When Christianity came to Scotland, it encountered countless already-ancient beliefs & practices it condemned as pagan & tried to eradicate. Yet many were so deeply rooted that the Church proved powerless against them.

Scottish Customs offers readers a smooth path to understanding those enduring folkways, with special emphasis on Druidic origins, Christian modifications, and survival into modern times.

Here is a world where poetry and ritual dignified all the major turning points of life and many of its most common occurrences. Here, also, is the struggle of that world with an invisible one, where physical laws of cause and effect did not apply.

Magic resided in many everyday objects and actions, and in the darkness around the peasant huts, devils, fairies and witches swarmed, threatening the happiness and even the very existence of pious mortals.

To help her bring these two worlds to life, the author Sheila Livingstone uses numerous extracts from medieval and modern Scottish poetry and prose.

Organized in handbook form under such topics as Birth and Marriage, and such subtopics as Changelings and Love Prophecies , this concise and accessible work will prove invaluable to students of Scottish history and lore and to readers of Scottish ancestry who wish to delve into the riches of their heritage.