Rare Books @ NLS

We have reached the first milestone in digitising all our out-of-copyright books in Gaelic: the first 50 are now freely accessible and can be read in full on our website about Early Gaelic Book Collections! The digitised books were published between 1631 and 1900 and cover mostly literary and religious subjects from poetry and songs to translations of John Bunyan’s works, editions of the Psalms and the Bible, catechisms and Gaelic hymns.

That sounds like a lot of religious stuff, and it is! The first Gaelic book that was not concerned with anything religious was only published in 1741. That was a Gaelic-English Dictionary (H.M.109(1)), obviously the first of its kind. You can also access this Galick and English Vocabulary online.

One of the highlights of the first batch of 50 items in Gaelic is the second ever book printed in Gaelic. It is a translation of John Calvin’s Catechism,(F.7.g.5(2)) and ours is the only known surviving copy!

It is a remarkable fact that none of the 50 books now availble online have any illustrations.

One of our recent purchases is a catechism for children printed in Edinburgh (Shelfmark: AP.3.210.09). It was written by an anonymous ‘Well-wisher to the Education of Children’. The text was at first drawn up for the private instruction of a girl when she was between four and five years old and then added to as she grew up, until she was twelve or thirteen; it was finally published in 1751.

In the 17th century, Robert Leighton, bishop of Dunblane, had argued for simpler catechisms. His catechism for children was printed posthumously in 1695 in Edinburgh (we hold a copy at shelfmark: Ferg.92). A number of similar children’s catechisms, with shorter and simplified texts, were printed in Scotland in the first half of the 18th century. In the preface to our new acquisition it is noted:

‘that the author has studied a natural plainness [sic] and simplicity of stile [sic], a thing much wanted in productions of this nature, and which few attained to; … he has studied to give this performance the air of dialogue, which by the best critics is judged the easiest and most entertaining way of writing and teaching.’

Our new holding is one of only three known copies (the other two are held outside the UK) and includes ‘Some forms of prayer for children’ at the end.

Further reading:

• On our website: Children’s books in the National Library of Scotland.
• Robert Leighton  (bap. 1612, d. 1684) in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (accessible through NLS licensed digital collections).