First published in 1895, The Days of Auld Langsyne was Ian Maclaren's second collection of sketches from 'Drumtochty'. Following in the wake of the enormous success of Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush (1894), the volume established the Rev. John Watson as one of the most widely-read authors in Britain and America. Based on memories of life as a minister of the Free Kirk in Logiealmond, Perthshire, the stories, with their skilful use of local dialect, offer a nostalgic evocation of rural Scottish life in the 1860s and 1870s.
A new introduction places Maclaren's work in the context of Scottish fiction at the end of the nineteenth century and addresses the style of his writing and his representation of community values and religious life in Scotland.