Blended Scotch

CLOUD HOWE -- Lewis Grassic Gibbon --Doubleday, Doran ($2.50).

As every distiller knows, all Scotch whiskey is blended. So is Scots dialect. A blend not only of pungent Scots dialect and plain English but of symphony and satire, low comedy and drama that sometimes aspires to the tragic, Cloud Howe is a malty, fairly intoxicating brew. Author ''Lewis Grassic Gibbon" (J. Leslie Mitchell, British historian and archeologist) has already written one book about his heroine (Sunset Song), will write one more, but Cloud Howe stands sturdily enough alone.

When Chris and her parson husband, Robert, went to the little town of Segget they found the inhabitants a dour, gnarled lot. Chris was a woman and a realist, not much of a churchwoman, but Robert was a fiery Christian who wanted to make the whole congregation over into decent folk. It took a lot to down him, but gradually he learned that Segget was there to stay. Then he had a vision and turned otherworldly. Chris liked him better in his old role. But when he got up from a sick bed to preach his last sermon she recognized him again. They were friends at the end.

The story is stuffed like a haggis with hearty anecdotes: the practical joker who put a fresh-killed pig in the bed of the town drunkard; the man who could find no peace & quiet in his quarrelsome house, took his evening paper out in the graveyard to read; the sweet Alice who was known as "the Roarer and Greeter," not because she was hospitable but because anything out-of-the-way made her roar and greet (howl and cry); the town villain's tale of Robbie Burns's entry into heaven.

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