Wales (Queen's Bench Division). On his father's death, in February 2021, James (Jamie) Brodie Macpherson of Cluny, became the 28th Chief of the MacPherson Clan. Ballindalloch Castle was built by the Clan Grant and owned by the Ballindallochs before coming to the Macphersons, now the Macpherson-Grants. [9]

Scottish clans have long and proud history – and some moments are spoken of with more pride than others! The big miss for me was the fact Stewart felt compelled to add a bit of supernatural into the storyline. The Ashley family members have always had psychic ability apparently. They have ESP and can communicate mentally with one another. Bryony has been connecting to someone whom she refers to as her ‘lover’ her whole life. She believes she is truly in love with this voice in her head and that they will meet in real life and she’ll be swept away with the romance of it all. It just… maybe I'm too cynical and logical for this type of thing. With a supernatural flavor missing in Rose Cottage, Touch Not the Cat tells the story of 21-year-old Bryony Ashley, the descendant of a ruthless family that predates the Norman Conquest, a family once so exalted that the future Cardinal Wolsey had been their parish priest. How ruthless? All this time in a moated grange straight out of Tennyson, and not even the sniff of a ghost or a secret passage or any of the things you might expect!” Bryony replies:Invereshie House, near Kingussie, Strathspey was held by the Macphersons from the fourteenth century. [9] William Macpherson of Invereshie captured Blair Castle from the Marquess of Montrose in 1644. [9] We have the heroine, who's father died in an accident, but it could have been a murder. We have cousins who are greedy and need fast cash and want the heroine's trust. We have glimpses into the past of an ancestor of the heroine and a lot of lines from Shakespere and Romeo and Juliet references. They shared a love of nature, Greek and Roman history, music, theatre and art, and all of these are evident in Mary Stewart’s books. I didn’t think I was going to be scared for Bryony’s life but the climactic scenes did become creepy. Stewart certainly is a great example of gothic style suspense.

Macpherson clan traditions is that in 1309 Robert the Bruce offered the lands of Badenoch to the chief of Clan Macpherson if they destroyed the Bruce's enemies, the Clan Comyn, and the Macphersons carried out the king's wishes. [2] The Clan Macpherson is sometimes known as the Clan of the Three Brothers owing to the fact that chief Ewan Ban Macpherson had three sons: Kenneth Macpherson of Clunie, Iain Macpherson of Pitman and Gillies Macpherson of Invereshie. [2] 14th-century clan conflicts [ edit ] Here we have a gothic feel, with a detailed description of the ancient ancestral home, surrounding buildings and outlying areas which make up the Ashley estate. The unnerving feeling is emphasised by an unquestioned supernatural element. From the very start we learn that Bryony Ashley has the gift of telepathy, inherited from a distant ancestor, Bess, who had been burned as a witch in the 17th century. She is able to communicate subliminally with a man whom she now regards as her lover. She is not sure of his identity but knows that he must be an “Ashley” to also have this gift, and spends time trying to decide which of her cousins once removed it is; one of the twins Emory and James, or the younger Francis. She constantly quizzes her telepathic lover about this, but he always puts her off, saying the time isn’t right yet. All the chapter headings in Touch Not the Cat are quotations from Shakespeare’s play “Romeo and Juliet”, and the story-line also mirrors the play in several ways. Also key to the story is a 1562 work by Arthur Brooke called “Romeus and Juliet”, a work which partly inspired Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet”. This work is also quoted from, and becomes essential to the plot of the novel. There are references to the poets Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Thomas Lovell Beddoes and Walter de la Mare at various points in the story. Even Jane Austen’s gothic parody “Northanger Abbey” is alluded to. This is not a typical romantic novel. a b c d e f g h i Coventry, Martin (2008). Castles of the Clans: The Strongholds and Seats of 750 Scottish Families and Clans. Musselburgh: Goblinshead. pp.398–399. ISBN 978-1-899874-36-1. I had so thoroughly enjoyed Rose Cottage, that I was eager for another Mary Stewart novel; therefore, I turned to Touch Not the Cat, one of her most famous works.A robed figure in a darkened church? Absurd. They had a word for the silly penny-dreadful, didn’t they? Gothic, that was it. Robed nuns and ancient houses and secret passages, the paraphernalia that Jane Austen had laughed at in Northanger Abbey”. Celtic languages In Ireland and Scotland, the word for smith, gobha, is found in the surname “MacGouren”/MacGouran/MacGowan/McGowan. This surname is an Anglicised form of Mac a’ Ghobhainn (Scottish Gaelic), Mac Gabhann (Irish), meaning “son of the smith”. What did the Celts do with their cats?

Ocr_converted abbyy-to-hocr 1.1.20 Ocr_module_version 0.0.17 Openlibrary OL17400257M Openlibrary_edition This tale of dark family secrets, Touch Not the Cat was one of the last of Mary Stewart’s classic mid-century gothic romances, redolent with danger and darkness, magic and suspense. We have all the tropes of gothic novels. There is an ancient grange, the tumbledown ancestral home of the Ashley family where danger lurks behind every shadow. There are missing parish registers and rightful heirs, twins and cousins. Thrillingly, there are churchyard scenes, shadowy figures, storms and floods, darkness … and a very great deal of moonlight. And to cap it all of course there is the supernatural element.

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The author spends far too much time describing in very flowery ways, the scenery, in nauseating detail in fact. I usually love when the author is so descriptive, but here it just angered me, and I ended up skimming through those parts. Perhaps I wouldn't have minded it so much if she spent the same amount of dedication to the acutal love story. It was odd to me that the author TOLD most of the action and SHOWED only the scenery. It was awkward and unbalanced. But anyway, if you can get past this concept, the plot is pretty good, and has all the suspense you've come to expect if you're a Mary Stewart fan. In fact, Touch Not the Cat really kept me mystified as to the identity of the telepathic lover right up until the reveal...and even then, Stewart didn't make it any easier for the reader to breathe a sigh of relief and mutter, "so that's who it was!". The narrator, Zoe Mills, was a first time for me, but I thought she nailed Bryony's voice and did great at the rest of the cast which were predominately male. I thought she even got Herr Goddard's German accent and even the American family from California. Most of the time, she narrated with a minimum of acting, but it was great how she swept me up during the climax scene with a bit more. I'll be keeping an eye out for more of her work. I liked the story, the setting, and the gentle sort of mystery. It is more of a mental mystery throughout most of the book, rather than one with a lot of action. Bryony spends plenty of time thinking about what is happening around her, discussing with everyone, and wondering just who is the mysterious 'fantasy lover' she has had a telepathic connection to practically her entire life.