​






From Stacie at pursuingstacie.wordpress.com/2018/04/06/megge-of-bury-down/ 

​Rebecca Kightlinger is a spell weaver. She has to be. Allow me to explain. First of all, every chapter was therapeutic. I was easily transported into each setting, each scene, each circumstance. You guys, I’m not even kidding. I could see everything, smell every herb, hear every conversation. I feel as though I met each of the women of Bury Down personally, and then let them set up residence in my heart-space. I didn’t read the book. I experienced it. And with each page, each escape, each passage with the women of Bury Down, I mended.
There is so much beauty in Megge of Bury Down, but there is an amazing amount of mystery. So often, I found myself thinking, “What on earth? What aren’t they telling Megge? Why is that going on? No, that did NOT just happen!” and it was stinkin’ awesome.
And, as if that wasn’t enough, I was offered the amazing opportunity to interview the author. (You know that high-pitched squeal that only dogs can hear? Totally me, while thinking up questions for Rebecca Kightlinger.) Enjoy our little chat below!


1. I hate to ask the “typical” question, but I loved this book so much and just haveto know: What was your inspiration for Megge of Bury Down? 
I wish I could say that I was inspired by an idea and then made up this story. But, as all my narrators do, Megge just appeared in my mind’s eye one day as I was finishing another story, and she began telling me hers. As soon as I finished that other story (which will be one of the later books in this series), I moved on to Megge’s and have just kept writing it.
I think it was her yearning to be part of her family, and her family’s determination to help her find the courage to join them by following her own path that inspired me to keep asking, “And then what happened?”
The women of Bury Down have such deep respect for knowledge and such a desire to serve despite being outsiders in relation to those they care for, that they drew me deeper and deeper into their lives and their world. It’s been seven years now, and their story continues to unroll before me. Megge reveals something to me every day that I never could have made up, and this inspires me to keep going.

2. Are character names important to you?
Very important. Sometimes I have to come up with a name, but most of the time, I just listen and the names come out in conversation. Dora Tucker is one example. When Megge found her lying in the weeds bleeding, she ran to her mother and said, “It’s Mistress Tucker…” so that’s one name I didn’t have to come up with. Anwen, Aleydis, Murga, Gytha, Bryluen, and Hugh all had names when they showed up. At first, I thought Alf’s name was Matthew. It wasn’t until he said, “Call me Alf!” that I realized I had it wrong. Alf was absolutely this character’s real name all along!

3. Did you resonate with one character more than the others? 
Probably with Morwen. I loved Morwen. She had such love for Megge, and compassion and interest in her well-being. It was Morwen who gave Megge the kind of life and work and training that would enable her to do what she needed to do when the time came. She had to run interference between Megge and her mother and bring together everyone Megge would ever need in this life. You’ll see later how much our little Morwen accomplished in this regard.

4. Is there anything that you edited outof this book?
You might have noticed that some of the names are Dutch or Germanic. Aleydis and her mother Beatrix, as well as Adaem and Arjen and his friends were all of Dutch descent. I had originally included more about that in Book One, but it was too much detail. So that will come out in Book Two!

5. What was the most difficult scene to write?
If I say, I might ruin it for some readers! Let me just say that it was the death that followed a lovely, intimate moment between the women and the girls. As it played out before me and I wrote, I could feel something was about to happen and that I was going to hate it. I kept thinking, “Oh, NO!” Grief welled up in me as I wrote just as it does every time I remember that scene.

6. For your readers who are interested in ancient medicine and mystic healing, do you have suggestions for where they should begin studying? 
Librarians are probably the best resource for reliable research material. Also, any reputable book will have its sources listed in the bibliography, and researchers can refer to those. 
For ancient medicine, I’d recommend the American Association for the History of Medicine, out of Johns Hopkins. And there must be a million books on ancient medicine. It depends on what you’re looking for. The history of midwifery was tough to pin down for rural Cornwall in Megge’s day, but there are a lot of sources on non-physician healers, mystical healing, herb lore, and witchcraft.
For magic and grimoires, Picatrix was enlightening, and there are many other fascinating and beautiful books of spells and incantations.  A list of sources I consulted is available at  https://www.burydownchronicles.com/referencesources.html

7. As a writer, what would you choose as your mascot/spirit animal?
Since my writing comes to me out of a place I can’t even see, I would choose the owl as my mascot. Is there anything more mysterious? The owl has enormous, luminous eyes, but it hunts at night, in the dark. It flies silently but shatters the stillness with it’s screeches. It’s gorgeous and wild and mesmerizing.
The night I arrived at Botelet Farm in Cornwall to start doing research for the historical and local details of the book, I was coming up the drive in the taxi, and an owl swooped down off a low branch and flew right over the windshield. At the time, never having been to Cornwall and not knowing anything about the place where I would be staying to research this novel, I knew something special was there. And it was. Without realizing it, I was at the site of Bury Down itself.

8. And finally, any idea when the next book might hit the shelves? (Not that I’m going to count the days or anything.) (I’m totally going to count the days.)
I know it’s not going to take as long to write as the first one did! But it’s going to take another visit to Cornwall (planned for September) to look into some details and get a better feel for the place Megge visits in the next book. It’s an incredible place out on the Northern cliffs: mystical, frightening, and ancient. A place of spirits, of union. A place of dreams.

To find out more about Rebecca Kightlinger, go here! Afterwards, buy Megge of Bury Down for yourself, your mom, your sister, your best friend, the librarian, the lady who fills your prescriptions, the woman who always says ‘hi’ at the bank and that gal you just met at work. Friends, trust me on this one. You will love it so. AND, it’s the first in the series. So, you kind of have to get it.
**A huge ‘thank you’ to Rebecca Kightlinger and Courtney Link for allowing me the privilege of reading and reviewing this book

---

visit pursuingstacie website

From Saoirse, at PaganPages .org

​Celebrating the Old Ways in New Times
Saoirse April 1st, 2018




​Bright Blessings!
We have “sprung forward”, and are rejoicing that the daylight hours are longer. Some of us are STILL adjusting to the time change, however happy we are about it. Spring officially starts in four days from the time I am writing this, and many have already had their Sabbat celebrations for it.
Some of us spend time outdoors, gardening, and “grooving with Nature”, as my Priest puts it, but are more into the arts. We create, we dance, we enjoy music and theatre. Many of us LOVE to read! What is better than a nice book, and a hot cuppa’ in a cozy room with Spring light streaming in?
Those who are prolific readers are in for a real treat!
A new book was published recently, and let me tell you, it’s an exquisite read.
It’s called Megge of Bury Down, which is part of The Bury Down Chronicles by Rebecca Kightlinger and is set in Thirteenth Century Cornwall, England. It is magical, chock full of mystery, the Old Ways, and Family Traditions. This book draws you in immediately, and Kightlinger’s descriptive narrative voice is so deep, you actually FEEL like you are THERE, watching in person. The firelight flickering in the darkness is so well detailed, you can almost smell the woodsmoke, and the faces of the women are so well described, you can almost reach out and touch them. You need this book, like , yesterday. Step into Bury Down with Kightlinger’s book.
I was lucky enough to get the opportunity to speak with Kightlinger via emails, for an in depth, very intimate interview, in which she speaks not only of her book, but her own background, and women’s issues.
 
Interviewing Rebecca Kightlighter
 
Saoirse (S)– Bright Blessings, Rebecca. First, tell me a bit about yourself and your work!
 
Rebecca Kightlinger (R)– My book, Megge of Bury Down, is about the daughter of a midwife in medieval Cornwall. Megge’s mother and aunt– a healer and a seer, respectively—each hold an ancient grimoire that they must pass down to their daughters, who will then become their apprentices. The books are companion tomes that together enable the women to harness the knowledge and wisdom of every previous heir to the books. They are able to query these ancestors in order to learn the secrets that enable them to serve the people of their village. The problem is that although Megge wants nothing more than to become a woman of Bury Down and be truly a part of her family, she is frightened of her mother’s book. When the time comes for her to accept it, she refuses. 
The stakes are very high for Megge’s mother, so she and Megge’s aunts must bring Megge to accept her charge and assume her role as a woman of Bury Down.
The themes are the desire to belong while being unable or unwilling to do the one thing that will make you a part of the group; the desire to find and follow your own path despite pressure to follow one laid down for you; and the closeness that can unite two people of different generations, the younger being able to learn from the elder, who brings wisdom and unconditional love.
I was an obstetrician gynecologist for many years; but in  2010, a serious injury to my right hand brought that work to an abrupt end. It was then that I started writing fiction. One day in 2011, when I was writing another story, letting scenes play out in my mind and describing them on paper, I saw not New York City or Amsterdam, where that story was set, but a pastoral scene: a grassy hill where sheep were grazing and a girl dressed in rough, heavy woolens was sitting on a big rock at the top of the hill. The girl seemed to look right at me and said, “When you’re done with those Dutch people, I want to go next.” And when I had finished the other story, she showed up again and just started telling me about her life and the lives of her ancestors. At the time, I knew very little about Cornwall and even less about the middle ages. But Megge spoke to me clearly, and with humor, showing me the scenes, and I felt this was something very real, though I had never before experienced anything quite like it.
Having been a visitor to Lily Dale spiritualist community many times, I called a medium, Jackie Avis, to talk to her about it. We had a telephone visit, and even before we started to talk about Megge, Jackie said she was seeing near me a big, very old book with a heavy wooden cover carved with symbols. She perfectly described The Book of Seasons, the book Megge was so afraid of. Our long conversation set my mind at ease, making me comfortable inviting Megge into my life. 
I knew that in order to tell this story well, I would need some serious writing skills, so I applied to The University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast MFA program. Poet Annie Finch was the director, and we spoke by phone. It was she who accepted me into the program.
In the summer of 2013, I went to Cornwall to visit the place I thought might be the region Megge had described as home. Arriving at Botelet Manor, where I was staying, was an incredible experience. Everything Megge described was right there. There is even a house on the manor that had been there during Megge’s day. The remains of Bury Down hillfort, built thousands of years ago, stood at the site Megge had described as the healer’s grove, where women came for healings at night. The church, the village location, and the castle were all as I had seen as she spoke.
Writing this book has been the most rewarding experience, and I hope this comes through in the book. 
 
S- I will add, I am a psychic advisor/seer/reader, or whatever people choose to call me also. I am thrilled you spoke with a seer! I refer to this as a gift of spirit, as do many others. I feel we all have gifts of spirit including, speaking with the dead, healing, comforting the grieving, ability to use prayer to intervene in other’s lives, etc. What are your personal beliefs and views about oracles/seers?  Do you feel you have gifts of spirit, and if so, what are they? It sounds like a spirit showed up and told you her story! Is that right? What is your spiritual path, and how does that influence your writing of this book, and your writing in general?
 
R- My mother and great-grandmother had strong spiritual gifts, and it may have been their openness to spiritual communication that has enabled me to accept this communication without fear, judgment, or censure. Like you, I think we all have the ability to perceive the presence of some who are now, as Megge says, in the ether. I sometimes feel my mother or father very near and have had communication of a sort with my mom through dreams after she passed. She told us in her final days that she would “stay nearby as long as possible” to comfort us after she passed, and when she did, I felt her spirit in the room with us for a good long time. It was a sense of joy I’ve never forgotten. 
I believe strongly in the power of intention and prayer, and I know that people’s needs are somehow made clear to the person who can help. I’ve been in that situation many times as a physician, and I know it’s true.
Is Megge a spirit? I can’t say. All I know is that when I’m ready to write, she seems to come and take me through her story. I don’t see or hear her with my senses, but her words come through me onto the page along with scenes as clear as any you’d see in a movie. And the only time this happens is when I’m at my typewriter or keyboard, ready to write. Her home, her village, and all the people in her world are just as vivid and consistent as anything in this world. 
I don’t know what my spiritual path is or where it is leading. One thing for sure is that my daily life is much more solitary that it ever was, and this feels right. It’s not lonely or boring in any way. The writer’s life seems to suit me now, where it would have been wrong for me before this. I used to have a busy practice, which I loved, and I worked with and taught some wonderful, caring, skilled, intelligent people. My patients, mostly middle-aged and elderly women for the last ten years of my practice, were smart, canny, funny, and insightful. I loved being their doctor. I remember talking to a lot of them about matters of the spirit, and I saw that as we all got older we seemed more in touch with it. It stopped seeming like something outside ourselves and became a source of both comfort and, well, interest, for lack of a better word. As I and my patients and friends began to experience more of the spiritual, we began to talk more openly about it and realized that we were having many of the same experiences. 
Other authors, I’ve learned, experience a similar kind of communication in their writing. One young man related in a lecture that when he sat down to write, he would close his eyes and see his narrator arrive at the door and ring the bell. He would let her in, and she would tell him her story. At a recent book-signing event, I asked the author how he invented his characters, and he kind of laughed and shook his head. “They just show up,” he said. “They do whatever they want. I had no control over this story.” Other writers have no idea what this means. They construct charts and plot points and have the beginning, middle, and end mapped out before they even start their story. Many search newspapers for inspiration or ideas, or capture snippets of conversation that they write down and build a story around. That sounds harder to me, more cognitive, but is probably a more efficient use of writing time!
For me, the cognitive part begins after a scene is down. I research the era and place–I visited the place Megge described–and cut and splice scenes, sometimes changing names or details where needed. But I don’t change the overarching story. I stay true to what I’m seeing so the story can continue to move forward. It may sound funny, but I want my narrators to trust me. I want the narrators who are waiting in the wings to tell their stories to know that I won’t mess with them too much. 
It feels like there are countless narrators/spirits out there waiting to tell their stories and searching for someone who can “hear” them. Is this how we return to the living world? Through a storyteller? Is this why many stories somehow just ring true? I can’t say. The first novel I wrote was narrated by an entire town. I had asked my husband for a manual typewriter for Christmas one year. He bought me an Olivetti, and I sat down at it for the first time ever and had no idea what to write. So I closed my eyes and thought, “Who has the story?” And in seconds, probably thirty or forty people showed up in my mind’s eye, all looking like working-class people and farmers from the 1930s, and all jostling to be the one to tell the story. It seemed they had all come back to tell their part of a horrific event that involved all of them but that that none of them knew the whole story of. Each one ended up telling his or her part, often interrupting each other and correcting details. Every night, at 8 pm, I sat down to write. For an entire year. And the whole story came out, all the details that had been kept secret. When it was done, those narrators disappeared. I’ve not heard from them again. One day, when Megge’s story is done, I’ll go back to that one. I hope I will have developed the skills by then to tell it well.
And this is probably much more than you wanted to hear! But it is unusual for me to be able to relate this kind of information about myself and my writing to someone who will understand and not judge. I’ll be very interested to learn if others have this experience and how they deal with it. How it first started and how they reacted. To me, it felt natural, inviting. I’ve never questioned it, and I hope it never stops
 
S- As somebody with a medical background, how does the past misunderstanding of illness, combined with superstition strike you? What do you have to say about it? Have you ever seen similar attitudes in today’s world?
 
R- There have always been and probably always will be superstitions about illness. Back in the Middle Ages, when so little was known about the body in health or illness, it’s understandable that people would confuse association with causality. The scientific method hadn’t yet been designed to distinguish between the two. So, when a patient made a spontaneous recovery from illness after taking a remedy or submitting to bloodletting, charms, or prayers, the association of that treatment with recovery meant that it must have worked! Word went out, and the treatment became more widely used.
My feeling is that even today there are treatments that work but whose mechanism of action we don’t understand despite considerable scientific research. Additionally, there are many treatments and remedies that might be beneficial but that will never be adequately studied simply because no one has a sufficient stake in the results of controlled, double-blind studies. And if the research might show that the productdoesn’t work, it’s a gamble. For this reason, some approaches that are considered “superstitious” or “magical” may never be scientifically proven safe and effective, even if they are. 
But, while superstitions in healing can sometimes result in harm, I’m less concerned about that than I am about people harnessing the power of superstition to do ill to the most vulnerable in society. We saw this in Megge’s story just as many have seen throughout history: the most powerful in society using both superstition and strong beliefs against the most vulnerable.
In the worst cases, superstitions are thinly-veiled excuses for committing violent acts. In The Midwife and the Witch, author Thomas Forbes cites “the crowing hen.” From the time of Aristotle until as recently as the late 1800s, a female showing masculine characteristics or behaving “like a man” (i.e., talking) was said to foretell doom. Often, this resulted in the death of the offender.
Whistling maids and crowing hens
Should have their necks wrung early.
(Scheftelowitz, 1913; Jones 1880)
A German proverb prescribed punishment for both hens and women who would dare make their voices heard:
When the hen crows before the cock
and the woman speaks before the man,
then the hen should be roasted 
and the woman beaten with a cudgel. 
(Abbot, 1903)
So, to my mind, the danger of superstition is not so much that the superstition itself will directly harm the believer, it is that others often use the power of belief to control and punish. In the case of Megge and the midwives in her life, someone uses both religious dogma and fanciful beliefs as an excuse to harm both women and children. 
 
S- Attending University in Maine placed you in New England- not horribly far from Salem, Mass. where one of the most famous accounts of witch scare happened. Have you studied this much, or have any insight into it? 
 
R- I’ve studied witch trials from all over the world and in different eras. When I first started looking into the history of this horror, I went to the Cornell University special manuscripts library and studied some original trial transcripts. 
I came away with a picture of ordinary women being tried, often tortured, and put to death after having been accused of witchcraft, sometimes by her neighbors, and often out of fear or retribution. The accusations rarely made sense, and the atmosphere of misogyny and hatred was almost palpable in these documents. Those who controlled communities engaged in witch trials needed a scapegoat for their rage and to control those in their jurisdiction, and this was often either the most vulnerable member of the community or the outsider.
Midwives were often targets of accusations, especially in the Middle Ages, as they treated the most frequently maligned portion of the population–women–and they often did so through techniques and remedies outside the understanding of the medical and religious communities. This made them suspect, and suspicion made them victims.
 
S- Magic is all around us, and in many forms. Your ladies in your book understand this, and practice well. They understand the power of blood bonds, as well as adoptive family bonds. They understand the power of women working together in a man’s world. They understand the power of working in generations. Today’s neo-practitioners are 50/50 in love or hate with this idea. Some shun it, and recognize no elders, believing they are born very powerful and don’t want anybody telling them how to practice. Some like me value our elders, who are passing our craft on to us. This is more ancient, and what the women of Bury Down are doing. I see value in both, personally. In your historic readings, what have you read about passing traditions down? About mentors and students? About family traditions? What examples can you share from history?
 
R- Nearly every profession, skilled trade, and educational or spiritual community relies on one generation teaching the next through both formal, didactic education and mentorship or apprenticeship. The alternative to being thought by someone more skilled or educated is to be an autodidact. People will dispute this, but while I understand that many of us possess innate talents and gifts that we can develop to some extent on our own, I think raw talent needs shaping from the outside, otherwise one’s learning tends to center on readings and teachings that substantiate our own theories and biases rather than challenging or questioning them with an eye to dispelling misconceptions, arriving at a truth, and honing our skills. 
Living by and passing down traditions is documented in religious, cultural, medical, artistic, and every other societal group or profession I can think of. While there are many short-lived splinter groups organized and led by one person, religion and spiritual traditions probably provide the most universal example of laws, rules, mores, and history transmitted to children through their parents, their schools, and their religious/spiritual leaders and teachers, with didactic learning supplemented by sometimes very intimate, inter-generational mentorship in the home. This is documented throughout history in religious texts and in literature ranging from The Iliad to the Mists of Avalon and The Red Tent. 
Another example of passing down traditions is the oral, storytelling or bardic tradition strikingly manifest in The Mabinogion, a suite of eleven Welsh prose tales passed through generations by storytellers (another profession whose practitioners learned from masters from the preceding generation).
Finally, witchcraft and magic have a long tradition of being practiced by those who draw on ancient knowledge coupled with the skill and insight of a master practitioner. In preparing the manuscript of Megge of Bury Down, I studied numerous grimoires including Picatrix, a compilation of works from the ancient, the medieval and the Renaissance eras, which urges its readers and students to learn from sages: “The wise who are endowed by nature with intelligence never cease nor neglect to seek and inquire that they might learn and understand the secrets of the sages, who sealed them up in their books and wrote them in hidden words, that the aforesaid might search them out by careful investigation until they attain what they desire…” [The Picatrix, Trans. Greer, John Michael, and Warnock, Christopher. Adocentyn Press, 2010, 61.] 
While I am neither witch nor magician, I see in the writings about spiritual practice the value of sages, of teachers, of mentorship. This is the basis of Megge’s story and path. She seeks and finds mentors throughout her life; and this, I believe, is what many people have always intuitively known they’ve needed, have sought throughout history, and continue to seek.
 
S- What that we have not discussed would you like included in my article, please?
 
R- Megge of Bury Down is the story of a young girl growing up in another time and place. It is historical in that it takes place in the past. But it is not really about the history. It is magical realism in that Megge’s family is charged with passing down two grimoires whose power preserves the spirits of their ancestors. But it is not about the genre of magical realism. 
The historical research and the literary technique here serve story: the story of a girl growing up in a family of women. A girl who wants to be one with the mystical women she admires but whose fear and misconceptions keep her apart. A girl who must find the courage to look past her fears to a terrible truth and find a new path. It is about the love, the traditions, and the teaching that unite generations. It is about the women of Bury Down, but it is mainly about unbreakable bonds, crafted over lifetimes, that precede us into each life, sustain us as we find and do the work we came to do, and then guide us into the next. 
 
Many thanks, Rebecca for this amazing interview! Blessed Be!

---

Visit Pagan Pages Website