I Wish I Knew Her in Real Life

 

I've "met" a lot of interesting characters through my reading over the years. Some of them are cherished "friends." But I "met" a character this summer who is especially memorable, one I wish I could spend time with for real - Corrag, the tiny young woman awaiting her death as an accused witch in Susan Fletcher's novel.

The book is set in late 17th-century England and Scotland. Corrag comes from a family with a history of being executed for witchcraft - both her grandmother (drowning) and her mother (hanging) were put to death. Corrag herself spends the whole novel in a Scottish jail waiting for the winter snows to thaw, when it will be dry enough for her to be burned at the stake. It's pretty poignant to read the passages where she hears the drip, drip of the thawing snow and ice, and knows the end of her life is coming nearer and nearer.

How did she get in this situation? We find out her full life story from an Irish minister who has come to interview her in his quest to get information about the massacre of the Macdonald clan in the Glencoe valley. Charles Leslie, a Jacobite, is there for proof that Protestant King William had a hand in the massacre, which he hopes will help with the Jacobite resistance and restore King James, a Catholic, to the throne. What he gets is much more.

Bit by bit, through Leslie's daily visits with Corrag, we get to know her - the lonely girl living with her outcast mother on the edge of a village, the fugitive who rides "north and west" to escape the men who are coming to arrest her mother, the hermit who finds peace in a hut she built herself on a mountain above Glencoe, the healer who earns trust and makes friends in the Macdonald clan, the courageous sentry who warns the clan of the danger they are facing, the accused witch. She's clearly a political prisoner, and this story made me think of how many women were accused and executed just because they were "different." 

Corrag is definitely different. She is gentle and forgiving, even taking healing herbs to the soldiers who are occupying the homes of the Macdonalds. What I really, really liked about her was how much she appreciates and celebrates her connection with the natural world. Here are a couple of quotes I copied from the book that are favorites:

"When did pennies make a person truly rich? Folk seem to fill their lives with favours or a title or two—as if these are the things which matter, like happiness lies in a coin or two. Like the natural world and our place in it is worth far less than a stuffed purse….”

"But what I say to myself when I see a mountain or a starry sky, or any natural thing which feels too much to bear, is what made this, made me, too. I am as special. We are made by the same thing…Call it God, if you wish. Call it chance, or nature—it does not matter.”

And this one really sealed the deal:

"Some things are hard, even if they are right. Even if you know they are the proper, decent way….It was kindness. And kindness is worth showing."

I chose this book just because it was about the Glencoe Massacre, and my husband and I had been to Glencoe a year or so ago. What I got was much more than just history - I got a new "friend" for my mental cocktail party. And what a sweet one she is.