Literature
Robert
Louis Stevenson: Songs
of Travel
Stevenson loved walking, especially in
the Pentlands, just south of Edinburgh. This suite of
poems reflects this. The poems were set to music by Ralph
Vaughan Williams - one minute previews of each song can
be heard on the Passionato
site. See also the Wikipedia
article that includes a link to the sheet music for
the songs.
Michael
Fairless: The
Road Mender
Michael Fairless was a pseudonym for Margaret Fairless
Barber who lived between 1869 and 1901. The Road Mender,
enormously popular in its time, is a collection of quiet
meditations on the road to heaven by a road mender and
contains some fine evocative writing on nature.
Robert
Southey: Poems
The
Cross-Roads:
A sad story of a slighted girl buried at the cross-roads
as a suicide.
They laid her here where
four roads meet.
Beneath this very place,
The earth upon her corpse was prest,
This post is driven into her breast,
And a stone is on her face.
Inscriptions
for the Caledonian Canal:
A eulogising of his friend Thomas Telford, that includes
a reference to his roads.
and where his roads,
In beautiful and sinuous line far seen,
Wind with the vale, and win the long ascent,
Now o'er the deep morass sustained, and now
Across ravine or glen or estuary,
Opening a passage through the wilds subdued.
Ronald
Primeau: The
Romance of the Road
Comprehensive survey of American "road literature".
 Matsuo
Basho: Narrow
Road to the Deep North
A classic of Japanese literature. In 1689 Basho set
off on a journey of discovery to the far north of Japan
and recorded his thoughts in calm reflective prose and
poetry.
How far must I walk
To the village of Kasajima
This endlessly muddy road
Of the early wet season?
Travel
as Metaphor, Columbia University
Video commentary on Narrow Road to the Deep North
(click "Show Video" then play
- Real Player)
Pentland
Hills
Overview of some of the literary figures associated
with the Pentlands.
Heathcote
Williams: Autogeddon
A poem denouncing the evils of the motor car. It was
made into a very successful TV film a year later. I
wrote this article
about an exhibition at the Glasgow School of Art in
1993 that was based on Autogeddon.
J
G Ballard: Concrete
Island
I have my own views on this novel but was unable to
find a link that agreed with me so this will have to
do. Superb bit of fiction.
The
archetypal road-myth: from the highway to the Matrix
Nikos Barbopoulos, Pavlos Baltas and Theodoros Chiotis
An examination of the archetypal road-myth in the age
of the super highway and the information highway of the
world wide web.
Hilaire
Belloc, The
Old Road
A classic "old road" book following the course
of the old road between Winchester and Canterbury -
sunny days, rolling downland, old English pubs etc.etc.
Art
Forgotten
Roads - Painting on the Edge. Keith Tilley.
Two
paintings of the Ca-na-Catanach, an ancient route between
Sutherland and Caithness.
Mythology
and Folklore
An Analysis of Pre-Christian Ireland
Using Mythology and A GIS,
Dimitra-Alys A. Caviness
This paper discusses how mythology and modern GIS techniques
could allow the possible routes for the Five Roads of
Tara and the three cow roads to be identified.
'In
Heaven as on Earth', Royal roads and the Milky Way,
Penny Drayton
Interesting article about the significance roads may
have had for people in the past.
The
Perilous Bridge, Alby Stone
An examination of the frequent occurence of the bridge
motif in mythology, and what it might mean.
Corpse
Roads, Dorian Robinson
A look at the folk-lore associated with corpse roads.
Fairy
Paths in Ireland and Wales, A Literature
and Field Study of Cognised Landscapes in Two Celtic
Countries, Paul Devereux
A
Road to the Other Side,
Camilla Grön
In an excavation of a Viking Age road/bridge near a
burial ground, the author examines its significance
as a means of transport to the afterlife.
Geoffrey
of Monmouth's Histories of the Kings of Britain
Brief mention of the four great roads of Britain built
by Belinus. See also the Molmutine Laws (page 34). This
seems to be a reference to major Roman roads.
The
Road That Takes and Points, Kaia Lehari
Although this paper and the one following are more philosophical
than mythological I have included them as they are full
of insights into the nature of roads and bridges.
A
Winter Landscape with a Bridge, Kaia Lehari
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