Cuillin range. Cracks and fissures in the rock provided pathways for later magma intrusions, leading to dykes of basalt which are commonly seen across Skye. The Red Cuillin also have volcanic origins, being formed from a later intrusion of acidic, granitic rock. This granite was more uniformly eroded by wind and water than the gabbro and basalt, causing the red hills to have smoother outlines. The Cuillin provide classic examples of glacial topography and were the subject of an early published account by James Forbes in 1846 (who had become a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh aged only nineteen).
In the Faëry Hills second-hand language" at some points, derivative of Wagner and Debussy, although "there is still a great deal which is wholly individual". "The Musical Times" praised "a mystic glamour that could not fail to be felt by the listener" although the coherence of the piece "was not instantly discernible". The work has, at 2015, been recorded three times for CD, by the Ulster Orchestra conducted by Bryden Thomson (1985), the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and David Lloyd-Jones (1997), and the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra and Vernon Handley (2006). In the Faëry Hills In the Faëry Hills, to which the composer gave the