. Most have a quite intelligent nature, capable of learning any skill or discipline; many are distinguished by a tenacious memory, an elegance of form, and a tallness of stature, cheerful in countenance, strong and spirited, and they display strength and a fearless spirit for fighting privately or publicly, when the occasion presents itself. They are themselves acute speakers according to their education, or avid listeners to and retailers of what is put forward cutely by others. They either express or try to express the humanity and civility which they have taken from Scots who live among them. Even the country people listen carefully to sermons, and by mutual repetition of what has been heard recall them to mind in a surprising manner.
Similar Products
Copyright © 2008. All rights reserved |
 |
Orkney Limited |
 | info@buyorkney.com |