Description
FIRST EDITION, 8vo, pp. iv, 133, [1]. Contemporary blue boards, red endpapers. Poor-quality paper a little toned, flyleaves creased, front flyleaf torn. Binding waterstained, a little rubbed, some wear to edges
Ancient History of Caledonia. Written by St Chaldean, and the other Saints of the Chaldean Faith, And chiefly by the Johnstones, who held the Royal Pen for Many Hundred Years, Translated From The Latin. With a Copious Index.
- Dunning: John M'Laren 1874
£95
Notes
A highly fanciful provincially-printed history of Scotland, beginning in ancient Egypt and taking in the building and destruction of Troy, the voyage to Scotland by descendants of Lazarus to found Montrose, finishing in 1286 with the death of King Alexander III, although in this history he was assassinated for religious reasons. It is prefaced by an even more unlikely tale relating to the origin of the text involving a gunner at the Tower of London, an ancient codex discovered in a shop on Petticoat Lane and translations into and out of Gaelic, in the process of which the original manuscript had of course disappeared.
This and its reprint from 1879 are the only books recorded in Library Hub published in the Scottish village of Dunning before 1980; printer and publisher did not operate in the period covered by SBTI but the printer (David Brown of the nearby town of Kinross) had his profession recorded on his gravestone when he died in 1885.
