Murdoch McLeod, the McLir — Jill Whalen

Murdoch was born in the “new world” to a family of Highlanders that had migrated there generations before. He was sent back to the British Isles by the council to be a watcher when he was a young man, because he was a trouble maker. His mission was to blend in and send back reports on the brown robe priests' activities. He was taken out of the wild lands of the continent and transported to the cities of England where few bathed and the stench was overpowering. It was hard to blend because he wore his hair in the old way of a prince's braid and he carried a huge sword on his back. Murdoch was heir to the title of The McLir, the sea wolves that were rulers of the sea pirates. The people in the cities worked with him because they remembered when the McLir ruled the seas. After a few years he had such a price on his head that he had to build his own massive ship in the fens. He took around nine hundred people with him home to the continent the Celtic people knew as Gall, named for the bitter man. The queen, nobles, and priests tried to find out where the rich furs, large timbers, and mines were located. After he sailed home, he burned the ship so there would be no trace. Those Welch people followed him across the continent to the shores of the western ocean. There they settled. Come along with Murdoch and be in Elizabethan Britain with all the squalor, fighting, and excitement. Join him on the ship; admire his quest to acclimate the Welch to the wild ways of Gall. Learn about this continent from a different perspective. For a little while be wild and free.