The Spirit of Skye

A very Scottish affair. On the island of Skye, during the reign of Queen Victoria, the close commitment of Scottish clans to their people and their tartans played some part in making the history of the era dramatic, gripping, and now, as we look back, glamorous and sometimes, insprawling,heather clad famous. The story of Annie MacKay, set against the backdrop of the Crimean War, political turmoil in Europe and the Highland Clearances, tells of bravery and loyalty, murder and hate, all outshone by her love for the soldier, recently returned from the Crimean War. It is August 1856, Annie is eighteen years old today, but there would be no celebrations. The slight, beautiful Annie, the only daughter of the Laird og Coill Mor, left the estate meeting, to escape to the towering heather clad mountains, to consider  rescuing her father, who was being intimidated by his unprincipled estate manager.

As several evictions are planned, and the Laird is planning to marry Annie to the manager, whom she detests and fears, Annie meets Lord Charles, newly returned from Sevastopol, who she falls in love with, unaware that the soldier's mother has already chosen a wife for her son. When the island Seer, a seventh son of a seventh son, warns Annie that a cricket was seen, leaving the chimneybreast of a tenant farmer's croft, Annie believes the farmer to be in peril of losing his farm. Following the eviction of the farmer, when Annie is lost in the mist, on tthe mountains,  Charles rescues her, and on horseback, he returns her home.

After the annual August Ball at Coll Mor, attended by Charles and his mother, Lady Tummel, the Laird dies, to be buried in the fold of tartan which held the body of Annie's mother, the only woman he had ever loved. Believing she has lost Charles to a beautiful titled girl, Annie is decieved by the estate manager, into a marriage of convenience, in exchange for the cancellation of all evictions on the estate. One night at Coill Mor, Charles berates her for marrying to clear her land. When she accuses him of not being a Highland man, he kisses her, and walks away.  As her traditional Highland wedding approaches, white owls are heard, screaming murder over Coill Mor, and on her wedding night, the owls return.

In the moonlight, still wearing her gown of white taffeta, Annie escpes her inebriated husband on horseback,  as two gunshots ring out, from the entrance to Coill Mor. The teenage Laird fights on, now believing the Clearances would claim her life, as they had killed her father,and unaware that Charles has spurned the bride chosen by his mother, for their estate. This is the story of Annie, her beloved Skye and the love  she believed she would never share.

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