In Witch Wood, John Buchan spins a mesmerizing tale of mysterious events in seventeenth-century rural Scotland. At the time the novel appeared, Samuel Merwin commented that "[Buchan's] knowledge and his sense of the past seem to me to find their best outlet in this new book... He has taken an old border legend, of a gentle country minister, supposed to have been spirited away by the fairies in the dark wood of Melanudrigill, and has breathed an astonishing life into it." (Saturday Review)