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Rural British strangeness in books, music + films
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tjj
tjj
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Re: Rural British strangeness in books, music + films
Apr 11, 2015, 16:44
It's a really good article isn't it. Monganaut posted it over on Village Pump earlier today, I read it then and did comment (which I rarely do on VP). I waffled on a bit about 'projection' but there is no getting away from the spookiness in MR James's "A view from a hill". Hard to explain away.

One of my favourite books is 'Witch Light' by Susan Fletcher (also published as Corrag) not spooky as such but quite 'other-worldly', though is a novel set around the Massacre of Glencoe.
To quote:
I had never liked witch, and I still don’t. But if ever I deserved the name at all, it was then, I reckon. It was having my hair fly in the wind as I stood on the tops, and how I crawled through the woods where the mushrooms grew. It was cloud-watching and stag-seeing, and spending long hours - full afternoons – by the waterfall that I bathed in, watching the autumn leaves fall down and make their way seaward. They bobbed and swirled. I said magick on day. In the gully that led to my valley, I stopped. The wind was in the birches and it felt they were speaking.

Each chapter is headed by a little bit of country/folk-lore pertaining to herbs.
"Moonwort is a herb (they say) will open locks and unshoe horses as tread upon it ... Country people, that I know call it Unshoe The Horse."

Sorry if I'm waffling again.
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Rural British strangeness in books, music + films (Rhiannon)
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