Flight of the Heron read-along: Part I chapters 1-2

[regshoe]

Hark! now the drums they beat again for all good soldiers, gentlemen...

Welcome back to the Flight of the Heron read-along! This week we read the first two proper chapters, and meet Keith Windham—and Keith meets Ewen Cameron.

As you'll have noticed, Broster is fond of including both Gaelic and Scots words in dialogue; this online Gaelic-English dictionary and this one for Scots may be of use if you'd like to look anything up.

Next week we will continue with chapters 3 and 4.

Comments

[impala_chick]

I'm learning a lot from your comment - the bit about mountain landscapes being ugly is so interesting. It would probably change the way I think about mountains if I couldn't look at pictures and appreciate the entire region at once.

Keith thinks about Ewen, but I will note the very funny contrast between Keith's immediate attraction to and admiration of Ewen, which only get stronger once he sees—as he very quickly does—how gentlemanlike and courteous Ewen is, and his insistence that Ewen is a barbarian.
Yes! I love the perfect internal struggle set-up between Keith's upbringing/preconceived notions and the way Ewen treats him in real life.

[regshoe]

It would probably change the way I think about mountains if I couldn't look at pictures and appreciate the entire region at once.

Yes, that's very true. I can kind of sympathise with Keith from a practical point of view, in that having to march thirty miles in a day (!) over that kind of terrain, when he's been used to fighting on the very flat geography of Flanders, can't exactly be pleasant.