THREE STORIES

by R. B. Cunninghame Graham

Introduction by Jenni Calder

Association for Scottish Literary Studies, 2015
Text courtesy of the Kennedy & Boyd Cunninghame Graham Collection

Published in: PDF

Robert Bontine Cunninghame Graham (1852–1936) was a traveller and adventurer, a politician and campaigner, a Scottish laird and an American rancher, a superb horseman, and a writer of essays, polemic, history, biography, and fiction. Throughout his life he was a champion of the underdog and an outspoken critic of injustice and inequality, and wherever he went, his capacity for empathy and his appreciation of the demands and customs of diverse territories and contrasting cultures were hallmarks of his life, his political ideas, and his writing.

The three stories collected here are set respectively in Mexico, Morocco, and Scotland. They are about journeys and frontiers, and about tenacity, loss, and death. In “A Hegira”, a little band of escaped Mescalero Apaches are trying to get back to their homeland; in “The Gold Fish”, Amarabat must carry a fragile, priceless gift across the desert; and in “Beattock for Moffat”, a dying man travels north, looking to see his home one last time.

CONTENTS
Introduction
A Hegira
The Gold Fish
Beattock for Moffat
The Cunninghame Graham Collection