Hunter, Mollie

About the author

Mollie Hunter (born Maureen Mollie Hunter McIlwraith, 1922–2012) was a Scottish writer whose works were imbued with Scottish mythology, legends and history. She wrote over 20 children’s books, and won the Carnegie Medal in 1975 for The Stronghold, a story of life and death in a prehistoric Orkney broch. She wasn’t a horse story writer by any means, but the water horse, or kelpie, has its own niche in Scottish folklore, and it appears in The Kelpie’s Pearls (1964), one of Hunter’s best known stories. There is an element of horse in several of her other books: the Grollican enchants a filly in The Wicked One, and a young boy sets out to capture a unicorn in The Day of the Unicorn.

The Kelpie’s Pearls, much republished, is to be published by Merchiston Publishing, as part of the MSc in Publishing offered at Edinburgh Napier University.

Finding the books
Reasonably easy to find.

Links and sources
Obituary, The Scotsman, 7 August 2012
Merchiston Publishing


Bibliography


The Kelpie’s Pearls

Blackie, London, 1964, 107 pp, illus Charles Keeping
Funk & Wagnalls, 1966 (same cover as UK edition)
Puffin Books, Harmondsworth, 1973, illus Charles Keeping
Harper & Row, New  York, 1977, 134 pp, illus Stephen Gammell
Hamilton, London, 1983, 107 pp, illus Charles Keeping
Chivers, Large Print, 1988, 168 pp
Mammoth, 1990, pb
Floris Books, 1993

The villagers say that Morag MacLeod is a witch. She must be a witch, for she talks to the kelpie, the water horse. Is she really a witch, or a person just the same as the villagers, but one who lives life differently? Only Torquil, who has a way with animals, stands by Morag when the village turn on her.

The Wicked One

Hamilton, London, 1977, 136 pp.
The Wicked One – a Story of Suspense
Harper & Row, New York, 1977, 136 pp.
Methuen, London, 1985, pb

Colin Grant and his family are taunted by the Grollican, a supernatural creature that feeds on anger. Colin and his family flee Scotland for America in their attempt to escape the creature, but the Grollican enchants the family’s filly.

The Day of the Unicorn

HarperCollins, New York, 1994, 59 pp, illus Donna Diamond

A young boy’s daydream transforms him into the fearless Sir Dauntless and he sets out to capture a unicorn that has magically escaped from a tapestry at Crag Castle. A Knights of the Golden Plainstory.