History is a murk. Scottish history on which these stories are loosely based is a thick fog on a boggy moor gloomed by craggy mountains. It's a bad dream. I have tried to make some sense of that dream in my own way. If you read these stories-and I hope you will-in search of Facts you will be lost. No one wants to be lost in a thick fog on a boggy moor in Scotland at night. Trust me. You will lose the plot. You will never know where solid Fact leaves off and the bogs of Fiction begin. I'm not even sure myself. But if you let your imagination be your "slew dogge" (you'll get the reference if you take the plunge), you may make it through to the Afterword. I hope you will. As the waiter tending the coffee-bar said to the winterized woman with the mustache who found Greece cold for the time of year: Enjoy. (You'll have to take the plunge for that one too. Sorry)