This is a tale of adventure, for children between the ages of five and twelve. A typescript is available from this web site for $12.00, plus shipping and handling..
THE WITCH OF CUULLIN by M. Burbidge
Table of Contents:
1. The Marble and the Egg
Two children rob the nest of an old witch.
2. The Leprechaun's Hut
An elf helps them to escape, temporarily, from the witch
3. The Greenland Shark
The witch changes herself into a shark to pursue their boat across the North Sea.
4. The Cave of the Troll
Kathleen and Kevin explore a troll's cave on the seashore of Norway, and find some potato
soup. The magic marble comes in handy.
5. The White Deer
The children get more help, but Kevin suffers a disaster.
6. Kathleen Alone
Alone and sad, Kathleen finds here way to the top of a mountain in Norway, where an Old
Man lives.
7. Mephistopheles
Kathleen has a wonderful breakfast, and acquires a new and temperamental companion.
8. Down the Mountain
The Old Man gives the travellers a good push to set them off on their way to the coast of
Norway.
9. The Robbers
Kathleen spends an uncomfortable night in the hut of some desperate thieves.
10. The Pirate Ship
More trouble with villains, and Kathleen offers to cook for them, if they will take her to
Brittany.
11. Shipwreck
Mephistopheles is much too clever for his own good, and the pirate ship crashes into the
shore of Brittany.
12. The Wild Boar
The forests of Brittany have some beasts who are especially dangerous if teased.
13. The Wizard of Brittany
The travellers find another friend who feeds them wonderfully and helps them on their way.
14. Kevin's Luck
We discover Kevin again, who is nursed back to health, finds a companion and sets out after
his sister. Kevin and Peer encounter the Witch of Cuullin once more, and survive an
encounter with wolves.
15. The Gryphon
The travellers meet the Old Man of the Mountain, who helps them; then they meet a
ferocious monster, who terrifies them.
16. Flying to Brittany
The Gryphon makes a promise, and flies through a thunderstorm.
17. The Gryphon Keeps Her Promise
Two witches and a raven plot revenge, and the Gryphon finds herself in a bucket.
18. The Inn of the Three Weasels
Kevin and Peer pass Kathleen on the road without knowing it, and reach a gloomy old inn,
where they encounter some weasels.
19. A Brace of Panthers
The Witch of Cuullin enlists the aid of her wicked sister of Nancy, and they prowl as panthers
for their prey.
20. Mephistopheles Meets a Flea
Kathleen and her comrade reach the Inn of the Three Weasels, and find two kittens and a
flea.
21. The Gryphon Swoops
All hope seems lost as the panthers prepare to pounce, but the Gryphon arrives just in time.
22. The Morning Glory Pool
At last the witches confront their enemy, and Kathleen falls in the magic pool.
23. Home to Cuullin
All good folk are re-united, and the Gryphon soars to glory.
Number of words: 40,902 Number of pages: 141 .
THE WITCH OF CUULLIN
CHAPTER 1 THE MARBLE AND THE EGG
Far away on the ocean somewhere to the north of Scotland there used to be a tiny island called the
Island of Cuullin. I do not know whether it is still there, or how you could find it if you went to look for
it. But since this story happened long ago, that doesn't really matter, because it was certainly there when
the story took place. On the island there was a high mountain called Cuullin Mountain, and at the top of
this mountain, so the people of the island said, lived an old witch who the islanders called the Witch of
Cuullin. When our story began it was a long time since anyone had ever climbed the mountain to look at
the place where the witch was said to live, because the islanders said that anyone who did venture that
far would be turned into a mouse by the witch. When she had done that, they said, she would turn
herself into a weasel, and eat the mouse. Whether this is true or not is hard to tell, but since all the
people who lived on the island swore it was, few were willing to climb the mountain to find out.
At the time of our story, there lived on the island two children, a girl named Kathleen and a boy named
Kevin. Their last name was O'Houlihan, and that they had got from their father who was Irish. From
their mother, who was Scottish, they had received their blue eyes. They were very pretty children,
clever and curious, sometimes bad and sometimes good. They lived with their parents in a small cottage
on the western shore of the island, close to the rolling sea. In a barn nearby there were two cows, three
pigs, four ducks and a flock of red chickens. They had herring and potatoes and milk for breakfast,
lunch and supper. On Sunday, each child had an egg for breakfast and sometimes roast chicken for
supper. The whole family lived very happily until one day.
That was the day during the heat of summer when their mother told the children to take their berry pails
and go up into the hills to pick bramble berries. She gave them each a lunch of cheese and potato cakes
which they put in their knapsacks, and off they went, up into the mountain where the berries grew
thickest. Now it seemed to Kevin and Kathleen that the higher they went up the slopes of Cuullin
Mountain, the thicker and juicier the berries grew. So all that lovely morning, they climbed higher and
higher, filling their pails with berries, until at noon they stopped for lunch not far from the top of the
mountain. All the while they watched the blue sky, because they had heard that the witch would often
change herself into an eagle and soar high above the island keeping watch over her nest on the peak.
Kevin and Kathleen saw no eagle, so they climbed higher and higher, closer to the peak where it seem
that the biggest, fattest, juiciest bramble berries grew.
Finally at noon they sat down to eat their cheese and potato cakes, and sip some water from a small
stream close to the top of the mountain. As they munched, Kathleen said to Kevin,"Do you see a great
heap of sticks and straw at the very tip of the peak?" Kevin said, "Indeed I do; it looks very messy,
doesn't it?"
"Do you suppose," said Kathleen," that it is the nest of the witch of Cuullin-- and do you suppose that
we could sneak up before she gets back from wherever she is travelling, and see what she has hidden
inside?"
Now Kevin as brave as Kathleen, and quite as curious, so he thought this was a grand idea. They
gobbled their lunches, seized their pails, and started up through the heather on the last little bit of the
way to the nest. As they neared it, they began to feel a bit uneasy; might there not be something horrible
crouched down inside the nest waiting for them? Kevin scanned the sky and said as cheerfully as he
could," No sign of eagles." So staring round and round, they trudged upwards until at last they stood at
the top, beside a great heap of sticks, branches and old white bones. The only sounds were the sighing
of a warm wind through the heather, and the chattering of their teeth. They stood on tip-toe and peered
over the edge of the nest, and this is what they saw.
There, on a soft bed of gull feathers, rested a small silver casket. Kevin scrambled up the side of the
nest, seized a handle of the casket, pulled it out and set it upon the ground between them. Kathleen
opened the clasp of the casket and lifted the lid. It was almost filled with large golden pieces,
doubloons, or sovereigns, or napoleons; they did not know. But resting on some gull feathers on top of
the gold was a small, bright, blue marble and a large speckled egg. "That looks like a gull's egg to me'"
said Kathleen. "Do you suppose if we put it under the red hen at home it would hatch into a gull, or a
baby witch"?
"Let's try", said Kevin. "And the little blue egg, we can do the same with it. Perhaps it will hatch into a
blue swallow or a blue elf" (Neither had ever seen a marble before) So Kevin picked up the marble and
Kathleen the egg; then, with a cold ripple of fear running up and down their spines, they turned to look
at the sky.
Now it is true that the Witch of Cuullin had not been to the island for a very long time. She had been far
away in sunny Egypt, and on the way home she had stopped to visit her lovely young sister, the Witch
of Nancy, in Brittany. When that visit had ended in a spat, Cuullin had gone on to Norway to visit her
ugly older sister, the Witch of Hardanger. It was while she was crouched by a cauldron in the mountain
cave of Hardanger that she seemed to feel in her bones that something was getting closer and closer to
her nest on Cuullin Mountain, far away across the North Sea. She turned to her sister and said in a
hoarse cackle, "Someone is robbing my nest, I must be gone, sister." And in the twinkling of an eye, she
rose up stretched her skinny arms above her head and turned into a huge sea eagle; then she spread her
wings and soared out over the North Sea, away to the west to the Island of Cuullin. As she neared it
she could look far down with her eagle eyes, and see two tiny figures standing beside her nest. The
eagle gave a mighty scream and flapped her wings in powerful sweeps which drove her like a spear
downwards towards the two. Kathleen and Kevin hear the scream, and looked up in terror, They saw
a speck in the blue dome of the sky, which seemed to grow larger as they stared.
"Quick", squealed Kevin, "We must run." "Wait" screamed Kathleen, "You take the gull's egg and I'll
take the blue one. But wait; she will be upon us before we run half way down the mountain. I'll take the
casket and I'll throw the gold pieces all around the mountain top. Maybe she will stop to gather them
up, and we can escape. She seized the casket and, with one whirl of her arm, she threw a shiny stream
of golden coins far out over the slopes of the mountain. They flashed in the air like golden stars and fell
helter-skelter in a wide circle around in the heather. "There," said Kevin, "It will take the old witch a
long time to gather them up now." Then they seized each other by the hand, grasped their packs, and
ran as hard as they could go down the mountain.
As the circle of coins flashed through the air the old witch saw them go, and screamed another horrible
scream at seeing her treasure cast away like stones. She fluttered down on the nest, and turned into an
old bent woman with a tall black pointed hat, fluttering black robes, a long hooked nose, sharp and
stubbly chin, and flashing eyes which looked very much like those of an eagle. She screamed again.
"You horrible brats, wait till I pick up these gold pieces and then I shall be after you, and I shall get my
magic marble and my talking egg as well--you'll be sorry you ever ventured up on the mountain of the
Witch of Cuullin."
Kevin and Kathleen heard her scream, but it only made them run faster. It happened, however, that the
direction in which they ran was not that which would take them back home. Instead they ran to the
east, down the other side of the mountain where they had never been before. When they finally realized
their mistake, they were half way down to the sea. Kevin gasped,"How can we ever get back home?"
and Kathleen wailed, "Why should we ever go back there? That would simply bring the witch down
upon our cottage and she would burn it with a great flash of fire, and roast mother and father and cow
and chickens to a crisp." Kevin moaned, "But then we can never go home again--we have stolen two
things that the old witch loves, so now we must run as hard as we can, forever and ever."
They looked up at the mountain--no sign of the old witch yet. They looked down at the sea and there,
far away, they could see a tiny green hut close to the rolling waves. "Lets go there," said Kathleen, and
they took hands again and ran as hard as they could down to the shore to the little green cottage.
2. THE LEPRECHAUN'S HUT
The small green hut was the home of a leprechaun. You probably know as well as I that a leprechaun is
a wee man, no taller than a cat would be, if it stood on its hind legs, who wears green breeches and
jacket, lives in Ireland and thereabouts, and has lots of magical powers which he uses when he has a
mind to. But you may not know that he is as stubborn a goblin as ever winked an eye. And the third
thing you must know about leprechauns is that they love gold more than anything else in the world, and
will do a great many mischievous and terrible things to get it. So here was the Leprechaun of Cuullin,
sitting on a small bench by door of his hut, with his long white beard trailing to the ground and a wreath
of blue smoke curling up to the sky from his clay pipe.
Return to List of Books