This is a bewitching & atmospheric collection of short stories celebrating life & love: the world ripens as a baby stirs in its mother`s womb; a soldier captured at Bannockburn sees the daughter of his jailor bathing & falls in love; two ghosts become reconciled with death; &, an eighteenth-century tale of piracy & treachery. George Mackay Brown`s distinctive voice has a clarity & resonance that blends the magical with the mundane, & the present with the past.