Celebrating the Life and Times of Hugh Miller: Scotland in the Early Nineteenth Century

Folklore, August, 2004 by Sandy Hobbs

Celebrating the Life and Times of Hugh Miller: Scotland in the Early Nineteenth Century. Edited by Lester Borley. Cromarty: Cromarty Arts Trust; Aberdeen: Elphinstone Institute, 2003. 352 pp. Illus. 13.50 [pounds sterling] (pbk.) ISBN 0-906265-33-9

In The British Folklorists (1968), Richard Dorson described Hugh Miller (1802-56) as the author of two very remarkable contributions to the "first shelf" of British folklore, Scenes and Legends of the North of Scotland (1850) and My Schools and Schoolmasters (1854). However, Dorson saw interest in Miller as having "gradually receded." He also noted that none of Miller's obituaries referred to him as a "folklorist." Four decades on, things look rather different. Both of the books Dorson mentioned are currently in print. A major scholarly work, Hugh Miller and the Controversies of Victorian Science, edited by Michael Shortland, was published by Oxford University Press in 1996. The present volume is another sign of the revived interest in Miller. It is the outcome of a conference held to celebrate Miller's bicentenary. Editing papers from a conference for publication requires difficult decisions. Here the policy is one of inclusiveness. As well as around thirty papers, accounts of discussions are included. The book has a rather cramped feel to it. There is no index but it benefits from a number of well-chosen illustrations.

Miller's life was a remarkable one. Born In relatively humble circumstances, he began his working life as a stonemason, but eventually achieved success as a writer, lecturer and editor. At the height of his fame he committed suicide in circumstances that are still debated. The book has three main sections, each of which covers an area of Miller's interests. "Church and Society" represents Miller's standing as the editor of The Witness, a newspaper devoted to the cause of the Free Church that broke from the Established Church of Scotland in 1843. Dorson suggested that such matters are of little concern today, but contributions to this book indicate the issues still arouse passions. One contributor, Sandy Thomson, refers to himself, albeit lightheartedly, as an "Episcopalian layman" in a "lion's den of Presbyterian historians." Miller's attempt to marry his geological researches with a creationist theology underlies the second section, "Geology and Natural History." However, the contributions, partly because of restrictions of space, are not as substantial as the contributions to Shortland's book. Unfortunately, the same holds true for the section most likely to interest readers of Folklore, "Ethnography and Folklore." There are valuable papers by Edward Cowan and Lizanne Henderson, but the section as a whole is disappointing, perhaps because the area is treated so broadly, including as it does papers on Miller's wife, Lydia, and a Free Church settlement in New Zealand. Readers interested in a critical assessment of Miller as a folklorist would be well advised to start with David Alston's insightful and comprehensive paper "The Fallen Meteor: Hugh Miller and Local Tradition" in Shortland's volume. Alston attended the conference, but unfortunately appears in this book only as a rapporteur of the discussion.

This volume concludes with a guide to the Hugh Miller Cromarty Trail. Here we have a clue to one of the reasons for contemporary interest in Miller. His hometown, Cromarty, once a thriving port, is now partly reliant on tourism for its economic well-being. Thus, Hugh Miller's cottage (run by the National Trust for Scotland) and other sites form part of the heritage industry. Miller was a successful self-publicist; so these efforts by Cromarty folk today to attract visitors are in a way appropriate.

However, there is a danger that presenting Miller as a heroic figure will conflict with serious attempts at assessing his work critically.

Sandy Hobbs, University of Paisley, Scotland