The Moorchild Summary
Eloise McGraw

The Moorchild Summary

There is something mysterious and strange about the child who lives in the house of Yanno, the smith, and Anwara. Something, whisper the villagers, "eldritch, freaky-odd."

First, there is the problem of her strange brown face, her color-changing eyes, her shock of pale hair, and her curiously long hands and feet. Then, she has a fear of iron that lingers about her father, a love of honey, and, to her parents' dismay, she finds Yanno's da's old bagpipes and plays, without instruction, weird, unbelievable tunes on them. She escapes to the moor at every opportunity and, all else beside, the child literally climbs the walls.

Anwara's mother, Old Bess, the Wise Woman of the village, suspects the child to be a "changeling," delivered to the village by the Moorfolk who inhabit the moor, but her parents, for all their offspring's strangeness, love her and refuse to see the...

(read more from the Short Guide)