Druid Sacrifice

by Nigel Tranter

Thanea, Christian daughter to the pagan King Loth, survives being set to sea in an oarless coracle as a druid sacrifice, and is taken in by St. Serf as the only woman in his monastery. In due course, she produces a son who, with his mother, founds the great city of Glasgow.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Scotland, Fiction, Historical, Fantasy

312 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

Nigel Tranter OBE was a Scottish historian and writer. He was the author of a wide range of books on Scottish castles, particularly on themes of architecture and history. He also specialised in deeply researched historical novels that cover centuries of Scottish history.

Reviews

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tranter weaves ancient Scottish history, the Arthurian legends with Kentigern (Mungo) and his mother who was a Christian that been sacrificed to the local pagan gods and survived. She and her son would start missions in the Strathclyde area where they would found Glasgow. He would become Bishop of Strathclyde and is buried in Glasgow Cathedral.

[Debbi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Broken into three parts, I enjoyed the first two much more. The third deals with St. Mungo/Kentigern as an adult and his missionary works. I didn't much like him. Seemed a bit of a hot-head to me. At once trying to preach the Gospel of a loving God and then calling down an angry God who would get those unbelievers. The church practices were weird too. I'm not wholly familiar with the Celtic church, but I have a hard time believing they would have encouraged lone wolf missionary journey's without the blessing of one's Bishop.

But the first two parts were quite good. The Scottish landscape was just as much of a character in the book and I wished the publisher had included a map.

[Julia · Rating 2 out of 5]

An absolute bore. Enjoyed other books (Bruce trilogy and others) very much but this is dreadful. After the first 60-70 pages absolutly nothing happens. We read about the saintly Thanea's travels and missionary works and in the process we learn the names of each brook and moor and glen she happened to cross. When those names occured in the Bruce trilogy, there was purpose to it because it had to deal with military strategies and political events but in this book what is the point?

Also, Thanea is so sweet and saintly, she gets on your nerves, a totally unrealistic character.
Anyways, I am not reading Dark Age Christian fiction by Nigel Tranter anymore, will stick to 16th century Scotland

[Pat · Rating 4 out of 5]

After reading two other Tranter books I decided to try to read his Scottish historical fiction in chronological order. Wikipedia actually has a list sorted this way.
With the help of Google Maps, I was able to follow the characters around what will become Southern Scotland during the age when Christians were on a mission to convert the people from paganism, and King Arthur was purported to be repelling the Saxons.

[Pam · Rating 1 out of 5]

I tried to start this twice. Someone gave it to me and now I'm going to donate it so someone else can have a shot.

[Des Pemberton · Rating 2 out of 5]

A tale about the struggle to introduce Christianity into what later became Scotland. Pagan bad, Christian good. Christians all loving and forgiving; well, yes, but like all political parties, as soon as they gained supremacy their God-thing remained so, but his/her/its human representatives got their knives and matches to work on supposed miscreants. But 'The Druids Sacrifice' story just touched on the loving and forgiving element of the Christian teaching. The main God-bothering characters didn't bother to question why the druids' human sacrifices were chosen: were they just picked off the high street? had they killed or abused a child? had they stolen from the Druids' Pension Fund? We aren't told.

I found the goodies too good and the case against the baddies (senior Druids) not proven. The latter were just protecting themselves from a load of weirdos with crazy, and still unproven, ideas. Did Mungo die a virgin? Weird, especially for those days, when celibacy wasn't the norm.

[Memory · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found the language used rather stilting and archaic, but enjoyed the alternative telling which mingled fact and faction to build a tapestry of life in Arthurian Britain, though it was mostly focused on Scotland. I expect I'll read more of this author, after getting past the language thing, it became entertaining. I marked it down on that and that it didn't manage to keep me utterly enthralled. I put it down and returned to it several times.

[Velvetink · Rating 3 out of 5]

donated to smith family charity march 2015