PHANTASMAGORIA.
On the 29th of January, 1719, a Scottish gentleman, named Alexander
Jaffray, Laird of Kingswells, was riding across a piece of wide and
waste moorland to the westward of Aberdeen, when, about eight o'clock
in the morning, he beheld--to his great alarm and bewilderment, as he
states in a letter to his friend, Sir Archibald Grant of Monymusk
(printed by the Spalding Club)--a body of about seven thousand
soldiers drawn up in front of him, all under arms, with colours
uncased and waving, and the drums slung on the drummers' backs. A
clear morning sun was shining, so he saw them distinctly, and also a
commander who rode along the line, mounted on a white charger.
Dubious whether to advance or retire, and sorely perplexed as to what
mysterious army this was, the worthy Laird of Kingswells and a
companion, an old Scottish soldier, who had served in Low Country
wars, reined in their horses, and continued to gaze on this
unexpected array for nearly two hours; till suddenly the troops broke
into marching order, and departed towards Aberdeen, near which, he
adds, "the hill called the Stockett tooke them out of sight."
Nothing more was heard or seen of this phantom force until the 21st
of the ensuing October, when upon the same ground--the then open and
desolate White-myres--on a fine clear afternoon, when some hundred
persons were returning home from the yearly fair at Old Aberdeen,
about two thousand infantry, clad in blue uniforms faced with white,
and with all their arms shining in the evening sun, were distinctly
visible; and after a space, the same commander on the same white
charger rode slowly along the shadowy line. Then a long "wreath of
smoak apiered, as if they had fired, but no noise" followed.
To add to the marvel of this scene, the spectators, who, we have
said, were numerous, saw many of their friends, who were coming from
the fair, pass _through_ this line of impalpable shadows, of which
they could see nothing until they came to a certain point upon the
moor and looked back to the sloping ground. Then, precisely as
before, those phantoms in foreign uniform broke into marching order,
and moved towards the Bridge of the Dee. They remained visible,
however, for three hours, and only seemed to fade out or melt
gradually away as the sun set behind the mountains. "This will
puzzle thy philosophy," adds the laird at the close of his letter to
the baronet of Monymusk; "but thou needst not doubt of the certainty
of either."
Scottish tradition, and even Scottish history, especially after the
Reformation, record many such instances of optical phenomena, which
were a source of great terror and amazement to the simple folks of
those days; and England was not without her full share of them
either; but science finds a ready solution for all such delusions
now. They are chiefly peculiar to mountainous districts, and may
appear in many shapes and in many numbers, or singly, like the giant
of the Brocken, the spectator's own shadow cast on the opposite
clouds, and girt with rings of concentric light--or like the wondrous
fog-bow, so recently seen from the Matterhorn.
Almost on the same ground where the Laird of Kingswells saw the
second army of phantoms, and doubtless resulting from the same
natural and atmospheric causes, a similar appearance had been visible
on the 12th of February, 1643, when a great body of horse and foot
appeared as if under arms on the Brimman Hill. Accoutred with
matchlock, pike, and morion, they looked ghost-like and misty as they
skimmed through the gray vapour about eight o'clock in the morning;
but on the sun breaking forth from a bank of cloud, they vanished,
and the green hill-slopes were left bare, or occupied by sheep alone.
Much about the same time, another army was seen to hover in the air
over the Moor of Forfar. "Quhilkis visons," adds the Commissary
Spalding, "the people thocht to be prodigious tokens, and it fell out
owre trew, as may be seen hereafter."
Many such omens are gravely recorded as preceding and accompanying
the long struggle of the Covenant, and the fatal war in which the
three kingdoms were plunged by Charles I. and his evil advisers.
Indigestion, heavy dinners, and heavier drinking had doubtless much
to do in creating some of the spectral delusions of those days; and
inborn superstition, together with a heated fancy, were often not
wanting as additional accessories. But in the gloomy and stormy
autumn that preceded the march of the Scottish Covenanters into
England, omens of all kinds teemed to a wonderful extent in the land.
When Alaster Macdonnel, son of Coll the Devastator, as the Whigs
named him, landed from Ireland, at the Rhu of Ardnamurchan, in
Morven, to join the Scottish cavaliers under the Marquis of Montrose,
then in arms for the king, it was alleged that the _hum_ of
cannon-shot was heard in the air, passing all over Scotland from the
Atlantic to the German Sea; that many strange lights appeared in the
firmament; and that, on a gloomy night in the winter of 1650, a
spectre drummer, beating in succession the Scottish and English
marches, summoned to a ghostly conference, at the castle-gate of
Edinburgh, Colonel Dundas of that Ilk, a corrupt officer, who, on
being bribed by gold, afterwards surrendered to Cromwell the
fortress, together with some sixty pieces of cannon.
All the private diaries and quaint chronicles, of late years
published by the various literary clubs in England and Scotland, teem
with such marvels, but the latter country was more particularly
afflicted by them; omens, warnings, and predictions of coming peril
rendering it, by their number and character, extremely doubtful
whether Heaven or the _other place_ was most interested in Scottish
affairs.
In 1638, fairy drums were heard beating on the hills of Dun Echt, in
Aberdeenshire, according to the narrative of the parson of Rothiemay;
in 1643, we hear of the noise of drums "and apparitions of armyes" at
Bankafoir in the same county. "The wraith of General Leslie in his
buff-coat and on horseback, carrying his own banner with its bend
_azure_ and three buckles _or_, appeared on the summit of a tower at
St. Johnstown. Science now explains such visions as the aerial
Morgana, produced by the reflection of real objects on a peculiar
atmospheric arrangement; but then they were a source of unlimited
terror." Law, in his _Memorials_, records that, in 1676, a wondrous
star blazed at noon on the hill of Gargunnock, and a great army of
spectres was seen to glide along the hills near Aberdeen.
A folio of _Apparitions and Wonders_, preserved in the British
Museum, records that, at Durham, on the 27th September, 1703, when
the evening sky was serene and full of stars, a strange and
prodigious light spread over its north-western quarter, as if the sun
itself was shining; then came streamers which turned to armed men
ranked on horseback. J. Edmonson, the writer of the broadsheet,
adds: "It was thought they would see the apparition better in
Scotland, because it appeared a great way north; the same," he
continues gravely, "was seen in the latter end of March, 1704," and
the battle of Hochstadt followed it. This must refer to the second
battle fought there, which we call Blenheim, when Marshal Tallard was
defeated and taken prisoner by Marlborough. But this wonderful light
which turned to armed men at Durham was outdone by a marvel at
Churchill, Oxfordshire, where (in the same collection) we find that,
on the 9th January, 1705, _four suns_ were all visible in the air at
once, "sent for signs unto mankind," adds the publisher, Mr. Tookey
of St. Christopher's Court, "and having their significations of the
Lord, like the hand-writing unto his servant Daniel."
In 1744, a man named D. Stricket, when servant to Mr. Lancaster of
Blakehills, saw one evening, about seven o'clock, a troop of horse
riding leisurely along Souter Fell in Cumberland. They were in close
ranks, and ere long quickened their pace. As this man had been
sharply ridiculed as the solitary beholder of a spectre horseman in
the same place in the preceding year, he watched these strange
troopers for some time ere he summoned his master from the house to
look too. But ere Stricket spoke of what was to be seen, "Mr.
Lancaster discovered the aerial troopers," whose appearance was as
plainly visible to him as to his servant. "These visionary horsemen
_seemed_ to come from the lowest part of Souter Fell, and became
visible at a place named Knott; they moved in successive troops (or
squadrons) along the side of the Fell till they came opposite to
Blakehills, where they went over the mountain. They thus described a
kind of curvilinear path, their first and last appearances being
bounded by the mountain." They were two hours in sight; and "this
phenomenon was seen by _every person_ (twenty-six in number) in every
cottage within the distance of a mile," according to the statement
attested before a magistrate by Lancaster and Stricket, on the 21st
of July, 1745.
During the middle of the last century, a toll-keeper in Perthshire
affirmed on oath, before certain justices of the peace, that an
entire regiment passed through his toll-gate at midnight; but as no
such force had left any town in the neighbourhood, or arrived at any
other, or, in fact, were ever seen anywhere but at his particular
turnpike, the whole story was naturally treated as a delusion; though
the Highlanders sought in some way to connect the vision with the
unquiet spirits of those who fought at Culloden, for there, the
peasantry aver, that "in the soft twilight of the summer evening,
solitary wayfarers, when passing near the burial mounds, have
suddenly found themselves amid the smoke and hurly-burly of a battle,
and could recognize the various clans engaged by their tartans and
badges. On those occasions, a certain Laird of Culduthil was always
seen amid the fray on a white horse, and the people believe that once
again a great battle will be fought there by the clans; but with
whom, or about what, no seer has ventured to predict."
Shadowy figures of armed men were seen in Stockton Forest, Yorkshire,
prior to the war with France, as the _Leeds Mercury_ and local prints
record; and so lately as 1812, much curiosity and no small ridicule
were excited by the alleged appearance of a phantom army in the
vicinity of hard-working prosaic Leeds, and all the newspapers and
magazines of the time show how much the story amused the sceptical,
and occupied the attention of the scientific.
It would appear that between seven and eight o'clock on the evening
of Sunday, the 28th October, Mr. Anthony Jackson, a farmer, in his
forty-fifth year, and a lad of fifteen, named Turner, were
overlooking their cattle, which were at grass in Havarah Park, near
Ripley, the seat of Sir John Ingilby, when the lad suddenly
exclaimed: "Look, Anthony; what a number of beasts!" "Beasts? Lord
bless us!" replied the farmer with fear and wonder, "they are _men_!"
And, as he spoke, there immediately became visible "an army of
soldiers dressed in white uniforms, and in the centre a personage of
commanding aspect clad in scarlet." These phantoms (according to the
_Leeds Mercury_ and _Edinburgh Annual Register_) were four deep,
extended over thirty acres, and performed many evolutions. Other
bodies in dark uniforms now appeared, and smoke, as if from
artillery, rolled over the grass of the park. On this, Jackson and
Turner, thinking they had seen quite enough, turned and fled.
Like the spells of the Fairy Morgana, which were alleged to create
such beautiful effects in the Bay of Reggio, and which Fra Antonio
Minasi saw thrice in 1773, and "deemed to exceed by far the most
beautiful theatrical exhibition in the world," science has explained
away, or fully discovered the true source of all such spectral
phenomena. The northern aurora was deemed by the superstitious, from
the days of Plutarch even to those of the sage Sir Richard Baker, as
portentous of dire events; and the fancies of the timid saw only war
and battle in the shining streamers; but those supposed spectral
armies whose appearance we have noted, were something more, in most
instances, than mere _deceptio visus_, being actually the shadows of
_realities_--the airy reproductions of events, bodily passing in
other parts of the country, reflected in the clouds, and imaged again
on the mountain slopes or elsewhere, by a peculiar operation of the
sun's rays.