Cuillin Harta Corrie and Coire Na Creich in the Cuillin: Boswell and Johnson visited Skye during their tour of the Western Isles in 1773, and observed snow falling on the summits of the range in September. Boswell described the Cuillin as "a prodigious range of mountains, capped with rocks like pinnacles in a strange variety of shapes". Uniquely for a group of Scottish mountains there are no records of the majority of the Cuillin summits having been climbed prior to the start of mountaineering as a leisure activity in the Victorian era, a situation reflected in the fact that around half
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