It is neither voluntary nor constant, and is considered rather annoying
than agreeable to the possessors of it, who are chiefly found among the
Highlands and Islands of Scotland, the Isle of Man and Ireland. The
gift was possessed by individuals of both sexes, and its fits came on
within doors and without, sitting and standing, at night and by day,
and at whatever employment the votary might chance to be engaged. The
visions were usually about funerals, shrouds, the appearance of friends
who were at the time in distant countries, the arrival of strangers,
falls from horses, the upsetting of vehicles, bridal ceremonies, funeral
processions, corpses, swamping of boats, drowning at sea, dropping
suddenly dead, and numberless other subjects. Very astonishing cases
might be mentioned wherein it would appear impossible that either fraud
or deception could exist. Martin, in his book on the Western Isles,
alludes to many who were undoubtedly, in his belief, “Taibhsears,”
or Seers; and even to this day this faculty is believed by many to
exist. Dr. Beattie ascribes it to the influence of physical causes on
superstitious and unenlightened minds, such as the effects which wild
scenery, interspersed with valleys, mountains, and lakes, have upon
the imagination of the natives. Others maintain that it arose from
optical illusions, and others from ignorance, the great mother of all
superstitions. It is remarkable when Dr. Samuel Johnson visited Skye in
1773, and had heard much about the second-sight, that he gave credit to
it, and expressed his surprise that it was disbelieved by the clergy,
while many others were of a different opinion. If space permitted, many
wonderful cases of second-sight might be given, but a few must suffice.
It is traditionally stated that the execution of the unfortunate Queen
Mary had been foreseen by many Highland seers, and had been previously
described by them by extraordinary minuteness. King James alludes to
it in his “Demonology”; and it was brought as a charge against various
Shetland witches in that monarch’s reign. Mackenzie of Tarbat, afterwards
Earl of Cromartie, a talented statesman in the reign of Charles II.,
wrote some account of this strange faculty for the use of the celebrated
Boyle. He gives one instance, as follows:—One day as he was riding in
a field among his tenants, who were manuring barley, a stranger came
up to the party and observed that they need not be so busy about their
crop, as he saw the Englishmen’s horses tethered among them already.
The event proved as the man had foretold, for the horses of Cromwell’s
army in 1650 ate up the whole field. A few years after this incident,
before Argyll went on his fatal journey to congratulate King Charles on
his restoration, he was playing at bowls with some gentlemen near his
castle at Inverary, when one of them grew pale and fainted as the Marquis
stooped for his bowl. On recovering, he cried, “Bless me, what do I see?
my lord with his head off, and all his shoulders full of blood”. The
late General Stewart of Garth, in his “Sketches of the Highlanders,”
relates a very remarkable instance of second-sight which happened in
his own family:—“Late on an autumnal evening in the year 1773, the
son of a neighbouring gentleman came to my father’s house. He and my
mother were from home, but several friends were in the house. The young
gentleman spoke little, and seemed absorbed in deep thought. Soon after
he arrived, he inquired for a boy of the family, then three years of
age. When shown into the nursery, the nurse was trying on a pair of new
shoes, and complained that they did not fit the child. ‘They will fit
him before he will have occasion for them,’ said the young gentleman.
This called forth the chidings of the nurse for predicting evil to the
child, who was stout and healthy. When he returned to the party he
had left in the sitting-room, who had heard of his observation on the
shoes, they cautioned him to take care that the nurse did not derange
his new talent of the second sight, with some ironical congratulations
on his pretended acquirement. This brought on an explanation, when he
told them that as he had approached the end of a wooden bridge near the
house, he was astonished to see a crowd of people passing the bridge.
Coming nearer, he observed a person carrying a small coffin, followed by
about twenty gentlemen, all of his acquaintance, his own father and mine
being of the number, with a concourse of the country people. He did not
attempt to join, but saw them turn off to the right, in the direction of
the churchyard, which they entered. He then proceeded on his intended
visit, much impressed with what he had seen, with a feeling of awe, and
believing it to have been a representation of the death and funeral of a
child of the family. The whole received perfect confirmation in his mind,
by the sudden death of the boy the following night, and the consequent
funeral, which was exactly as he had seen. This gentleman was not a
professed seer. This was his first and his last vision, and, as he told
me,” says General Stewart, “it was sufficient.”
A very remarkable instance of supernatural vision happened a few years
ago, in a landed proprietor’s house in Skye. On a certain evening,
probably that of New Year’s Day, a large party of neighbouring ladies
and gentlemen, with the youngsters of their families, had been invited
to enjoy certain harmless festivities at this proprietor’s house, the
lady of which had been absent at the time in the south, but her sons
and daughters were at home to entertain the happy guests. After dinner
the junior members of the party retired to the drawing-room to amuse
themselves. A quadrille was set agoing, but before it had commenced, the
figure of a lady glided along the side wall of the room, from end to end,
and was seen by several of those opposite to it. “My mother! my mother!”
screamed one of the young ladies of the family, and fainted. The vision
put a sudden termination to the hilarities of the evening; but the most
surprising fact was, that at the very time the vision appeared, the lady
of the house had died in a city in the south.
Besides the many instances of second-sight given by Martin, Theophilus
Insulanus, and several others, a great additional variety might be
stated of rather remarkable cases. In the village of Earlish, parish of
Snizort, in Skye, about fifty years ago, a cottar’s wife was delivered of
a nice baby. Soon after the birth, the happy mother was visited by the
wives of her neighbours, who came, according to the custom of the place
on such occasions, each with a gift of fowls, eggs, and such like. The
baby was admired as a nice infant, and the usual hopes were expressed
that it might be long spared to the parents. One female in a corner of
the apartment whispered in her neighbour’s ear, that she was afraid
the infant would not be long spared, and that it would some day be the
cause of excessive grief to the poor mother. On being questioned for the
reason of such a statement, she said that she had a vision of the child
all mangled, torn up, and bleeding. Her neighbour upbraided her for
expressing a thing so ridiculous in itself, and so very improbable. In
the course of a month or two, when the infant had progressed in health
and strength to the desire of his parent’s heart, he was laid to sleep
in the cradle, and the mother, being alone at the time, embraced the
opportunity of going to the well for a pitcher of water. After having
talked for a few minutes with a neighbour who had met her at the well,
she returned to her house, when, to her unspeakable horror, she found her
baby on the floor dead, mangled, torn to pieces, with the arms and face
eaten away. During the distracted mother’s absence, a large brute of a
pig had been roaming about. It entered the deserted apartment, seized
upon the innocent sleeping babe, and partially devoured it.
About sixty years ago, one of the annual fairs was to be held at Portree,
the Capital of Skye, to which the natives were in the habit of resorting
in hundreds from all quarters of the Island. In the East-side district
of Kilmuir, about eighteen miles north of Portree, there lived at that
time a female advanced in years, who was reported to be possessed of
the faculty of second-sight. Some time previous to the date of the
market, this woman was day after day sitting, sighing, and lamenting the
catastrophe, which she said was sure to take place, as she had seen a
boat sinking in a storm, and so many people drowned. Few, however, paid
any attention to the cause of her grief at the time, but there was reason
afterwards to do so. A large boat left Portree on the market-day evening
for the East-side, which was literally crammed with people of all ages,
anxious to get home. A storm got up, and all were consigned to a watery
grave.
Here is another remarkable instance. A worthy parish minister in Skye,
about seventy years ago, went to visit a brother of his, a Captain
Macleod, who had been ailing, and lived near Portree. Captain Macleod had
a numerous family of sons and daughters. In the evening, the minister
mounted his horse to return home, a distance of about nine miles. The
weather became so boisterous and stormy, that the good old gentleman
deemed it prudent to pass the night at Scorribreck, where Widow Nicolson
and her family resided. She was a sister of the late Adjutant-General
Sir John Macdonald. Mrs. Nicolson welcomed her reverend guest, and was
delighted at his unexpected appearance. At that remote period most of the
large farmers’ dwellings in Skye, were comfortable thatched houses, with
trap-stairs to the upper flats, where they deposited all kinds of lumber.
In a certain corner up-stairs in this domicile, the parish mort-cloth
was kept for safety, as the burying-place was near by. Mrs. Nicolson
ascended the stairs on some business in the dark, and left the reverend
gentleman with her family for a few minutes in the parlour. Immediately
thereafter a scream was heard, instantly followed by the noise of a fall
on the upper floor. Two or three rushed up with a light, and found Mrs.
Nicolson in a fainting fit, quite insensible. On her recovering, and at a
subsequent hour of the evening, she reluctantly told her reverend friend
that she beheld a very brilliant light on the mort-cloth, which was
spread on a table, and in the middle of the light she saw the distinct
image of his niece’s face, a daughter of the said Captain Macleod. The
circumstance, no doubt, created some concern in the minds of the family
circle, but ere bed-time, the conversation turned on something else.
Shortly thereafter, however, the young lady alluded to, took ill, and
died, and her bier was the first to require the use of the mort-cloth in
question after that eventful evening.
Another instance equally marvellous took place in the northern district
of Skye, at a considerably later date than that of the event just
recorded. The parish clergyman on his rounds, visited the miller’s house,
and met the miller’s wife evidently in a very excited state, standing
on the kitchen floor. In that part of the Island great quantities of
timber were frequently found on the sea-shore, drifted thither from
wrecked vessels. On this occasion, the miller’s kitchen was benched all
round with batons and planks of timber, in order to be seasoned by the
heat of the fire, which is placed in these dwellings in the middle of the
floor. The clergyman had scarcely time to speak, when the good-wife, a
very respectable woman, told him that she was always glad to see him, but
particularly so on this occasion. She explained that Christy Macleod, a
female of known repute as a seer, had just been sitting on that plank,
warming herself by the fire, when she suddenly fainted and fell on the
floor. She further stated that she carried Christy ben the house, and
laid her on a bed until she would recover. “But,” said the matron to
the minister, “you must go to see Christy, and insist upon her telling
what she saw, as I am in terror that she had an unlucky sight of some
of my own children.” The minister very reluctantly complied, and, on
entering the apartment, found Christy so far recovered as to bear being
questioned. He asked the cause of her ailment, and, in short, put the
query whether she had seen anything? She refused to reply, except by
the uttering of some evasive answers. He then told her to tell at once
what she had seen, as otherwise he would not leave her until she did.
Eventually she expressed herself in timid, tremulous terms, and said,
that while seated on the wooden bench by the fire, she happened to cast
her eyes upon a plank on the opposite side, and beheld stretched on it
the mangled, bleeding body of a lad, Macdonald, then alive and well.
Having told this, she solicited the minister not to divulge it. On his
leaving the seer, he was instantly pounced upon by the landlady, and
asked, in breathless anxiety, “What did she see? What or whom did she
see?” His reverence had no alternative but to tell the good matron, for
the comfort of herself and her domestic circle, what the dreaded woman
had revealed. All parties were then contented, and the affair looked on
as a mere revery. Six weeks or so thereafter, there was a marriage in
the upper district of the parish, to which the young man, Macdonald, was
invited, and went. On returning home alone about midnight by a hilly
pathway, in the extreme darkness, he lost his way, fell over a precipice
about a thousand feet high, and was dashed to pieces in the clefts of
the debris below. He was eventually missed at home. Messengers were sent
in quest of him, hither and thither, and when no tidings could be found
concerning him, the population of the district went forth in hundreds
on the search. After a day or two’s minute ransacking of every hill and
dale, lake and river, the mangled corpse was discovered by a boy, jammed
hard and fast in a crevice at the base of the huge precipice already
named. The crowd assembled around the shattered remains, and a cry was
uttered as to what was best to be done? The torn body could hardly be
handled, and a proposal was immediately agreed to, that four men should
run to the miller’s house for a door or plank, to convey the remains to
the father’s home. This was done—the men rushed forward to the miller’s,
and snatched away the identical plank on which the woman, Macleod, had
seen the vision already related.
Many similar instances of second-sight in the Western Isles are alleged
to have existed, which as yet have not been recorded.
It is stated in the Statistical Account of Iona, that St. Columba was
the first on record who had the faculty of second-sight. He is said to
have told the victory of Aidan over the Picts and Saxons, on the very
instant it happened. The same authority states, that when St. Columba
first attempted to build on Iona, the walls, by the operation of some
evil spirit, fell down as fast as they were erected. Columba received
some supernatural information that they would never stand unless a human
victim was buried alive. According to one account, the lot fell on Oran,
the companion of the Saint, as the victim that was demanded for the
success of the undertaking. Others pretend that Oran voluntarily devoted
himself, and was interred accordingly. At the end of three days, Columba
had the curiosity to take a farewell look at his old friend, and caused
the earth to be removed accordingly. Oran raised his swimming eyes, and
said, “There is no wonder in death, and hell is not as it is reported”.
The Saint was so shocked at this monstrous impiety, that he instantly
ordered the earth to be flung in again, uttering the words, “Uir! Uir!
air beul Orain! mu’n labhair e tuilleadh comhraidh!”—that is, Earth!
Earth! on the mouth of Oran, that he may blab no more! This passed into
a proverb, and is in use in the Highlands at the present day. It is not
improbable that the story was invented by some of Columba’s Druidical
enemies to expose him and his Christian doctrines to ridicule.
SMALLER SUPERSTITIONS.—Somewhat resembling this alleged faculty, yet
different from it, are certain prognostications of death, which are said
to be seen in the shape of blue, quivering lights, resembling the feeble
flame of a taper. These have been observed moving along in the course
which some funeral procession would soon take, or perhaps twinkling in or
about the bed on which some individual was soon to die. Many intelligent
people firmly believe in the existence of these lights.
Some years ago, if not even still, many in the Western Isles believed
in the existence of the “Gruagach,” a female spectre of the class of
Brownies to which the Highland dairymaids made frequent libations
of milk. The Gruagach is said to have been an innocent, supernatural
visitor, who frisked and gambolled about the cattle-pens and folds. She
was armed only with a pliable reed, with which she switched all who
annoyed her by uttering obscene language, or would neglect to leave for
her a share of the dairy produce. Even so late as 1770, the dairymaids
who attended a herd of cattle in the Island of Trodda, at the north end
of Skye, were in the habit of pouring daily a quantity of milk on a
hollow stone for the Gruagach. Should they neglect to do so, they made
sure of feeling the effects of her wand next day. The Rev. Dr. Macqueen,
then minister of Kilmuir, of whom Dr. Johnson spoke so highly, and who
is buried within a few yards of Flora Macdonald’s grave, went purposely
to Trodda to check this gross superstition. He might then have succeeded
for a time, but it is known that many believed in the existence of the
Gruagach long after that worthy clergyman had been gathered to his
fathers. Besides the votaries of this ridiculous superstition, there are
others who confidently believe in the existence of an evil eye, by which
cattle and all kinds of property are said to suffer injury. The glance of
an evil eye is, therefore, very much dreaded. It deprives cows of their
milk, and milk of its nutritive qualities, and renders it unfit for the
various preparations made from it. This superstition can certainly lay
claim to great antiquity. Virgil, Ossian, and other writers, seem to have
dreaded the effects of it, at least they allude to its existence. Virgil
says (Eclog. III., 103)—
Nescio quis teneros oculus mihi fascinat agnos.
(I know not what malignant eye bewitches my tender lambs).
But equally superstitious are the means resorted to for the cure of these
sad afflictions, such as the use of certain charms, the repetition of
strange rhymes, putting living trout in a portion of the injured milk,
and many other such ridiculous appliances.
There is an endless variety of superstitions in regard to things which
are unlucky or unfortunate to be done. It is unfortunate if a stranger
counts the number of your sheep, cattle, or children. It is quite common
if one asks, “How many children have you?” to add the words, “Bless them”
to the question. It is unlucky for an odd number to sit at a table,
such as 7, 9, 11; and 13 in particular is so unfortunate that unless
rectified, one of the party is sure to die that year. It is unlucky if
a stranger walks across a parcel of fishing-rods on the sea beach, over
ropes, oars, or sailing gear, when a boat is about to go to sea. Means
are used for getting the stranger to retrace his steps. It is unlucky
to drink the health of a company, or to serve them round a table except
from left to right, as the sun goes in the firmament, or the hands on
the dial-plate of a watch. It is unlucky, in setting off, to row in a
boat, or to commence a procession at a marriage or funeral, but to the
right. It is unlucky to hear the cuckoo, or see a foal or snail before
breakfast. As to this there is a Gaelic rhyme as follows, viz.:—
Chunnaic mi an searrachan ’sa chulaobh rium,
Chunnaic mi an t-seilcheag air an lic luim;
Chual mi’ a’ chuag gun ghreim ’nam bhroinn,
Is dh’ aithnich mi fein nach rachadh a’ bhliadhn’ so leam.
These lines may be translated—
With its back to me turn’d I beheld the young foal,
And the snail on the bare flag in motion so slow;
Without tasting of food, lo! the cuckoo I heard,
Then judged that the year would not prosperously go.
It is unlucky to stand between an epileptic man and fire or water. In
Shetland there was once an idea that it was unlucky to save drowning
men. It is unlucky to throw out water after sunset, and before sunrise.
It is unlucky to have a grave open upon Sunday, as another will be dug
during the week for some of the family. If a corpse does not stiffen
after death, there will be another death in the family before the end
of that year. Fires and candles afford presages of death. Long hollow
coals spirted from the fire are coffins. Winding-sheets are indicated
when the tallow of the candle curls away from the flame. The howling of
a dog at night, and the resting of a crow or magpie on the house-top,
are warnings of death. It is unlucky to weigh infants; they are sure to
die. Cats sleeping near infants suck their breath and kill them. When
children begin to walk they must go up-stairs before they go down-stairs,
otherwise they will not thrive in the world, and if there is no stair
they should climb a chair. A mother after the birth of a child must not
go outside beyond her house door until she goes to be kirked. If you rock
an empty cradle you will soon rock a new baby in it. It is quite curious
to see the face of alarm with which a poor woman, with her tenth baby in
her arms, will dash across the room to prevent “the baby but one” from
the dangerous amusement of rocking the empty cradle. It is unlucky that
a stray swarm of bees should settle on your premises unclaimed by their
owner. It is customary in many parts of England when a death takes place
to go and tell the bees of it, to ask them to the funeral, and to fix a
piece of crape upon their hives! It is unlucky to catch a sight of the
new moon through a window. It is a token of fine weather to see the old
moon in the arms of the new; and so is the turning up of the horns of the
new moon, as they retain the water which would fall to the earth if the
horns were turned down. It is unlucky to enter a house, which you are
to occupy, by the back door. If, when fishing you count what you have
taken, you will catch no more. If, you break your bones by accident, it
is unlucky and useless to employ a physician or surgeon to bind them, as
it is believed that, however skilful these may be in curing all other
maladies, they know nothing whatever about the setting of broken bones.