THE Isle of Mull, an outrageously green patch of land in Scotland's Inner Hebrides, thrives today on a diet of tourism, fishing and farming. Go back a century or five and the picture was much the same, save for the tourists taking the form of rampaging clans hungry for power and resources. It was a perilous place to survive, yet Mull has been inhabited for more than 10,000 years. Little wonder that those hardy folk who braved the tides to fish and climbed the cliffs for bird eggs found solace in myth and legend. Even today, as you hike through the glens and sit a while beside the lochs there, you'll find it's easier to believe in witches and wee folk in Scotland than perhaps anywhere else in the world. You wouldn't expect any less from a country with the unicorn as its national animal.
Mull's witches, however, were a breed apart. It's said that not merely one witch or two made the island her home, but a whole race of them. These weren't hidden figures in ramshackle cabins scaring the children, feared and avoided these women were important. Powerful, in their own way, respected by local people and consulted by the clan chiefs.
So it was that the Mull witch known as the Dòideag was called upon when a galleon from the Spanish Armada sailed into Tobermory harbour in 1588. Among the sailors and soldiers on board was a Spanish princess who had dreamed of the island and of finding a man there whom she would love with all her heart. She spotted the man as he neared the shore and history might have taken a very different turn had that man not been married. As it was, his wife was none too happy about the princess's attempts to woo her husband and she approached the witch for a solution.
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة September 14, 2022 من Country Life UK.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك ? تسجيل الدخول
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة September 14, 2022 من Country Life UK.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك? تسجيل الدخول
Happiness in small things
Putting life into perspective and forces of nature in farming
Colour vision
In an eye-baffling arrangement of geometric shapes, a sinister-looking clown and a little girl, Test Card F is one of television’s most enduring images, says Rob Crossan
'Without fever there is no creation'
Three of the top 10 operas performed worldwide are by the emotionally volatile Italian composer Giacomo Puccini, who died a century ago. Henrietta Bredin explains how his colourful life influenced his melodramatic plot lines
The colour revolution
Toxic, dull or fast-fading pigments had long made it tricky for artists to paint verdant scenes, but the 19th century ushered in a viridescent explosion of waterlili
Bullace for you
The distinction between plums, damsons and bullaces is sweetly subtle, boiling down to flavour and aesthetics, but don’t eat the stones, warns John Wright
Lights, camera, action!
Three remarkable country houses, two of which have links to the film industry, the other the setting for a top-class croquet tournament, are anything but ordinary
I was on fire for you, where did you go?
In Iceland, a land with no monks or monkeys, our correspondent attempts to master the art of fishing light’ for Salmo salar, by stroking the creases and dimples of the Midfjardara river like the features of a loved one
Bravery bevond belief
A teenager on his gap year who saved a boy and his father from being savaged by a crocodile is one of a host of heroic acts celebrated in a book to mark the 250th anniversary of the Royal Humane Society, says its author Rupert Uloth
Let's get to the bottom of this
Discovering a well on your property can be viewed as a blessing or a curse, but all's well that ends well, says Deborah Nicholls-Lee, as she examines the benefits of a personal water supply
Sing on, sweet bird
An essential component of our emotional relationship with the landscape, the mellifluous song of a thrush shapes the very foundation of human happiness, notes Mark Cocker, as he takes a closer look at this diverse family of birds