David Elginbrod

By George MacDonald and Michael Phillips

“A novel which is the work of a man of genius”—and that launched MacDonald’s career as one of the preeminent Victorian novelists of his day (The Times).

George MacDonald’s first realistic novel, David Elginbrod, was published in 1863. Unable to get his poetry and fantasy published, one of MacDonald’s publishers remarked, “I tell you, Mr. MacDonald, if you would but write novels, you would find all the publishers saving up to buy them of you. Nothing but fiction pays.” Eventually MacDonald decided to try his hand at realistic fiction, and his publisher’s words proved prophetic—within a few years publishers indeed were lining up to buy his books.

Partially set in MacDonald’s homeland of northern Scotland, the story of Hugh Sutherland and Margaret Elginbrod is replete with the dialect and thorough “Scottishness” that became MacDonald’s trademark. The story takes the characters into the eerie world of the occult and spiritualism that so fascinated Victorian readers. This new edition by MacDonald biographer Michael Phillips streamlines the occasionally ponderous Victorian narrative style and updates the thick Doric brogue into readable English.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Nov 26, 2018
• ISBN: 9780795351945

George MacDonald

George MacDonald (1824 – 1905) was a Scottish-born novelist and poet. He grew up in a religious home influenced by various sects of Christianity. He attended University of Aberdeen, where he graduated with a degree in chemistry and physics. After experiencing a crisis of faith, he began theological training and became minister of Trinity Congregational Church. Later, he gained success as a writer penning fantasy tales such as Lilith, The Light Princess and At the Back of the North Wind. MacDonald became a well-known lecturer and mentor to various creatives including Lewis Carroll who famously wrote, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland fame.

Book preview

David Elginbrod

George MacDonald

Introductory material © 2018 by Michael Phillips

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

Electronic edition published 2018 by RosettaBooks

ISBN (Kindle): 978-0-7953-5194-5

www.RosettaBooks.com

The Cullen Collection of the

Fiction of George MacDonald

1. Phantastes (1858)

2. David Elginbrod (1863)

3. The Portent (1864)

4. Adela Cathcart (1864)

5. Alec Forbes of Howglen (1865)

6. Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood (1867)

7. Robert Falconer (1868)

8. Guild Court (1868)

9. The Seaboard Parish (1868)

10. At the Back of the North Wind (1871)

11. Ranald Bannerman’s Boyhood (1871)

12. The Princess and the Goblin (1872)

13. Wilfrid Cumbermede (1872)

14. The Vicar’s Daughter (1872)

15. Gutta Percha Willie (1873)

16. Malcolm (1875)

17. The Wise Woman (1875)

18. St. George and St. Michael (1876)

19. Thomas Wingfold Curate (1876)

20. The Marquis of Lossie (1877)

21. Paul Faber Surgeon (1879)

22. Sir Gibbie (1879)

23. Mary Marston (1881)

24. Castle Warlock (1881)

25. The Princess and Curdie (1882)

26. Weighed and Wanting (1882)

27. Donal Grant (1883)

28. What’s Mine’s Mine (1886)

29. Home Again (1887)

30. The Elect Lady (1888)

31. A Rough Shaking (1890)

32. There and Back (1891)

33. The Flight of the Shadow (1891)

34. Heather and Snow (1893)

35. Lilith (1895)

36. Salted With Fire (1897)

37. Far Above Rubies (1898)

The introductions to the 37 volumes form a continuous picture of George MacDonald’s literary life, viewed through the prism of the development of his written legacy of works. While each book can of course be read on its own, every introduction picks up where that to the previous volume left off, with special attention to the title under consideration. The introductions together, as a biography of MacDonald’s life as a writer, are compiled in Volume 38.

38. George MacDonald A Writer’s Life

The Cullen Collection

of the Fiction of George MacDonald

New editions of George MacDonald’s classic fiction works updated and introduced by Michael Phillips

CONTENTS

Foreword to The Cullen Collection

Introduction to David Elginbrod

NOTE: As the introductions to the 37 volumes of The Cullen Collection form a continuous portrait of George MacDonald’s life, and as many of the introductions contain comprehensive and detailed discussion and analysis of the title in question—its plot, themes, and circumstances of writing—some first-time readers may choose to skip ahead to the story itself, saving the introduction for later, so as not to spoil the story.

BOOK I—TURRIEPUFFIT

1. The Primrose

2. David Elginbrod

3. The New Tutor

4. The Cottage

5. The Students

6. The Laird’s Lady

7. A Sunday Morning

8. Harvest Time

9. The New Room

10. David and Hugh

11. Snow Storm

12. Transition

BOOK II—ARNSTEAD

13. A New Home

14. Harry’s Horse

15. Euphrasia

16. A Straw Cave and Two Flowers

17. More Learning

18. On Horseback

19. The Picture Gallery

20. Nest Building

21. Geography

22. Italian

23. Alone at Midnight

24. The Storm

25. An Evening Lecture

26. A Bargain for Poetry

27. New Visitor and Old Acquaintance

28. Ghost Hunting

29. Materialism and True Spiritualism

30. The Ghost Walk

31. Count Halkar

32. Battle

33. The Ring

34. The Wager

35. Lady Euphrasia

36. The Next Morning

37. The Accident

38. The Robbery

39. A Clandestine Meeting

40. Changes

41. Explanations

42. Departure

BOOK III—LONDON

43. London

44. A Sunday

45. Robert Falconer

46. The Prayer

47. The New Pupils

48. Consultations

49. Questions and Dreams

50. A Sunday with Falconer

51. The Lady’s Maid

52. Memory of a Father

53. Margaret’s Secret

54. Forebodings

55. The Struggle

56. Victory

57. Margaret

58. The Count

59. The Last Groat

60. Death

61. Nature and Her Lady

62. The Fir Wood Again

Papa seems so quietly happy.

—Louisa MacDonald, May 4, 1872, from Deskford (near Cullen)

Papa does enjoy this place so much.

—Louisa MacDonald, May 6, 1872 from the Seafield Arms Hotel, Cullen

Papa oh! so jolly & bright & happy…Papa was taken for Lord Seafield yesterday.

—Louisa MacDonald, Sept. 2, 1873, from Cullen

Papa is very poorly. He ought to go to Cullen for a week I think.

—Louisa MacDonald, October 5, 1873, from London

FOREWORD

The Cullen Collection

of the Fiction of George MacDonald

The series name for these works of Scotsman George MacDonald (1824-1905) has its origins in the 1830s when the boy MacDonald formed what would be a lifelong affection for the northeast Scottish village of Cullen.

The ocean became young George’s delight. At the age of eleven, writing from Portsoy or Cullen, he announced to his father his intention to go to sea as a sailor—in his words, as soon as possible. The broad white beach of Cullen Bay, the Seatown, the grounds of Cullen House, the temple of Psyche (Temple of the Winds), Cullen Burn, the dwellings along Grant Street, Scarnose, and especially Findlater Castle, all seized the youth’s imagination with a love that never left him. MacDonald continued to visit Huntly and Cullen throughout his life, using his childhood love for his homeland as the backdrop for his richest novels, including what is arguably his greatest work of fiction, Malcolm, published in 1875.

We therefore honor MacDonald’s unique relationship to Cullen with these newly updated editions of his novels. In Cullen, in certain respects more than in any other place, one finds the transcendent spirit of George MacDonald’s life and the ongoing legacy of his work still magically alive after a century and a half. This release of The Cullen Collection of the Fiction of George MacDonald coincides with a memorial bench and plaque established on Cullen’s Castle Hill commemorating MacDonald’s visits to the region.

To those readers familiar with my previous editions of MacDonald’s novels, I should make clear that eighteen of the volumes in this new series (including this one) are updated and expanded titles from the Bethany House series of the 1980s. Limitations of length dictated much about how those previous volumes were produced. To interest a publisher in the project during those years when MacDonald was a virtual unknown in the publishing world, certain sacrifices had to be made. Cuts to length had to be more severe than I would have preferred. Practicality drove the effort.

Added to that was the challenge of working with editors who occasionally changed MacDonald’s wording and removed more than I intended, then also sometimes took liberties to the opposite extreme by inserting words, sentences, even whole paragraphs that originated from neither myself nor MacDonald. Those editions were also subject to sanitizing editorial scrutiny, which occasionally removed aspects of MacDonald’s more controversial perspectives, and added evangelically correct words and phrases to bring the text more in line with accepted orthodoxy. As MacDonald himself knew, there are times an author has little say in details of final text, design, art, or overall quality. Thus, the covers and titles were not mine. And I was often kept in the dark about internal textual changes and was unable to correct them. Yet, too, many of MacDonald’s expansive perspectives were preserved (though what was excised and what was left often seemed random and inconsistent) for which I applaud Bethany’s openness. Their publications of the 1980s helped inaugurate a worldwide renaissance of interest in MacDonald and we owe them our gratitude. Frustrating as the process occasionally was, I thus remain enormously grateful for those editions. They were wonderful door-openers for many thousands into MacDonald’s world.

Hopefully this new and more comprehensive set of MacDonald’s fiction will take up where they left off. Not constrained by the limitations that dictated production of the former volumes, these new editions, though identical at many points, have been expanded—sometimes significantly. In that sense they reflect MacDonald’s originals somewhat more closely, while still preserving the flavor, pace, and readability of their predecessors. Needless to say, the doctrinal scrubbings have been corrected and the deleted passages reinstated. Nineteen additional titles have been added. The thirteen realistic novels among these have been updated according to the same priorities that guided the earlier Bethany House series. That process will be explained in more detail in the introductions to the books of the series. The final six, which would more accurately be termed fantasy, have not been edited in any way. They are faithful reproductions of the originals exactly as they were first published. These six titles—Phantastes, At the Back of the North Wind, The Princess and the Goblin, The Wise Woman, The Princess and Curdie, and Lilith—are so well known and have been published literally in hundreds of editions through the years, that it has seemed best to reproduce them for The Cullen Collection with the same texts by which they are generally known. *

Dedicated followers of all great men and women continually seek hints that reveal their inner being—the true man, the true woman. What were they really like? What made him or her tick? Many biographies and studies attempt to answer such questions. In George MacDonald’s case, however, a panorama of windows exists that reveals far more about his person than the sum-total of everything that has been written about him over the years. Those are the novels that encompass his life’s work. The volumes of this series represent the true spiritual biography of the man, a far more important biography than life’s details can ever tell.

In 1911, six years after his father’s death, George MacDonald’s son Ronald wrote of the man with whom he had spent his life:

The ideals of his didactic novels were the motive of his own life…a life of literal, and, which is more, imaginative consistency with his doctrine…There has probably never been a writer whose work was a better expression of his personal character. This I am not engaged to prove; but I very positively assert…that in his novels…and allegories…one encounters...the same rich imagination, the same generous lover of God and man, the same consistent practiser of his own preaching, the same tender charity to the sinner with the same uncompromising hostility to the sin, which were known in daily use and by his own people counted upon more surely than sunshine. *

Thirty years after the publication of my one-volume biography George MacDonald Scotland’s Beloved Storyteller, it now gives me great pleasure to present this thirty-seven-volume biography of the man, the Scotsman, the prophetic spiritual voice who is George MacDonald. †

How fitting is the original title in which Ronald MacDonald’s sketch of his father quoted above first appeared, From A Northern Window. For any attempted portrait of the man George MacDonald becomes at once a window into his homeland as well.

Therefore, I invite you to gaze back in time through the northern windows of these volumes. Picture yourself perhaps near the cheerful hearth described in the opening pages of What’s Mine’s Mine, looking out the window to the cold seas and mountains in the distance, where perhaps you get a fleeting glimpse of highlanders Ian and Alister Macruadh.

Or imagine yourself walking up Duke Street in Huntly from MacDonald’s birth home, following in the footsteps of fictional Robert Falconer to the town square.

Or envision yourself on some windswept highland moor with Gibbie or Cosmo Warlock.

Or walk up the circular staircase of Fyvie Castle to Donal Grant’s tiny tower hideaway where he began to unravel the mysteries of that ancient and spooky place.

Or walk up from Cullen’s Seatown in your mind’s eye alongside Malcolm selling the fish in his creel, turning at the Market Cross into Grant Street and continuing past Miss Horn’s house and up the hill to the entrance of the Cullen House grounds.

Or perhaps climb Castle Hill to the George MacDonald memorial bench and gaze across the sweep of Cullen Bay as Malcolm’s story comes to life before your eyes.

From any of these settings, whether real or imaginary, drift back through the years and gaze through the panoramic windows of these stories, and take in with pleasure the drama, relationships, images, characters, settings, and spiritual truths George MacDonald offers us as we are drawn into his world.

Michael Phillips

Cullen, Morayshire

Scotland, 2017

INTRODUCTION

Mr. MacDonald, If You Would But Write Novels

One evening in early 1862, a Scottish poet of thirty-seven attended a dinner party in London. Surrounding him were personalities from the literary intelligentsia of the day.*

If George MacDonald felt overshadowed by authors, publishers, and journalists more well-known than himself, he did not show it. On the basis of his early writings and his association with the late Lady Noel Byron,¹ the aspiring author had learned to mix easily. He was personable, confident, witty, and a charming conversationalist. He had a slightly mysterious side as well—dreamy, a little dark perhaps, which his Scottish accent, thick black beard, and probing light-blue eyes confirmed to refined English sensibilities. An aura of the temperamental highlands of his ancestors clung with almost hypnotic subtlety to his engaging yet occasionally melancholy personality.

The Scots poet was therefore already an enigma in the lofty circles of the London literati. They said he was a descendent of survivors from both the Glencoe massacre and Culloden. He was the sort of man who drew stares.

He had broken onto the scene seven years earlier with a dramatic poem that had garnered rave reviews. Lady Byron had been so moved by Within and Without that she insisted all her friends read it. Everyone said he was someone to watch. Prior to her death Lord Byron’s widow had taken the promising newcomer under her wing and introduced him into the highest echelons of literary society.

Unfortunately, his lengthy adult fantasy four years before had been a flop. Few could understand it. Even fewer knew what the strange title Phantastes meant. The reviews were savage. Yet the very peculiarity of the work almost added to the aura surrounding the young Scot. Word began to get around that he was a mystic. As glances went his way, therefore, some of the ladies couldn’t help being a little afraid of him. ²

As the poet-mystic sat near the evening’s host, George Murray Smith, the same man who had backed that failed title and head of the prestigious publishing firm of Smith Elder & Co., the young author was unaware of the stares. Though keeping up with the conversations around him, laughing and contributing in his turn, inside he was profoundly discouraged. Few observers would have realized it, but he found these social gatherings trying. The masks everyone wore to hide their true selves grated on him. He would rather sit down with a few friends for an engaging discussion on evolution, the Fatherhood of God, or the trinity, or enjoy a pipe alongside an old village cobbler, than be here. But he put up with such events as a necessity of his fledgling writing career.

If it could be called a career at all. True, he had published four books—three by reputable publishers after an initial self-published collection of German poems a mere twenty-seven pages in length.

But his last book had done so badly for Smith Elder that his future as an author seemed doomed as soon as it had begun. No publisher wanted to touch his work now. Disappointment after disappointment was sapping his optimism. Financial pressures were intense. He and Louisa had six young mouths to feed and no regular income. Lecturing, tutoring, and handouts from friends produced barely enough to pay the rent and put food on the table. For most of his adult life he had known that he was suited for little other than the ministry, teaching, or writing. He had failed in the only pulpit he had held. Though lecturing opportunities were increasing, they weren’t enough to support a single man, much less a family of eight.

There were simply no prospects on the horizon.

Of course, nothing could stop him writing. Not knowing what the future held, he was trying different things, experimenting with ideas, genres, styles. He was writing…writing…writing—poems, stories, tales for children…whatever came to him. He managed to place a few stories in magazines now and then. But the handful of pounds they paid were hardly worth the time it took to write them. He had poems and stories and fairy tales stacking up in his files. But getting them published was proving nearly impossible. And to what purpose was all this writing? If he couldn’t get books published, and couldn’t make any money as a writer, how long could he keep it up?

Having published Phantastes, Smith had done nothing but reject his work since.

He had written a play which he called If I Had a Father—Smith had rejected it.

He had tried to turn that drama into a novel which he titled Seekers and Finders. Smith had rejected that too.

Everyone was writing novels, but he didn’t seem to have the knack for it. Seekers and Finders had not only been rejected by Smith, he had taken it to most of London’s major houses—they had all turned it down.

He vividly remembered that day in the publisher’s office as he handed him back his play and shook his head. I’m sorry, MacDonald, said Smith, but this is useless. I could never sell it. I see what you’re trying to do, but there’s simply no narrative power to it. It would never work on the stage—nor does it work as a book.

Dejected, MacDonald turned to go. Smith’s voice behind him arrested his step. He turned back to face the publisher.

Don’t give up, said Smith. "You can write…you can write well. You have a future, you just need to find a genre, a niche that suits your talents."

He paused briefly, then added. "I tell you, Mr. MacDonald, if you would but write novels, you would find all the publishers saving up to buy them of you. Nothing but fiction pays."

MacDonald forced an ironic smile as he recalled the interview. Well, he had tried. But Smith had rejected his novel too. So much for the man’s prediction.

It was obvious he wasn’t cut out to be a novelist.

He had said as much to Louisa. According to Smith, Elder, nothing is any use but a novel…Isn’t it a pity I can’t. Wish I could. ³

MacDonald’s disconsolate reflections at the dinner party were interrupted by the publisher himself.

I say, MacDonald, said Smith, speaking across the man sitting between them, when are you going to bring me something else? Your public is waiting.

I’m not sure I have much of a public left! laughed MacDonald. It’s been four years, he added in his thick Scots brogue.

Nonsense—four years is nothing. I told you before, bring me a novel.

"I did. Seekers and Finders, remember, smiled MacDonald. You told me to write a novel. I did. You didn’t like it."

You won’t let me forget, will you? laughed Smith. But it was weak, I’m sorry to say—too didactic. It sounded like a debate society, not a story. Try again. Bring me a strong idea, strong characters, a sense of place—write about your native Scotland. The English love the mysterious highlands.

You may be right, nodded MacDonald. But I haven’t got a strong idea. I’ve thought about what you said, but I haven’t come up with anything. Whenever I sit down to write, poetry or fantasy comes out.

Say…speaking of Scotland, a voice interrupted from across the table, —I heard a good one recently.

The speaker was the noted journalist Manby Smith, a friend though no relation of the publisher. —Sorry, he went on, "must have been eavesdropping. But I read a Scotch epitaph the other day. Most fascinating audacity you Scots have toward the Almighty, MacDonald! This fellow had inscribed on his tombstone: Here lie I, Martin Elginbrodde; Hae mercy o’ my soul, Lord God; As I wad do, were I Lord God, An’ ye war Martin Elginbrodde!"

The man laughed aloud and was joined by those around him.

But MacDonald wasn’t laughing. His ears perked up.

"Elginbrodde, he repeated to himself thoughtfully. Elginbrodde! What a fascinating name. Say it again, Mr. Smith, he said across the table. I’m not sure I caught it all."

"Here you go, MacDonald—Here lie I, Martin Elginbrodde; Hae mercy o’ my soul, Lord God; As I wad do, were I Lord God, An’ ye war Martin Elginbrodde!"

It was a simple enough ditty. But the words struck root in George MacDonald’s brain. He could not dislodge them. Who was this curious Martin Elginbrodde who claimed such familiarity with God?

He thought about the strange epitaph for the rest of the evening and throughout the night. By the next day a story began to form in his brain.

Within another two days he was writing in earnest. It was a story, as George Murray Smith had suggested, set in his homeland. As he wrote, he was suddenly free from past constraints, comfortably allowing spiritual themes and characters and the Scotland of his roots, complete with its dialect, to imbue the conversations and narrative descriptions that came out on the paper in front of him.

The unknown Martin Elginbrodde’s story flowed.

Gradually his new novel took shape. The handwritten pages flew from under his pen. A rhythm, a pace, a style emerged almost without effort. Suddenly he seemed to have found a fictional voice, permeated with themes of thoughtful spirituality, that had never been present in his writing before.

In spite of what he had said to Louisa about not being able to do it, within months he had completed the novel, which was built around a fictional descendant of the man with the memorable tombstone epitaph.

Unfortunately, George Murray Smith’s words were not quite fulfilled yet. Once again young MacDonald left the publisher’s office disappointed. Smith had asked for a novel, but had now rejected a second one. And so it was with all London’s publishers. No one was willing to take a chance on the new effort which MacDonald had entitled David Elginbrod. *

A pivotal encounter, however, was about to change everything. The details are obscure. The long-accepted tradition goes as follows:

The daughter of a Manchester friend, visiting the MacDonalds at their home and hearing of the ill-fated manuscript, asked if she could show it to her friend Dinah Mulock (aka Mrs. Craik), author of John Halifax, Gentleman. MacDonald agreed.

Seeing MacDonald’s story, the authoress promptly took it to Hurst and Blackett publishers, telling them they were foolish if they did not publish it. Their reply was swift: Then we will publish it without delay.

George MacDonald was paid £90. David Elginbrod was published in three volumes in January of 1863, and MacDonald’s career as a novelist was born. ⁴

Turning our attention now to the novel itself in preparation for reading it with insight and enjoyment, what strikes us the moment we open MacDonald’s original is a dialect that at first glance leaves us wondering what kind of book we have picked up.

What gars ye gang stravaguin’ that get, Meg, whan ye ken weel eneuch ye sud a’ been in to worship lang syne? An sae we maun hae worship our lanes for want o’ you, ye hizzy!

This regionally colloquialized dialect of Scots called Doric is distinct to the northeast of Scotland. To the eyes of Englanders in the nineteenth century who were not well versed in their Sir Walter Scott—not to say Americans more than 150 years later!—it would have appeared as a completely foreign language. ⁵

The enthusiastic response to David Elginbrod, and all MacDonald’s Scottish novels, notwithstanding their merits, is therefore somewhat difficult to understand in that much of the dialogue was written in this thick dialect. In the north of Scotland, the Doric was no impediment to understanding. But that MacDonald’s books were read so avidly by readers in England and America is one of the remarkable features of the literary climate of the Victorian age.

It is not so much that Victorians would read anything, it is that they could read such a diversity of literary fare—read it, understand it, and relish it. MacDonald’s books spread through the middle and upper classes of a very literate and well-read society familiar with the works of other Scots like Robert Burns and Sir Walter Scott. Obviously, literacy was sadly lacking at the lower end of the social spectrum. But MacDonald’s books were read by men and women who knew their poets, knew their Shakespeare, knew their Bibles, and in Britain were familiar with all manner of dialects, as the film My Fair Lady so vividly depicts. Most were able to navigate the dialect and theology and lengthy digressions for which MacDonald’s books are famous. They were accustomed to such books. Sir Walter Scott’s best-selling Waverley Novels a generation before, also mostly Scottish and with some dialect (though not as much as MacDonald’s), were even more abstruse yet were huge sellers.

MacDonald had published a story called The Portent as a magazine serial three years earlier, set in Scotland without dialect. Yet he had not been successful in getting it published as a book. Perhaps he thought regional dialect would add a realism that would enhance David Elginbrod’s chances of publication even though it looks incomprehensible to us today.

And in fact, William Raeper’s observation about the romance of Scotland in English eyes reveals that the dialect might actually have been an asset rather than a liability.

It is hard to appreciate now the spell that Walter Scott’s Waverley novels cast over the nineteenth century, Raeper writes. "They conjured up an historical and romantic Scotland peopled with exotic characters such as Rob Roy MacGregor, the same Scotland which emerges in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped. There was a general awakening of interest in Scotland and things Scottish at this time—even Queen Victoria had wrapped herself in the Scottish myth, retreating to Balmoral and having a piper play under her window every morning. The truth was somewhat different. The grim carnage associated with the Gallows Herd had gone, but the Highlands had been cleared for sheep and the Clyde Valley was now reeking with mills—the Industrial Revolution had transformed Scotland almost overnight. If Turriepuffit is a figment summoned from MacDonald’s childhood, it is a world suffused with the glow of Burns and Ossian and Wordsworth—literally a Glamour-town enchanted by the transforming magic of nostalgia—a world that had slipped away forever. Turriepuffit, the distant, Scottish idyll is more than a description, it is a place where nature is able to exercise her charms unhindered and Wordsworthian sentiments flow out of every hill and fir-tree.

Such a romantic view of nature as a divine educative mediator is central to MacDonald’s vision and encounters with nature are always key points in the development of MacDonald’s characters. ⁶

In any event, David Elginbrod is laden with Doric. That proceeding out of the mouth of the title character (as in this example from Chapter 4), is the most unintelligible of all:

I believe as mony o’ them as ye do, an’ maybe a wheen mair, my dawtie. Keep yer min’ easy aboot that. But ye jist see ’at folk warna a’thegither saitisfeed aboot a sairpent speikin’, an’ sae they leukit aboot and aboot till at last they fand the deil in him. Gude kens whether he was there or no. Noo, ye see hoo, gin we was to leuk weel aboot thae corps, an’ thae angels, an’ a’ that queer stuff—but oh! It’s bonny stuff tee!—we might fa’ in wi’ something we didna awthegither expec, though we was leukin’ for’t a’ the time. Sae I maun jist think aboot it, Mr. Sutherlan’; an’ I wad fain read it ower again afore I lippen on giein’ my opingan on the maitter.

Whatever MacDonald’s reasons for employing the dialect of his boyhood, David Elginbrod received strong reviews, sold extremely well, and suddenly MacDonald was on his way as a novelist.

This discussion of MacDonald’s use of dialect raises the question that is inevitably asked by readers encountering the New Editions of The Cullen Collection, as well as my former editions of the 1980s:

Why new editions at all? Why not read MacDonald’s books exactly as he originally wrote them?

May I interrupt here and employ a technique MacDonald himself used on a number of occasions, that is to invite those readers among you who may not be curious about my rationale for updated editions, to skip ahead six pages to where the introduction to David Elginbrod continues. The following points concern The Cullen Collection as a whole, and you may perhaps want to return to it at a later time.

In discussing the relative merits of distinct editions, it is clear that many readers do prefer to read MacDonald’s originals. Many others read my edited editions and then gradually adjust to the longer originals and come to enjoy them as well. It was for exactly this reason that my early work bringing the works of George MacDonald back into print in the 1980s involved republishing original editions and edited editions. We were trying to provide a range of editions to suit all reading tastes.

There remain five chief reasons why updated editions are helpful for many readers. It is perhaps appropriate to explain these in some detail in introducing this first dialect-heavy and updated title in The Cullen Collection. These five points will dictate, to varying degrees, the rationale behind the entire series.

ONE, as already touched on, MacDonald’s use of dialect and other outmoded 19th century language.

Today’s may be a more literate society overall, but life is also moving more rapidly than it did 150 years ago. Most readers have neither time nor inclination to wade through unintelligible dialect. The translation of MacDonald’s Doric, occasionally preserving enough to give the flavor of nineteenth century Scotland, helps contemporary readers enjoy MacDonald’s considerable artistic gifts and spiritual insight without having to labor over every sentence of dialogue.

MacDonald’s word use is not only difficult because of the dialect, there are numerous instances where meanings have changed in 150 years. He uses car, truck, bus, van, freak, and pathetic, as but a few examples of words that are familiar to us—the first four appearing in his books long before the invention of the automobile—but which today convey an entirely different meaning than they did in MacDonald’s day. There are literally scores of examples, not to mention MacDonald’s propensity for the more than occasional five-dollar word—nephelocockygia, tergiversation, chrysprase, pellucid, meridional, deglutition, adumbration, deinotherium, parhelion, and dozens more—most of which I’ve never encountered in my life and must look up in a 19th century dictionary.

The dialect in MacDonald’s novels is difficult for me to know how to handle. Some of it is so dense that to approximate ten percent of it would leave many readers baffled. For these new editions my methods vary, trying to keep faith with MacDonald’s originals in ways that turn out to be unique for each book. Readability and characterization are foremost among my priorities. Yet I alter the dialect used by individual characters, and even vary one character’s speech depending on whom he or she is talking to.

This is precisely how the dialect functions in Scotland. Doric speakers adapt many different levels of speech depending on whether they are talking to an American, an Englishman, a fellow Scot who perhaps doesn’t speak Doric, or a lifelong friend from the same village. Some of the seeming inconsistencies in my edits and translations may be my intentional attempt to convey the realistic flavor of these conversational patterns in Scotland. Sometimes you is ye, sometimes it is you, sometimes it sounds more like yeh or ya. Sometimes no is nay, sometimes nah, sometimes no.

Most of the dialect retained in these new editions is visual more than linguistic—to give the feel and flavor of Doric (ye, yer, wi’, hae, hoo, oot, weel, jist, dinna, aboot, wouldna, canna, etc.) with easily recognizable constructions, and also adding a handful of colorful words (ken, auld, muckle, gowk, etc.).

There is also character growth to consider. Circumstances change and a character’s language changes as well—when Malcom goes to London he speaks differently than he does at home. In Salted With Fire, James Blatherwick goes to the city to become a minister and tries to elevate his speech accordingly. MacDonald goes so far as to intrude into the narrative of Robert Falconer several times to explain these variations in Falconer’s speech as the story progresses.

From time to time I also encounter MacDonald’s own inconsistencies. In Salted With Fire, for example, in a long speech by John MacLear—who throughout has spoken in thick Doric—suddenly the humble cobbler begins speaking perfect Queen’s English for half a paragraph, then in mid-sentence reverts again to Doric. For the rest of the paragraph he then alternates between the two. I assume this to have been a lapse of attentiveness on MacDonald’s part. (He was, after all, 72 at the time of writing.) However, you do often hear exactly those kinds of abrupt shifts in Scotland.

For every book, I must make value judgments about how to handle these things, whether it seems appropriate to leave more or less in one case or another. I cannot point to a rigid guideline. I try to feel the pulse and flavor of every story and setting and its characters, with the overriding objective always in my thoughts of conveying MacDonald’s heart and purpose for a particular book and its themes most effectively.

It is a fluid and inexact process. One friend who has helped with these new editions commented, I love the Doric! while Judy, who is probably more conversant in the dialect of Cullen than I am, said, I’m wondering if there’s too much—some of Duncan’s is a little tough going!

In some of the heavily Scots novels, near the beginning of the books, I have reproduced portions of the dialect exactly as it appears in MacDonald’s original, with a footnote of translation. As the books progress I shift the narrative into more familiar English, retaining only bits of the dialect for flavor. It is the same technique used in films where certain characters begin speaking in their native tongue, but then at some point seamlessly morph into accented but understandable English. It is a convention, a device, to convey that the characters are actually speaking in a different language, yet without hopelessly bogging down the movie with subtitles. A film purist might argue that it is not really the way the characters would be talking in real life. But few complain. They realize that the movie experience is improved without subtitles. I hope my use of this similar technique will add to your appreciation of MacDonald’s especially Scottish stories.

While I would never claim that my small representations of the dialect in these editions is perfect by any means, many of the idiosyncrasies in the text are intentional to reflect the ebb and flow of the dialect as it is actually used, and as MacDonald himself uses it. ⁷

TWO, book length.

MacDonald’s novels were long. Very long. Their average length was 160,000 to 200,000 words—the equivalent of a 500-700 page book. The average length of most novels being published today is 60,000-100,000 words. My publishers squawk if my novels are over 100,000 words. The simple fact is—for most people (not all, but most) MacDonald’s novels are enhanced and the reading flow improved when they move a little more rapidly and are not so long.

THREE, MacDonald’s circuitous linguistic style.

MacDonald wrote using long, involved, complex sentences. Such a style was in vogue among Victorian writers. With the exception of MacDonald’s friend Mark Twain and very few others, the narrative style of the day was much different than it is today. When writing my own novels, if I discover my average sentence length to be sixteen or eighteen words, I know that an editor will get out the red pen and start trimming. I usually try to achieve an average sentence length of twelve to fifteen words. That’s the level at which I feel my writing flows decently well. Longer than that and it becomes cumbersome and wordy, and the focus is lost.

In George MacDonald’s novels and sermons, however, sentences of fifty words are common. Sentences of 100 words might be found every several chapters, with 200-word sentences once or twice in a book. I recently encountered a sentence of an astonishing 400 words in MacDonald’s The Wise Woman—a book supposedly for children. Who can possibly wade through a sentence that long? Trying to follow MacDonald’s progression of thought sometimes makes the head spin.

Nor is it only sentence length. His paragraphs are much too long as well, sometimes going on for three or four pages without a pause. With no visual breaks, and with sentences of 50-100 words, one’s brain simply bogs down.

This explains why I have also produced updated editions