Dr Doreen J. Waugh, Edinburgh. Custom, Culture and Community in Shetland is a book which will appeal to a wide range of readers but, although presenting his work in such a way as to guarantee popularity, particularly among Shetlanders at home and abroad, the writer makes no sacrifices in terms of academic rigour. At times, he seems to be historian, anthropologist and sociologist rolled into one.
Tradition is only tradition if it has resonance in the present day.
The argument in each of these chapters is backed up by usefully detailed notes and references which, to this reviewers satisfaction, appear at the end of each chapter rather than as footnotes or endnotes to the book as a whole. Brown suggests that celebration of Old Christmas had died out by the 1930s and that would certainly have been true of Lerwick, but old customs lingered in some families on the west side of Shetland. This pageant takes place in the 1990s in a highly sophisticated modern society, but it is a moving tableau of a world we have lost . For those not within these communities, responses and reactions may be extremely varied. In describing the permanence of the institution as part of the Shetland yearly calendar, Brown is certainly correct because, as he points out, preparations for the nens conclusion.