at the time, these recommendations were the work of Nicolson. They met with total hostility from the Scottish Education Department and its inspectorate. Gaelic-medium education would have to wait for another 100 years. During the tour of investigation the gunboat HMS Lively, with the commissioners on board, sank off Stornoway, and he had some difficulty in saving the manuscript of his Memoirs of Adam Black, on which he was working at the time. In 1885 he became sheriff-substitute of Greenock, retiring in 1889, with a pension, on grounds of ill-health. He returned to Edinburgh, died suddenly at the breakfast table on 13 January 1893, and was buried in Warriston cemetery in Edinburgh. Interests Nicolson was popular in society, being known for stories and songs, such as "The British Ass" and "Highland Regiments". He wrote: "I would rather be remembered as the composer of one good song, than as the writer of many respectable and superfluous books." His interest in climbing has seen him called "arguably the first modern mountaineer". He was a pioneer of climbing in the Cuillin hills of Skye, and in 1873 made the first recorded ascent of Sgùrr Alasdair, their highest peak, which is now named after him ("Alasdair" being a Gaelic form of "Alexander"). A member of the Scottish Mountaineering Club he is also credited with the first recorded ascent of Sgurr na Banachdich and Sgurr Dubh Mòr with the guide, John MacKenzie and with a possible winter first ascent of Sgurr nan Gillean. Credits for first ascents of British hills are very rare. He was also a keen athlete and a volunteer. Works It is as a scholar of Scottish Gaelic that Nicolson has a lasting reputation, based mainly on his articles in The Gael, a Gaelic periodical, his collection of Gaelic proverbs, and his revised version of the Gaelic Bible, made for the Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge. He was also a Greek scholar. His main publications were: The Lay of the Beanmhòr: a Song of the Sudreyar, Dunedin [Edinburgh], 1867. A Collection of Gaelic Proverbs and Familiar Phrases. Based on Macintosh's Collection. Edited by Alexander Nicolson, Edinburgh, 1881; 2nd edit. 1882. An updated version of the collection by Donald Macintosh. Still available: . Memoirs of Adam Black, Edinburgh, 1885; 2nd edit. 1885. Verses by Alexander Nicolson, LL.D., with a Memoir by Walter Chalmers Smith, Edinburgh, 1893. Nicolson also edited in 1857