A Rope-In Case

TALL TALES FROM THE OUTER HEBRIDES. The March morning was full of mist; grey and inscrutable the swirling formations loped in from the sea to hover uncertainly over the village of Bruach so that the houses and crofts vanished and re-emerged in a constantly changing pattern; the land apeared to be adrift in a thick silence through which the distant throbbing of the burn and the nearer rasp of tide on shingle barely penetrated. For every day of mist in March there ll be an inch of snow in May, the old crofters predicted. The fourth of Lillian Beckwith's books on her life on Bruach, A Rope - In Case is packed with hilarious stories and delightful characters. Yet it is never sentimental - always observant.