author
John Gregorson Campbell
1836–1891
A Scottish minister with a deep love of Gaelic storytelling, he spent years gathering Highland and Island tales that might otherwise have been lost. His work still offers a vivid doorway into the folklore, beliefs, and everyday imagination of nineteenth-century Scotland.
2 Audiobooks
Witchcraft & Second Sight in the Highlands & Islands of Scotland Tales and Traditions Collected Entirely from Oral Sources
by John Gregorson Campbell
Superstitions of the Highlands & Islands of Scotland Collected Entirely from Oral Sources
by John Gregorson Campbell
About the author
Born in Argyll in 1836, John Gregorson Campbell became a Free Church minister and is best remembered as one of the important collectors of Scottish Gaelic folklore. He studied in Glasgow, where his interest in traditional stories and Gaelic culture grew stronger, and later served the parishes of Tiree and Coll.
While carrying out his ministry, he carefully wrote down oral traditions he heard in the Highlands and Islands. His collections preserved stories of heroes, fairies, second sight, witchcraft, and local belief, and they remain valuable for readers interested in folklore as well as the Gaelic-speaking world that shaped it.
Campbell died in 1891, but his books continued to circulate after his death and helped secure his reputation as a patient, respectful recorder of tradition. What makes his work especially appealing is the sense that he was listening closely to real voices and trying to keep a living culture on the page.