In The Interpreter's House (1975), David Daniell noted that Witch Wood is tightly enclosed, with everything taking place under a heavy, black, suffocating pall of evil. Lewis wrote, "for Witch Wood specially I am always grateful all that devilment sprouting up out of a beginning like Galt’s Annals of the Parish. Of the Buchan novels, Witch Wood was the author's own favourite and has been described as "a masterful tale of godliness in conflict with wickedness." C. That it concerns the land and history of Scotland, that it makes brilliant use of braid Scots dialect and that it enshrines many aspects, both admirable and contemptible, of the Scottish character are features that must give satisfaction to Mr Buchan's countrymen". The Spectator called it "this powerful, charming and spiritually earnest novel which almost enables Mr Buchan to be called a modern and terse Walter Scott", and the Glasgow Herald thought that it "must be adjudged the greatest of Mr Buchan's published works. Critical reception Įarly critics were quick to recognise the significance of the novel, which has since come to be regarded as Buchan's masterpiece. According to the historian Ronald Hutton, it was based upon the Witch-cult hypothesis of the anthropologist Margaret Murray. The story was originally known as The Minister of Woodilee and was first serialised in British Weekly under the title The High Places. His research had raised questions of religious tolerance which he wanted to explore. Witch Wood was written while Buchan was researching Montrose, the revised version of his biography of James Graham, 1st Marquess of Montrose, who appears as a minor character in the novel. In an epilogue, it is revealed that Sempill and Kerr had ridden to Leith and had boarded the first available ship out of Scotland. The minister is never after that day seen again, giving rise to the legend mentioned in the novel's prologue. The effort is too much for Caird who runs off in demented terror and is killed in a fall. He forces Caird to enter, kneel before the pagan altar, and to make his choice between Christ and the devil. On his way back from the hearing, Sempill meets Ephraim Caird near the Black Wood. Sempill is found guilty and is excommunicated and ejected from his ministry. In retaliation, Caird brings counter-charges against the minister for harbouring a fugitive, for associating with Mark Riddel (now publicly identified as Mark Kerr), and for keeping the company of an unknown woman. Sempill presents his evidence of Ephraim Caird's heresy to the presbytery, the Kirk's religious court, which rejects it as circumstantial and unreliable. A local woman is accused by a pricker of being a witch and in spite of the best efforts of Sempill and Riddel is tortured and killed. Nursing care is surreptitiously provided by a shadowy figure whom the locals take to be a fairy but who is in fact Katrine Yester, niece of the local laird, to whom Sempill is secretly engaged.
Sempill works to prevent its spread helped by a newcomer named Mark Riddel who, unknown to the locals, is in fact the fugitive Mark Kerr. The wife of a prominent elder of the Kirk, Ephraim Caird, is discovered burning clothes on a fire which smells strongly of aniseed. After attempting unsuccessfully to identify the ringleader, he manages to splash pungent aniseed oil onto the ringleader's clothes. One night in the feared Black Wood of Melanudrigill the minister stumbles across a diabolic rite in which figures wearing animal headpieces dance around a pagan altar. When Kerr is injured, the minister hides him in the manse. Sempill is less committed to strict doctrinal practices than many of the Covenanters, and he finds himself attracted to the creed of Mark Kerr, a fugitive and follower of Lord Montrose, supporter of the King and enemy of the Kirk. The story opens in 1644 with the coming of David Sempill, newly-ordained minister of the Church of Scotland, to Woodilee, a parish passionate in its support of the Covenant. Locals believe that he was spirited away by the fairies or, as some maintain, by the devil. Looking at its now-ruined parish kirk, he recalls a legend about its last minister, who disappeared without trace 300 years ago. In a prologue to the novel, the narrator muses on the rural parish of Woodilee in the Scottish Borders.
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