Who is Bardie? Her refined clothes show that she is not an ordinary girl. But why did she have to be saved from the sea by a fisherman? This story is through the eyes of the fisherman, who followed Bardie throughout her childhood and attempted to discover her roots.
Note: This text, published more than 150 years ago, contains race-related words and descriptions, which listeners may find offensive.
By : Richard Doddridge Blackmore (1825 - 1900)
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The Maid of Sker is set at the end of the 18th century; the story is told by Davy Llewellyn, an elderly fisherman, and is about a two-year-old girl who in a calm before a storm, drifts in a boat onto a beach in Glamorganshire. The little girl calls herself Bardie. Davy is tempted to keep the girl but decides to give her up and keep the boat for himself. He quarters the pretty child in a simple but wealthy household in his neighbourhood. As Bardie grows up, Davy dotes upon her, watching anxiously over her fortunes, partly or principally because he thinks his own fortune may be bound up with hers. It is clear from the refinement of the girl's manners and from the quality of the clothes she was washed ashore in that she is no common child.
Davy joins the crew of a ketch that trades between Porthcawl and Barnstaple, Devon. Whilst in Devon, he encounters several characters who hold the key to solving the mystery of Bardie's origins. These include Sir Philip Bampfylde, who spends most of his time looking for his two grandchildren who have mysteriously disappeared; Parson Chowne, a wicked, demonic and crafty parson who defies the law for many years in the north of Devon; and Captain Drake Bamfylde, who is under suspicion of having abducted his elder brother Philip's children and heirs to the family property. Davy gradually unravels the mystery and sets matters right, although many distractions, including an extended period at sea in which Blackmore gives a graphic account of the Battle of the Nile, delay him.
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