num_pages: 192
description: Introduced by John Herdman, And the Cock Crew offers one of the most powerful and searching examinations of the Highland Clearances to be found in modern Scottish literature. Written during the 1930s and published in 1945, Fionn MacColla’s finest book maintains that the roots of all social change are to be found not in so-called "economic causes," but deep in the human heart. This searching and passionate novel, with its philosophical understanding of the dangers of the will to power and its passionate advocacy of old Gaelic ways, takes the familiar themes of freedom, obedience, and dispossession beyond the Clearances themselves and into the realms of the spirit. In prose style burning with the felt immediacy of the hills and glens in which the book is set, And the Cock Crew revolves around the central encounter between Fearchar the Gaelic poet, who speaks for tradition and continuity, and Maighstir Sachairi, the minister who heralds a more modern world of control, submission, and absolute necessity. At last available in print again, Fionn MacColla’s best-known novel has lost none of its power to challenge and disturb.
language: English
title: And the Cock Crew
titlecomplete: And the Cock Crew
characters: Maighster Zachairi, Fearcher
ratings_count: 22
places: Highlands, Scotland
publisher: Canongate Books Ltd