This is the latest (2008) reprint of James Stewart Robertson's massive 1884 compilation, containing 870 tunes from the Scottish dance music repertoire. It has been completely reset in clear print, and notes on the sources of the tunes added by Charlie Gore. 

The Athole Collection of Scottish Dance Music is recognised as one of the principal sources in this field. Its compiler, James Stewart Robertson of Edradynate, Perthshire, was a founding member of The Edinburgh Highland Reel and Strathspey Society and its president from 1881. He published his collection of 870 strathspeys, reels, jigs, hornpipes and country dances in 1884.

The book contains a foreword by the late Duke of Atholl and an introduction by the great Scottish fiddler Alasdair Fraser. There are 240 pages, and it is spiral bound for ease of playing.

Alasdair Fraser writes in his introduction to the 1996 edition of The Athole Collection:
"I have great pleasure in being asked to write an introduction for this timely reprint of The Athole Collection (1884) by James Stewart Robertson. Described by Francis Collinson in his foreword to the 1961 edition as 'an Encyclopaedia of Scottish Dance Music,' this collection of tunes has been a great source of inspiration and joy to me as a working musician and teacher in the Scottish dance and performance field.......
James Stewart Robertson of Edradynate, Perthshire, was a founding member of the Edinburgh Strathspey and Reel Society and became President of that organisation in 1881. At that time interest in Scottish fiddle music seemed to be in decline and Robertson is quoted  in the Society's minutes as saying that it was "very desirable that this class of music should not be allowed to fall back as undoubtably it was doing for the past few years". The Athole Collection was published three years later in 1884. It contains 870 strathspeys, reels, jigs, hornpipes and country dances and creates an extremely high quality cross section of the Scottish fiddle repertoire up until that time. As Collinson points out, the author was able to cull from the many previous published collections of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries such as those of Niel and Nathaniel Gow, William Marshall and Captain Simon Fraser.
A unique aspect of Robertson's approach, however, is that he has included many ornamentation and phrasing ideas which are of great value to the player who is less familiar with the Scottish musical idiom. The original edition included a rudimentary accompaniment for the piano left hand or bass, as was the fashion in some of the older collections. In view of the evolving and dynamic  nature of accompaniment in traditional music a decision has been made by the editors of this current edition to allow these tunes to continue their journey into the twenty first century in their earlier 'untethered ' state..........................Alasdair Fraser, California, June 1996.