[1] Erskine claimed that he learned to speak Scottish Gaelic from his childhood nanny, who came from Harris, and that this kindled the enthusiasm which was to be a main hallmark of his career.

The paper was published for less than a year, but printed works by a number of notable artists, including Walter Sickert and James NcNeill Whistler.

Erskine, along with Vivian and Melville Henry Massue founded the Legitimist Jacobite League of Great Britain and Ireland in 1891, and he was president of the organisation in 1893, 1894 and 1897.

In 1904, he launched Guth na Blaidhna, a bilingual periodical which promoted Scottish Gaelic language revival, Catholicism and a twentieth-century Counter-Reformation.

Contributors included the Aberdonian trade unionist William Diack, James Maxton of the Independent Labour Party (ILP), the author and poet Lewis Spence, and the Welsh Nationalist MP Edward Thomas John.

His activities with the publication brought him into contact with William Gillies, with whom he formed the Scots National League (SNL) in 1920, thus going some way towards the realisation of the formation of a Scottish nationalist political party.

Erskine had at one stage described socialism as "a predatory creed", but by the time of the First World War he was becoming more politically radical and finding sympathy with the cause of figures such as Maclean.