A Spell for Green Corn, G. Mackay Brown: Hardback: 1st Edition: Plays

By George Mackay Brown.

Published by Hogarth Press, London, 1970. First Edition. Hardback cover with dustjacket (clipped), 91 pages.

CONDITION
Overall fair condition, some crumpling to edges of dustjacket commensurate with age, also some yellowing of dustjacket, light foxing the to book head, see photos. No names or writing.

For this chronicle in six scenes, the author goes to seventeenth-century Orkney. The action centres on a wild-living fiddler and the girl he seduces, who is later condemned to be burned as a witch. Mr Brown gives us an austere beauty of language and a convincing picture of the way seventeenth-century Orcadians talked and thought. Beyond this it is an imaginative exploration of the nature of fertility rites, religion, art. Incidents that happened to a few islanders long ago are seen to be enacted in a framework of timelessness and universality.