This essential collection from Lewis Grassic Gibbon comprises short stories, essays and a novel, The Speak of the Mearns, which was unfinished at the time of the author's death in 1935. Grassic Gibbon's fame rests mainly on the trilogy, A Scots Quair, and the short stories, some well known, exhibit the same elements - powerful, dramatic writing and a distinctive local flavour - found in the novels. The Speak of the Mearns is a sharply observed unsentimental portrait of a rural coastal community seen through the eyes of a young boy growing up there. The essays put on record the author's views on politics and religion.