The Sterling Institute for Folklore Quantification is part of the University of Sterling in Sterling, Scotland.
Overview[]
Sterling Castle is a luxurious marble-clad manor located in the medieval town of Sterling. It houses several departments of the University of Sterling, chiefly, The Sterling Institute for Folklore Quantification. This group of fanatical ethnographers, which works under the leadership of Scotland's infamous Dauntain, Dr. Calum Erskine, cuts a swath though the Dreaming big enough to drive a really huge, boring truck through.
Dr. Erskine's groundbreaking dissertation, "Quantifiable Dreams: Economic Determinants in Ubiquitous Folk Ideologies," created a whole new discipline for the scholars at Sterling. Dr. Erskine, along with his graduate students and associate professors, scours the Highlands and Lowlands in search of data. Due to generous contributions from industrialists and oil companies, Erskine is often able to bring these living archives of quaint folk wisdom to his laboratories where all their beliefs can be charted, probed, and analyzed. Dr. Erskine is also fond of holding instructional sessions in rural schools to describe how folk traditions and lore are inconsequential as art or the foundations of belief and wonder. Rather, he claims that they have invaluable worth as predictors of sociological and economic trends.
One of Calum's ex-graduate students, Edward Buchanan, is his most vocal detractor. Buchanan argues for the folk tales to be taken for what they are: lessons in life. His presence at the meetings sends Dr. Erskine into a rage. On several occasions Erskine has attempted to assault his old student, especially when confronted with his own lively undergraduate work, which Edward uses as evidence against Calum's cold economic dogma.
Erskine's other ardent foe and the chief target of midnight rants to his graduate students is his brother, Russell Erskine, known in his fae mien as King Ross of Dalriada.
- See also Tuath Glas Cu
References[]
- CTD. Isle of the Mighty, p. 101.