I was recently in Scotland with my friend Hamish. We spent some hours at the Scottish National Gallery. This painting, by the Scottish artist, William McTaggart, entitled Spring (1864), caught my attention. I thought about two sisters in our family, Helen and Katie (Catherine) Ross … Continue reading Scottish sisters
Carron River
In the eastern Highlands of Scotland there is a beautiful river flowing down from the mountains to the sea; the Carron rises in the high country of Ross-Shire and at its steepest tumbles over rocks between barren heights covered in heather and gorse. In its … Continue reading Carron River
Gledfield
North of Inverness on the east coast of Scotland there are three deep inlets from the North Sea: the Moray Firth, the Cromarty Firth and the Dornoch Firth. Between the Moray and Cromarty firths is the so called Black Isle and between the Cromarty and … Continue reading Gledfield
James Ross’s sixteenth birthday
James Ross was born in Gledfield, Ross-Shire, in the winter of 1827, the fourth child of the village blacksmith and his wife. James' birthday was the 31st of January, but there were a lot of children (12 in all) in the Ross family and it … Continue reading James Ross’s sixteenth birthday
Communion season in nineteenth century Ross-Shire
It seems likely that James Ross carried the name Ferintosh to Australia with him because of a profound spiritual experience that he had at Ferintosh Burn in the 1840s when the Reverend Dr John McDonald was the minister at Urquhart, the parish which contained the … Continue reading Communion season in nineteenth century Ross-Shire
Forgotten tales 