Drawing on the collections of the National Museums of Scotland's Scottish Ethnological Archive, this book provides an insight into the work of farmers and fisher folk, the pastimes of children, transport and trade, craft-work and housework during the closing decades of the 19th and the first half of the 20th century. The realities of rural life are revealed in the faces, the clothes, the gestures, in the relationships with animals and in the objects of everyday life and work that the photographs reveal.