11. Deirdre Burton, ‘A Feminist Reading of A Scots Quair’, in The British Working-Class Novel in the Twentieth Century, ed. J. Hawthorn (London, 1984), p.45.

12. Edwin Muir, ‘Lewis Grassic Gibbon: An Appreciation’, in Scottish Standard I (March 1935), pp.23–4.

13. Malcolm, p. 184.

Note on the Text

The present text follows that of the first edition as scrupulously as possible, except in such matters of typographical styling as the use of small capitals, not italic capitals, for words emphasized in direct speech. Misprints that were not picked up in later editions have been corrected, and the map of ‘The Land of A Scots Quair’ has been prepared from the one in the first edition.

A typescript of Grey Granite survives, all but the last page, in NLS MS Acc. 26042. It includes phrases and short passages which Gibbon altered for his final version. Thus at p.1, line 10, the typescript reads ‘and paused, breathing deeply, she could hear her heart, afore tackling the chave of the climb’, and at p.2, line 3, ‘And at sixty, with sweirty and creash combined, they’ll have carted you off to the creamery!’ Sometimes there is a weakening of the Scots, as at p.3, line 18, where the typescript has ‘hap of the fog’, the printed text ‘peace’. The NLS also has a complete set of uncorrected galley proofs. These appear to embody all corrections made on first proof: a spot check revealed no differences from the published text.

ONE

Epidote

ALL AROUND her the street walls were dripping in fog as Chris Colquohoun made her way up the Gallowgate, yellow fog that hung tiny veils on her eyelashes, curled wet, and had in her throat the acrid taste of an ancient smoke. Here the slipper-slide of the pavement took a turn that she knew, leading up to the heights of Windmill Place, and shortly, out of the yellow swath, she saw come shambling the lines of the Steps with their iron hand-rail like a famished snake. She put out her hand on that rail, warm, slimy, and paused afore tackling the chave of the climb, breathing deeply, she could hear her heart. The netbagful of groceries on her arm ached—she looked down through wet lashes at the shape of the thing—as though it was the bag that ached, not her arm….

Standing still so breathing that little while she was suddenly aware of the silence below—as though all the shrouded town also stood still, deep-breathing a minute in the curl of the fog—stilling the shamble and grind of the trams, the purr of the buses in Royal Mile, the clang and swing of the trains in Grand Central, the swish and roll and oily call of the trawlers taking the Forthie’s flood—all pausing, folk wiping the fog from their eyes and squinting about them an un-eident minute—

Daft, she said to herself, and began climbing the stairs. Midway their forty steps a lamp came in sight, at last, glistening, it flung a long dirty hand down to help her. Her face came into its touch, it blinked surprised, not expecting that face or head or the glistering bronze coils of hair that crowned them—hair drawn in spiralled pads over each ear, fog-veiled, but shining. Chris halted again here under the lamp, thirty-eight, so she couldn’t run up these steps, stiff’s an old horse on a Mounth hill-road.