Corrag

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the jailer] We’ll need half the wood I thought we would, he said, very properly—like there was a magistrate in the room who he was talking to. The way Corrag tells her tale to Charles Leslie is through heart and feeling, and by extension these are the same ways in which the reader can feel so deeply her apprpeciation of the small beauties in life, her unrequited love, and her peace in loneliness.

I smiled at his references to her powers as a story teller and thought of those Russian nesting dolls.These are pressed into the narrative again and again, the repetition hypnotic and staccato, like a spell. Originally from England, Corrag races north to Scotland at the request of her mother who is about to be hanged for witchcraft. Although some of it strains credulity, I can live with that when my attention is captured as thoroughly as Susan Fletcher did. Author Susan Fletcher was inspired by the historical stories of Charles Leslie and the struggle of the Highland clans to survive the political turmoil of late 1600's, so she wrote a story to ignite a spark of knowledge and understanding in the reader, and she has Corrags magical gift for storytelling ignite a spark of knowledge and understanding in Charles which he then pays forward as well.

In Fletcher's version, Corrag has escaped persecution in Northumberland and reached Rannoch Moor on a stolen mare, finding a refuge in the hidden valley on Bidean nam Bian where the MacDonalds of Glencoe kept their stolen cattle. A small, scraggly, feral-like girl, Corrag and her mother, Cora, are labeled “witch” and “hag” and are never really able to live among people easily - Cora warning Corrag that love can never be with their kind.

She tells her story to Charles, who believes at first she should be executed, but as Corrag tells her story.

When she finally reaches Glencoe she finds a place – and a people – to whom, almost against her will, she becomes deeply attached. Superstitions and witchcraft as it was viewed at the end of the 17th Century in Britain is vividly portrayed.

There is some beautiful writing here and a compelling story set in the late 1600s in Scotland, but it has a few too many ingredients in the witch's brew. One was how much fear was built around these around these women - often old, often widowed or alone, sometimes too intelligent for their own good. But she speaks so richly of her wild life, of living in heather and moss and rocks, that I feel I am amongst it. You will love this book if you see the beauty of nature, if you love walking under a starry night sky, if you have heard and seen and experienced the beauty of a cold winter night or a motionless stag or rabbits frolicking on a field in spring. A valley of such narrowness, and with such steep sides that it is like walking into a hand, half-closed.

It is a tale of passion and courage, magic and betrayal, and the difference that a single heart can make to the great events of history. It is just after the brutal Glencoe massacre in which the McDonald clan is massacred by King William's redcoats, and the young woman Corrag is accused of supernaturally causing the massacre and sentenced to be burned to death. As the story begins, Corrag is chained to a cell in Inverary awaiting her death at the stake while being treated worse than an animal.It is a story of love for nature and for animals and how precious each of them are, how beautiful life's little things are and that a real life of richness revolves around love of these things and our relationship with others.