THE WITCH OF BALINTORE
James Munro
Medieval Magic and Mystery
> witchcraft
> the Queen of Elphame
> shamanism - in a Scottish form
> shape-shifting
> kabbalah
> the teachings of Meister Eckhart
Medieval Outsiders
> witches
> the Elpin - "little people" hunted by the "big people"
> a Urisgaig - a type of water-nymph
> two Moorish slaves whose master has been murdered - strangers in a strange land
> a Sasunn (Saxon) girl, another stranger in the north of Scotland
> a theologian condemned as a heretic
I already knew JM through his poetry before I realised that he also wrote Historical Fiction. I love HF, so I asked him where I should start, and he suggested The Witch of Balintore (his own favourite, I think).
The story is set in Easter Ross, the area immediately to the south of the Dornoch Firth (in the north east of Scotland - there should be a map!) while the first and last chapters take place in London and act as a kind of frame. In the opening chapter we meet Mariana, the narrator and heroine (a good idea if you come to this novel first, as I did, without having read any other Mariana stories) in the company of the demanding and self-indulgent Princess Joan, mother of the young King Richard.
Mariana - Lady Marian MacElpin - was born and grew up in the south of Spain, where she is known as Doña Mariana de la Manga, but her father was a Scot in exile and this visit to Scotland, which is her first, is partly a result of depression - she is fed up with her life in London, where she has made her home, and needs a break - but also partly a long-planned search for her roots.
She finds her grandmother, who turns out to be a witch. She befriends a group of "little people" dismissed derisively by the local people as "tinklers" but also superstitiously feared by them as shape-shifters and mermaids. The little people are in fact the "Elps", and Mariana herself, it transpires, has Elpin blood in her (she has Elpin eyes, everyone says, she swims like a mermaid - and consider her name!)
Then she gets caught up in a mystery involving various foreigners, including Raoul, her ancien amour from Paris, and a murder which "smacks of witchcraft". The suspects are two young Moorish slaves. As only Mariana speaks their language she is asked to interpret for them, which she does willingly, believing them innocent and wanting to help. The interpreting develops, predictably, into a full-scale investigation, in the course of which she falls foul of a certain Brother Arsenius, a Black Friar and Inquisitor, and quite the nastiest piece of work I have come across in a book for a long time - with the possible exception of the Master Executioner's odious son and apprentice, Kenneth.
