Growing Up In Scotland is an entertaining and enthralling anthology drawing on autobiographies, biographies, novels, short stories, oral history and poems. It is a powerful testament to the rich variety of the Scottish experience of childhood within different communities and social classes over the past few centuries.

The extracts are not arranged at random, but to illuminate each other and weave a brightly coloured tapestry of life in Scotland. Headings include: Early Days, Prodigies, Grannies, Play and Adventure, Food and Clothes, School days, Work, Fathers and Father-Figures, Adolescents and First Love.

Robbie Kydd was born in Aberdeenshire and was a social worker with children and later a social work teacher. He is the author of two novels, Auld Zimmery and The Quiet Stranger. Nora Kydd, also a social worker, was born in Trinidad and has been involved with children for most of her working life. The Kydds have two daughters and a son.

To give you an example of the type of material included here is a brief excerpt.

Skye late nineteenth century
" . . I looked down at the tidy earthen floor, not able to face [my uncle] out, knowing my gaze would be drawn to that wandering right eye of his, and I would be seized by a terrible urge to glance around and discover the object of its blind stare. it was queer the way his squint seemed to split his face clean in two. I always got the foolish notion that the two halves did not belong, that the wrong pieces had been matched, and that was why they made so ill-favoured a whole. It was always the same when I got to thinking like that, I could feel a nervous bubble of laughter rising in my throat. I swallowed it down, and sat still on the stool, watching a black beetle cross the floor.

'You were gone a terrible time putting out the cattle,' he said, in that soft voice of his that never rose above the same quiet drone no matter how wild he was. 'What was keeping you?'

'I took a walk,' I said, not able to remain still any longer, scraping at the leg of the stool with my thumbnail.

'So you took a walk,' he said, fairly purring, 'and it the Sabbath. Who learned you that the Sabbath was the day for the taking o' idle jaunts? Not me, boy. Not your mother. Putting out cattle beasts to grass is a work o' necessity and mercy, sanctioned by the Most High. We have the word o' Holy Scriptures for that. Only the wicked would make mock o' the Sabbath by taking idle jaunts, and it is laid down in Holy Scriptures that the wicked shall be crowded like bricks in a fiery furnace. I am telling you, boy, you should he down on your knees quaking and trembling at the thought of the everlasting fire that awaits the wicked. What a bed is theirs to lie on; no straw to ease their bones, but fire; no friends, but furies; no sun to mark the passage o' time, but darkness - fire eternal, always burning, never dying away. Who can endure everlasting flame, boy? It shall not be quenched night or day, and the smoke from the burning will rise for ever and ever, though mountains crumble and seas go dry.' He had to stop for breath, but he was soon on the go again, thrusting his long nose forward, and saying, 'Where were you after walking, boy?'

I gave a shrug.

'Where were you walking, boy,' he repeated softly, 'and you gone so long.'

'Och, here and there,' I said.

'Here and there, was it? You hear him, Iseabal?' he said to my mother. 'He says he was walking here and there.'

My mother shot me a dagger of a look, but she did not speak. She was too well acquaint with the ways of her brother to venture a word out of turn.

'Here-and-There,' he said, running the words together, and making them sound like a strange name that had him puzzled. 'I never heard tell of a place called Here-and-There. Where is it, boy? Likely over the hill beyond the Maoladh Mor, seeing the time you were gone.'

'I was putting out the beasts,' I said sullenly.

'Watch your tongue, boy. I am asking you - where?'

'Where else but the moor?' I said, not coming out with a straight untruth, but getting as near as I dared.

'Lies!' my mother shrieked. 'Lies! That tongue o' yours will be your undoing; it is a stranger to the truth, as sure as I am here.'

'Well, if he knows where I was, what is he asking me for?' I said to her, desperate for an end to the questioning. Anything was better than having him keep on at me.

She glanced at her brother, her mouth working, the tears starting to her eyes. But she had no need to struggle for words; one look at him was enough. He always had words in plenty ready fashioned dripping smooth from his tongue. 'Why am I asking you, boy?' he said. 'For to find the truth, so that justice can be done, and it not easy wi' you that full of sin.' He paused, and drew a heavy breath, and I knew what was coming before the words fell. 'It was not the moor you were on, but the laird's plantation above the road by the river, amn't I right? Sleeping, sprawled by the river, naked!' 'A Ghruitheachd!' my mother cried. 'Naked! And it the Sabbath!' She started to sob.

'Naked as the day he was born,' Tomas Caogach affirmed, 'and that on the solemn word o' Fearghus Mor, and himself not the man for to be telling lies.'

There was a silence. I squirmed on the stool, more naked than I had ever been in the sun on the riverbank. Then the two of them started in on me, like a pair of hungry gulls tearing at a dead thing, each of them that eager to strike they were at it again before the one was right done, spewing the words that fast I was not sure who was saying what.

'Are you wise, boy?'

'Have you no thought of the shame of it?'

'You know fine it is eviction for trespass. That has been the way of it since years.'

'And your own sister in service at the Lodge. You think the factor would keep Marsalis in her good job and her brother caught trespassing at the river? Never the day. She would be down the road in disgrace.'

'Not just trespass. You would ha' been charged wi' poaching, nothing surer, and the factor cannot abide poachers. Good grief, I believe that is why we were cleared from Glenuig; the factor was scunnered to death wi' the poaching that was going on, and no wonder. That farther o' yours was never away from the river supposmg he saw the least chance of lifting a salmon.'

'What if one o' the gentry had come on you lying naked?'

'And word got to the Ceistar, and me an elder o' the kirk.' 'You will be the death o' me yet, boy. I do not know what has got into you, and that is the truth of it.'

'The Devil himself that is easy seen.'

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