The Boggart

By Susan Cooper

In a tumbledown castle in the Western Highlands of Scotland lives the Boggart. He is invisible -- an ancient mischievous spirit, solitary and sly, born of a magic as old as the rocks and the waves. He has lived in Castle Keep for centuries, playing tricks on the owners. But the last Scottish owner has died and left the castle to his great-nephew Robert Volnik of Toronto, Canada. The Volnik family -- including Emily and her nine-year-old computer genius brother Jessup -- visit Castle Keep, and when they return to Toronto, they unwittingly take the Boggart with them.
The astonishments, delight, and horrors that invade their lives with the arrival of the Boggart fill this swiftly moving story. The collision of modern techology and the Old Magic brings perils nobody could have imagined -- and, in the end, an amazing and touching solution to the problem of the Boggart who has found himself on the wrong side of the ocean.
Sometimes extremely funny, sometimes wildly scary,and always totally absorbing, this remarkable story -- brilliantly imagined and beautifully written -- marks the return of the Newbery Award winner Susan Cooper to the field of novels for young readers. An outstanding achievement, The Boggart will work its special magic on all who read it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry Books
• Release date: Dec 12, 2001
• ISBN: 9780689832512

Susan Cooper

Susan Cooper is one of our foremost fantasy authors; her classic five-book fantasy sequence The Dark Is Rising has sold millions of copies worldwide. Her books’ accolades include the Newbery Medal, a Newbery Honor, the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award, and five shortlists for the Carnegie Medal. She combines fantasy with history in Victory (a Washington Post Top Ten Books for Children pick), King of Shadows, Ghost Hawk, and her magical The Boggart and the Monster, second in a trilogy, which won the Scottish Arts Council’s Children’s Book Award. Susan Cooper lives on a saltmarsh island in Massachusetts, and you can visit her online at TheLostLand.com.

Book preview

ONE

The little boat crept closer, over the grey-green water of the loch. Tommy could hear the slow creaking of the oarlocks, and see the white hair of the lean old man bent over the oars. His father said the MacDevon was one hundred years old, but Tommy had never had the courage to ask if it were true. The MacDevon was a clan chief, the last of his line, and you didn’t ask a clan chief a question like that.

Good day, Mr. MacDevon. He caught the bow of the dinghy as it crunched into the small stones of the beach. This was a weekly ritual: the old man’s shopping trip from the island of Castle Keep.

Aye, said the MacDevon, in his soft, rusty voice.

Have you not brought Fergus? Tommy was astonished; the old man never went anywhere without his dog.

Fergus is old and tired, Thomas. Like his master. The MacDevon stepped over the side of the dinghy, lifting his big rubber boots as if they were too heavy for him. Out of the boat he took a deep shopping basket woven of wicker, grey-brown with age. Then he walked carefully up the beach toward the village store, in which Tommy’s mother struggled to fill all at once the jobs of grocer, bookseller, fruiterer, postmistress, and occasionally—if Tommy went fishing—fishmonger. She used her son as delivery boy, though he preferred the fishing.

Tommy tugged the dinghy further up the beach and looked out over the water to the MacDevon’s island. It was no more than a rock, really: a grass-skinned slab from which the square grey bulk of Castle Keep rose like a box of stone. The castle’s grey sides were streaked yellow with lichen; there were only a few windows, and those cut so small, against attack from long-ago invaders or the everlasting Highland wind, that the walls seemed blind. It was a small castle, as castles go, but it was handsome and forbidding there alone in the loch, with the water all around and the hills of Mull rising misty beyond. Though Tommy rowed over to the island now and again, to deliver groceries or mail, he had seldom been inside. Nor had anyone else from the village. The days were long gone when Castle Keep rang with the reveling of clansmen gathered from all over the Western Isles, and every neighbor strained to hear the haunting music of the great piper MacCrimmon of Skye. Now the castle stood silent and empty, and the last MacDevon lived there alone with Fergus his dog.

But not quite alone.

Tommy gasped, jumping suddenly backward, as a strand of wet seaweed was flipped up into his face from something in the bottom of the empty boat. He thought: So you’re here again this time, are you? For an instant he heard the thread of a laugh, from the thing in the boat that he could not see. A very ancient, mischievous thing, solitary and sly, born of a magic as old as the rocks and the waves. A thing that had lived in Castle Keep for all the centuries of the MacDevon clan, and longer.

The Boggart had come shopping too.

---

Tommy’s mother weighed out the apples, and put them in the MacDevon’s basket. She frowned at the keys of her cash register, as she carefully punched in the prices of apples, bread, oatmeal, milk, and so she failed to see one of the apples rise quickly into the air and float sideways. But Tommy saw. Instinctively he put out a hand and snatched the apple as it passed, and from somewhere in the air he heard the echo of a small resentful wail. He handed the apple to the MacDevon. A smile flickered over the MacDevon’s pleated brown face, and he winked at Tommy with one of his bright eyes as he put the apple back in the basket with the rest. Nearby, the air seemed to quiver for a moment, as if something swiftly passed.

So, Mrs. Cameron, said the MacDevon, is there any mail for me?

No, Mr. MacDevon, not this week, said Tommy’s mother, as she said every week.

Well now—what is the news? he said.

Mrs. Cameron paused to think. She was a pretty woman, but looked always slightly worried, perhaps by the fecklessness of Tommy’s father, Angus Cameron, who as usual was away somewhere chasing a story. He was the Argyll correspondent for several Glasgow and London newspapers. By the standards of Glasgow and London, not much news was made in Argyll.

She said, Mrs. MacNeil’s youngest, Sue, has had twins in Aberdeen.

Tommy said eagerly, And my father has a great new computer.

Ah, said the MacDevon, without interest. In the course of his very long life he had resisted nearly all change; there was not even electricity in Castle Keep.

Mrs. Cameron sighed. There it sits in its box waiting for Angus, she said. And whether he will be able to talk to it I very much doubt.

I can help him, Tommy said confidently.

I’m sure you could, said his mother, without much hope, if he will just stay in the one place long enough.

Suddenly Tommy heard a bicycle bell ringing from outside the shop door, where six bicycles bought by his optimistic father stood waiting in a patient row for athletic tourists to come and rent them. He ran hopefully outside—and was greeted instantly by a great jangling crash as all six bicycles tumbled into a heap.

Tommy stood staring. Nobody was there. And he had not touched any of the bicycles, not one.

Mrs. Cameron called crossly, "Tommy! What are you doing?"

From the other side of the bicycles, in a triumphant whisper of sound, the Boggart laughed.

---

Swinging his golden tail, Fergus lumbered to his feet, as the MacDevon opened the great door into the castle’s drafty hall. Fergus was an elderly Labrador, deaf and almost blind, and all his world now was focused on the presence and smell and touch of the MacDevon. His master rubbed Fergus’ head absently, and moved toward the kitchen, carrying his basket. With his fine new packet of oatmeal from the Camerons’ shop, he had a mind to make a nice warming bowl of porridge for his tea.

Behind him, the Boggart swiftly transformed himself into a large hairy brown spider, and danced provocatively on the tip of Fergus’s hot dry nose. Once, this would have produced gratifyingly hysterical howls and barks. But Fergus was too blind to see the spider; he only sneezed, and shook his head, sending the Boggart rolling head over his eight heels on the floor.

It was the Boggart’s turn to sneeze, in the dust that lay thick all through Castle Keep. He changed back into his own shapeless invisible self, and flickered away to sulk on a windowsill. Outside, a fine soft rain began to fall, and all the surrounding coasts of the Western Highlands of Scotland and the Island of Mull disappeared into the mist.

For more centuries than he could count, the Boggart had lived at the edge of whatever family of MacDevons inhabited Castle Keep. He had no idea where he had come from. Nor did they. Sometimes the family knew he was there, sometimes there was nobody who noticed—though this offended the Boggart’s pride, and usually he would put the situation to rights by behavior so outrageous that even the most earth-bound human would sense that magic was at work. (Once, in the sixteenth century, in the time of a particularly bone-headed MacDevon, he had had to leave a grinning luminous skull suspended in midair over the castle steps for a full week before the clan chief stopped, looked up, and shrieked.)

The present MacDevon, last of his line, had known about the Boggart since the day when he lay in his cradle and heard something invisible squeaking like a mouse in his ear. Instead of crying, he had laughed. It was the first laugh of his life. Thus he had grown up to become a man who enjoyed practical jokes even when he himself was the object of them, and he and the Boggart had lived in silent mutual appreciation ever since.

The Boggart was his own master. Being one of the Old Things of the world, he was not made for human warmth; he belonged to the cold separate heart of the Wild Magic, which like everything that is wild operates by the law of the survival of the fittest. He did no hurt to anyone, but he lived for the satisfaction of teasing and trickery, and if the humans around him objected to his jokes they would find those jokes taking on a quality very close to malice. A boggart, by his nature, feels warmth for no one.

But once, in the faraway past, the Boggart of Castle Keep had broken this rule. Once, perhaps as much as a thousand years ago, there had been a chieftain of the MacDevon clan called Duncan, whom the Boggart had loved. This chieftain too had recognized the Boggart from his cradle, and smiled at his escapades, and through all the years of their friendship the Boggart had happily played his tricks on Duncan, and Duncan had laughed. But then, in one of the battles that bloodied the Highlands often in those years, Duncan MacDevon was killed, by a blow from the sword of an invading Norseman. And the Boggart had lost his friend.

All the members of the MacDevon clan gathered, after the murder of Duncan, and they took his body over the water to the Island of Mull. In procession they carried him, sadly, the whole length of the island, through the bare purple-green mountains and through the rocky passes. They went on foot, hundreds of them, in a long file, for days, with a single muffled drum beating before the body of Duncan, and a single piper playing his bagpipe behind. There was an irregular creaking all the way, from the wooden wheels of the cart which bore the coffin. The piper’s lament paused sometimes, since pipers need breath, but the slow rhythmic beat of the drum never stopped.

All along the track called the Road of the Chiefs they took Duncan MacDevon, through the mist and rain, until they came to the far coast of Mull, where in a little fleet of boats and coracles they crossed the water to the holy island of Columcille, which is also called Iona. The drum beat still as they carried their dead chief over the sea, and the pipe wailed its lament. And on Iona they buried him in the ground of Reilig Odhrain, the quiet graveyard where for centuries Scotsmen have laid the bodies of saints and abbots and clan chieftains, and more than sixty kings.

And all the way from Castle Keep to the island of Iona the Boggart went unseen with the procession, staying close to the body of Duncan, weeping. After the clansmen went home he stayed for a long time on Iona, listening to the gulls wailing in the sky like the lament of the bagpipe, and watching while the grass grew on Duncan’s grave. When the grave was green he went back to the castle, and for twenty years he lay quiet and made no sound or movement, nor played any trick on anybody. By the end of the twenty years he had forgotten why he was grieving, since he was a boggart and not a man, and he began to play tricks on the MacDevon clan once more. But once in a great while he remembered that he had felt pain, a terrible ache in his heart, and he swore he would never let himself feel love for a human again.

The Boggart flittered away from the windowsill. Thinking about his successful trick with the bicycles, his revenge on Tommy for rescuing the flying apple, he felt cheerful and sprightly, ready to find a heap of new ways to turn the MacDevon’s life upside down. He went to his own private place in the castle, a space between two blocks of stone high in a wall of the library, where three hundred years earlier an absentminded mason had forgotten to put mortar, and an absentminded carpenter had hidden the forgetfulness with a shelf. There he stayed, plotting and gleefully planning, while the MacDevon scraped the remains of his porridge into Fergus’s dish, to replace the dog food that gave such trouble to the poor old dog’s few remaining teeth.

The MacDevon felt very weary, suddenly; too weary even to go to bed. He sat down in his big armchair beside the fire, and Fergus, licking the porridge off his nose, flopped down with his chin over his master’s feet. Through a mist of fatigue the MacDevon thought of the Boggart, and wished he had put out an apple for him in some obvious ridiculous place, like the bath. Then he remembered that he had left all the apples he had bought in a bowl on the kitchen table, and that the Boggart loved to steal one or two things from any bowl, to leave him perplexed about how many had been there. It was the thought of the Boggart enjoying his stolen apple which brought an affectionate smile to the MacDevon’s mouth, a smile which was still there when he fell asleep.

---

Next morning a pale ray of sunshine slanted in through the library window, glanced up off a glass inkwell on an old desk, and woke the Boggart in his cubbyhole high in the wall. He basked in the light for a while, happily contemplating the day ahead. There was not much fun in playing tricks on Fergus anymore, since the old dog scarcely noticed anything but the touch of the MacDevon’s hand on his head. But the MacDevon still took obvious pleasure in any piece of teasing—the more ingenious the better. And his pleasure was in turn a challenge to the Boggart, who knew that he became for that moment a small child showing off. Look, I know how to fool you! Look at me!

He reviewed his plans for the morning. He would start by throwing pans around in the kitchen, if nobody was there. Then he would squawl like a lovesick cat, drawing the attention even of Fergus’s deaf ears, perhaps—and certainly of the MacDevon, who could never abide cats. When that brought the MacDevon out of his bed or his chair, the Boggart would take on the shape of a little black kitten, just for a moment, and run across the floor right past the MacDevon’s feet—and then—

The Boggart hugged himself gleefully. He could see the MacDevon’s face already: the astonishment, the outrage—and then the shamefaced incredulous laughter as he realized he had been tricked once more. It’s just you is it then, my mannie? I’ll be after you one of these days….

He flittered away to the kitchen, which was indeed empty. In the sink, half filled with water, was a saucepan lined with congealed porridge. The Boggart reached for this pan and then decided against it; he was a fastidious creature, and disliked the idea of spraying gobbets of wet porridge all over the walls and floor. Instead he took half a dozen clean—though dusty—metal pots, and hurled them all around the kitchen with a sound like that of a car crashing into a wall.

He waited, grinning, for sounds of reaction from the MacDevon. But the castle was silent. The Boggart was disappointed, but not impatient. He could wait. He helped himself to an apple from the bowl on the kitchen table, and sat on the back of a chair, nibbling.

The rays of sunshine which had been slanting through the kitchen’s one small window disappeared, as a cloud bank swallowed the sun. The kitchen grew dark, and the Boggart felt lonely. Finishing his apple, he flittered to the MacDevon’s bedroom, and like a small cloud of smoke he drifted in through the partly open door.

Nobody was there. The early sunshine

Reviews for The Boggart

[abcornils · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a fun book that I read to help prepare my son for Battle of the Books. I hope he enjoys it. Only criticism; it could have been longer.

[bookczuk · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I picked this up because I love Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising sequence, and wanted to try something else of hers. Once again, she's got magic and mayhem together blending history and modern day (though in actuality, the story was written nearly 2 decades ago, and the changes in technology, particularly computer technology, were apparent.) Still, it was a fine story, and combined enough folk lore to keep me reading. There are apparently more in the series, but I may not go on. So many books still to read out there, and I'm not getting younger.

[stefany_6 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The Boggart is a fairly entertaining young adult novel. It's a fast paced story that is difficult to put down yet still challenging enough for young readers. The characters are easy for kids to relate to even if the technology referenced throughout the book is very outdated by today's standards.While visiting their inherited castle in Ireland, the Volnik family mistakenly traps and takes the castle's boggart back to Canada with them. Strange occurrences begin to happen from the moment of the boggart's delivery and the family becomes more and more stressed out by these increasingly unexplainable happenings.This was a quick, fun read that I would recommend for 4th through 6th graders. There is no really objectionable material and only some mild violence. I found the storyline to be engaging and not your typical run-of-the-mill ghost story. The author does a nice job of allowing the reader to become sympathetic towards the main characters including the boggart and there is some good humor included throughout the novel.

[keebrook · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

i started reading this to my son but stopped within 2 chapters. it's not Bad but there are several things about it that don't jibe with Good Writing, in my opinion. also, my son was nonplussed by the whole thing and wanted to move on to something else for a while. we may come back to this book someday but, for now, it will live on the shelf.

at this moment i give what i've read of the book a solid "meh" with tendencies towards "nevermind."

[leslitgs · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Emily and Jessup always figured themselves to be a pair of normal teens living a normal life until their mother inherits a castle from a distant relative in Scotland. After they visit and come back home, however, the kids find out that they inherited a bit more than the building and furnishings. A boggart, a mischievous creature straight out of the myths, is trapped and shipped with Emily's rolltop desk. Having been living in a castle with no modernity, the boggart immediately begins acclimating himself to the new toys of technology and wreaking absolute havoc on the family. And now the kids have to get the boggart home before things get too crazy.Susan Cooper is not an uncommon name in the library circuit, best-known, perhaps, for her Dark is Rising series, this book was not only my introduction to her, but a staple through elementary school and something I revisited off and on thereafter. Until only a month ago, however, I did not own it. Thank God for little second-hand bookstores filled with unexpected treasures, right? Right.While all of the humanoid characters are pleasant and relatable, one of the most enchanting aspects of this novel is the depiction of the boggart itself, within its home castle. A nameless, genderless spirit thousands of years old, witness to history itself, not only of the castle but the land surrounding. It is, in a sense, emotionless. Yet, at the same time, when it finds an emotion, it is overcome--to the point of hiding and sleeping for days or weeks [it has the ability to sleep for decades, if the fancy strikes]. Without being human in feeling, the creature manages to be easy to connect with. Especially after the charm of the new world wears down to the nub.The story is deliberately paced, walking the reader through introductions and establishing the settings while steadily moving through the the plot. As with other texts that were favorites from childhood, this did not hold up quite as well as I might have hoped. Aside from being heavily dated technology-wise [the desk-top was a black and white screen, and I have a splendid recollection of DOS programs that supply amusing filler for how it must have been intended to appear], the text is almost too simple and too easy to read to be enjoyable at advanced leisure reading. Not being a particularly difficult novel, it is not something that a reader will have to dig through, but rather glide along. Though I mentioned I enjoyed it years afterward, I would say it was as a refuge from the reading or scholastics at the time. For purely 'heck, I'll read that one again' material...it's lacking.But if you haven't experienced it, Cooper is fun. Someday I'll read that Dark is Rising series and really get what she's about as a published writer. Or something like that. If you're in fourth or fifth grade, it might just be something you'd enjoy.

[meerka_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Very juvenile, but in a fun way. House spirit gets moved from Scotland to Toronto and must convince children he exists and they must help his return. Very beautiful portion where Boggart takes control of lighting in theater.

[rotheche · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Utterly endearing. Susan Cooper's long been one of my favourite authors and she's lost none of her charm: this book is eminently readable even for an adult. The depiction of the Boggart is effective - it's no sweet Tinkerbell, but a thing of ancient magic and no morality - and the family the Boggart encounters is equally well-drawn. The computer technology is...well, a bit dodgy, but I can forgive that for the rest of the book.

[foggidawn · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

When the old MacDevon dies, Castle Keep on a Scottish island is inherited by the Volnick family. They visit their legacy before putting it on the market, and inadvertently ship the castle's mischievous boggart back to Toronto. What will a creature of Old Magic make of modern technology?As you might expect, the computer parts of the story are solidly 1993, and some of the specs mentioned will give savvy modern readers a good laugh. Moving beyond that, it's obvious that Cooper is a master of her craft: the descriptions, the relationships between characters, and the emotion of the piece is spot on. I enjoyed this more than I thought I would.

[chazzifrazz · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Boggart - an ancient, mischievous spirit, solitary and sly.The Vonik family, Emily, her 10 year-old-computer-nerd brother Jessup, parents Maggie and Robert live in Toronto, Canada. When a cable arrives from Scotland informing them of Robert's inheritance of Castle Keep from a distant uncle, the Voniks take a trip to find out exactly what this inheritance is.The family arrives to find Castle Keep is a small, deteriorating structure on its own small island in the Western Highlands of Scotland. They fall in love with the area and the life, but do have to return to Toronto. Rober is the artistic director of the Chervil Playhouse and Maggie owns Old Stuff, an antiques shop.The family brings back some furniture item for themselves and some to sell in Maggie's shop. Unbeknownst to anyone, the Boggart has also come to Toronto. Seems he fell asleep in a desk that is to go in Emily's room.When the Boggart awakes, he finds that Toronto is nothing like the world he has lived in for the many centuries of his life. This new world is scary and yet there are many delightful things. He sets about pulling his old tricks to amuse the Voniks, but finds that the world he is now in has no clue to what and who he is.Will the Boggart stay forever in Toronto, or will he be able to return to Scotland and Castle Keep?This was a fast read for me, but I took my time just to enjoy it. I found I cringed at some of the pranks the Boggart played, knowing they wouldn't go over well, and yet I wished I could have seen them.

[t1bclasslibrary · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The Volnik family has picked up a boggart from their anscestral castle in Scotland, and suddenly the boggart’s tricks go from silly and upsetting to dangerous. The children, Emily and Jess finally manage to get the boggart out of their lives and send him back to the castle in Scotland where his harm is minor.

[finnyb_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Though set in Canada and Scotland, rather than the England, Cornwall, and Wales of Cooper’s more famous The Dark is Rising Sequence, and though more modern in tone, with computers and other technology readily available (in Canada if not always in the parts of Scotland the Volnik family visits) and Arthurian legends nowhere in evidence, The Boggart retains the magic of Cooper’s earlier works. And, like The Dark is Rising Sequence, though The Boggart is technically a children’s novel, it also holds something for those of us who, while chronologically out of that age range, are still children at heart.Perhaps it is because many of us, like Emily and Jessup Volnik (age twelve and ten, respectively), have had past, or present, experience with parents, and other adults, who do not understand that some things, as with the “virtual unicorns” in Madeleine L’Engle’s Many Waters, have to be believed to be seen. Like L’Engle’s unicorns, the boggart of Cooper’s novel is not readily visible to human eyes (unless he chooses to be so), yet he, and his actions, have very definite—and, in Toronto, rather innocently malicious turned inadvertently dangerous—effects on his surroundings and the people living there. Effects that the Volnik sibling’s parents, and others in the city, attribute to Emily, despite both her and Jessup’s frantic assertions to the contrary.This experience, of being disbelieved despite telling the truth, is one that many people have in common, and in combination with the boggart’s mischievousness and nearly palpable homesickness, and the believably sympathetic (or not so sympathetic, in the case of the psychologist interested in Emily) characters, makes The Boggart a book that is well-worth the read.

[pussreboots · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The Boggart by Susan Cooper is about a mischievous magical creature who suddenly finds itself in Canada. After the death of the old Laird and his dog, the Volnik family — distant relatives — inherit the old Castle Keep.The Boggart's main problem is ending up with a family who doesn't believe in magic. As the castle didn't come with instructions re magical beings, his pranks both at the castle and later in in the Volnik's home go unnoticed at first. Rather than stop (as that's not in its nature) he resorts to bigger and bigger pranks until they become dangerous!Although the book is dated (especially in terms of the computer hardware that's central to the plot) it's still an enjoyable read. I listened to it on audio and found myself sucked right in.

[jjmcgaffey · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Nice story - interesting characters, including the Boggart who is nicely alien. Chance and circumstance play a large part in events; and a lovely happy ending. I'd read it before, I noted, but I didn't remember any of it.

[bookwren · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

What is a boggart? You may remember the one in Harry Potter, who is a shapeshifter. The boggart in this story is similar and likes to play pranks. He lives in an old castle in Scotland and causes minor trouble. But when he is transported to modern-day Canada, chaos ensues. Emily & Jess are the only two who know the boggart is real. Can they help him return to his homeland? I love this story because it combines old-fashioned magic and the magic of science. The boggart is both funny and wise. I recommend this book to readers who love fantasy set in the modern world.