The fruit of horror

Sergeant Howie: Where is Rowan Morrison?

Lord Summerisle: Sergeant Howie, I think that... you are supposed to be the detective here.

Sergeant Howie: A child is reported missing on your island. At first, I'm told there is no such child. I-I... I then find that there is, in fact, but she has been killed. I subsequently discover that there is no death certificate. And now I find that there is a grave. There's no body.

Lord Summerisle: Very perplexing for you. What do you think could have happened?

Sergeant Howie: I think Rowan Morrison was murdered, under circumstances of Pagan barbarity, which I can scarcely bring myself to believe is taking place in the 20th century. Now, it is my intention tomorrow to return to the mainland and report my suspicions to the chief constable of the West Highland Constabulary. And I will demand a full inquiry takes place into the affairs of this heathen island.

Lord Summerisle: You must, of course, do as you see fit, Sergeant.

[ringing a bell]

Lord Summerisle: Perhaps it's just as well that you won't be here tomorrow to be offended by the sight of our May Day celebrations here.

Lord Summerisle: In the last century, the islanders were starving. Like our neighbors today, they were scratching a bare subsistence from sheep and sea. Then in 1868, my grandfather bought this barren island and began to change things. A distinguished Victorian scientist, agronomist, free thinker. How formidably benevolent he seems. Essentially the face of a man incredulous of all human good.

Sergeant Howie: You're very cynical, my Lord.

Lord Summerisle: What attracted my grandfather to the island, apart from the profuse source of wiry labor that it promised, was the unique combination of volcanic soil and the warm gulf stream that surrounded it. You see, his experiments had led him to believe that it was possible to induce here the successful growth of certain new strains of fruit that he had developed. So, with typical mid-Victorian zeal, he set to work. The best way of accomplishing this, so it seemed to him, was to rouse the people from their apathy by giving them back their joyous old gods, and it is as a result of this worship the barren island would burgeon and bring forth fruit in great abundance. What he did, of course, was to develop new cultivars of hardy fruits suited to local conditions. But, of course, to begin with, they worked for him because he fed them and clothed them. But then later, when the trees starting fruiting, it became a very different matter, and the ministers fled the island, never to return. What my grandfather had started out of expediency, my father continued out of... love. He brought me up the same way, to reverence the music and the drama and the rituals of the old gods. To love nature and to fear it. And to rely on it and to appease it where necessary. He brought me up...

Sergeant Howie: He brought you up to be a Pagan!

Lord Summerisle: A heathen, conceivably, but not, I hope, an unenlightened one.