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Quote by C J Cooke

“Some of the younger population had inherited crofts that they didn’t want to live in, so they’d started renting them out. The older population objected strongly both to the younger islanders moving away (‘all of them want to live in Edinburgh or London,’ she told us with a sneer) and, as a result, drawing ‘outsiders’ to the island to rent out the crofts.”

Quote by C J Cooke

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“The punishments meted out to the witches of North Berwick were recounted from generation to generation. Agnes Sampson, an elderly woman and a healer from Haddington, was the ringleader. She’d been kept in a scold’s bridle, a fearful instrument wrought of iron that enclosed the head. Four sharp blades penetrated the mouth of the witch to keep her quiet, and doubtless to ruin her tongue for a long time thereafter. In Agnes’ case, the bridle was chained to the wall of her cell, and therefore she was forced to endure countless days unable to speak, eat, or sleep, enduring the humiliation of opening her bowels or bladder without being able to attend to herself, and doubtless in a terrible amount of pain without a moment’s relief. After spending days thus, she confessed to raising the storm in partnership with the Devil, though I always thought that if I’d had to suffer days on end in a cell wearing such a monstrous instrument I’d have confessed to being Satan himself. No mercy was bestowed for Agnes’ confession, however – she was swiftly garrotted and burnt at the stake.”

Scotland Witches The Lighthouse Witches Agnes Sampson Haddington North Berwick

Author:C J Cooke

“She tries to force memories to the surface of her mind, picturing them as stones on the bottom of a lake that she has to push upwards. But it doesn’t work like that. Memories, like stones, have their own gravity.”

Memories Stones Gravity The Lighthouse Witches

Author:C J Cooke

“I’ll take care of them. I do a bit of pest control, on the side.’ ‘Didn’t you say you do plastering on the side?’ He cocked an eyebrow. ‘There’s a lot of “on the side” when you live on an island.”

Working Scottish The Lighthouse Witches Island Life Pest Control Plastering

Author:C J Cooke

“...a single parent, an honest-to-God buck-stops-with-me single parent was a rare species.”

Parenting The Lighthouse Witches Single Parenting

Author:C J Cooke

“Most of the year he worked at sea on a whaling ship, and when he was home he worked as a handyman, endowed with a knack for sniffing out both the problem and a solution to virtually any constructional issue by merely setting eyes on it.”

Sea Construction Problem Solving The Lighthouse Witches Whaling Handyman

Author:C J Cooke

“She remembers that sphagnum moss is an antiseptic, that the Celts used it to pack their wounds after battle. Soldiers in World War One did the same. She likes to cling on to bits of information like that, the type that links the ancient past to the near-present. It makes the strangeness of the present less strange.”

Information Celtic The Lighthouse Witches Natural Healing Ancient Healing Antiseptic Soldiers Ww1 Sphagnum Moss

Author:C J Cooke

“I tried to force myself to enjoy every detail, every second of time. When I looked out at the beach, I imagined each grain of sand like a measure of time that I’d been allotted. I could either let them run through my hands or I could stop and pay attention.”

Time Pay Attention Beach The Lighthouse Witches Grain Of Sand

Author:C J Cooke

“Each week day I dropped the girls off to school at eight am, then worked solidly until I collected them from afterschool club at five-thirty, often returning to the Longing once they were in bed. I enjoyed Finn’s conversational tour of Lòn Haven, and occasionally his death metal tapes. Here, on Lòn Haven, I was untethered from the past. Everything I’d carried for the last fifteen years – the shock of my pregnancy with Saffy, the grief at losing Sean, and now, that terrifying phone call – was gobbled up by the ravenous tide. And witnessing the Longing transform, stroke by stroke, into something a little less knackered, its former glory beginning to creep back, was rewarding. I felt that, maybe, I could start again, too.”

Past Hope Future Parenting Present The Lighthouse Witches Death Metal

Author:C J Cooke

“These are machair orchids,’ he told me. ‘I grow them on my land. They’re native to the western isles, where my mother was born. They’re fragile as soap bubbles, these things. I grow them in a greenhouse.”

Flowers Scotland Orchids The Lighthouse Witches Western Isles Machair Machair Orchids

Author:C J Cooke

“Why don’t you like him?’ He screwed up his face. ‘It’s nothing personal. He’s just a bit of a bawbag.”

Insult Scottish The Lighthouse Witches Bawbag

Author:C J Cooke