SECOND SIGHT (_an da shealladh_).
Freed from a good deal of mystery in which an imperfect understanding
of its character has involved it, the gift of second sight may be
briefly explained to be the same as being “spectre-haunted,” or liable
to “spectre illusions,” when that condition occurs, as it often does,
in persons of sound mind. The phenomena in both cases are the same; the
difference is in the explanation given of them. In the one case the
vision is looked on as unreal and imaginary, arising from some bodily
or mental derangement, and having no foundation in fact, while the
other proceeds on a belief that the object seen is really there and
has an existence independent of the seer, is a revelation, in fact,
to certain gifted individuals of a world different from, and beyond,
the world of sense. Science has accepted the former as the true and
rational explanation, and traces spectral illusions to an abnormal state
of the nervous system, exhaustion of mind or body, strong emotions,
temperament, and others of the countless, and at times obscure, causes
that lead to hallucination and delusion. But before optical and nervous
delusions were recognised by science, while the spectres were believed to
be external realities having an existence of their own, the visions were
necessarily invested with an awe approaching to terror, and the gift or
faculty of seeing them could not but be referred to some such explanation
as the doctrine of the second sight offers.
“The shepherds of the Hebrid Isles” are usually credited with the largest
possession of the gift, but the doctrine was well known over the whole
Highlands, and as firmly believed in Ross-shire and the highlands of
Perthshire as in the remotest Hebrides. Waldron describes it as existing
in his time in the Isle of Man. It is a Celtic belief, and the suggestion
that it is the remains of the magic of the Druids is not unreasonable.
In every age there are individuals who are spectre-haunted, and it is
probable enough that the sage Celtic priests, assuming the spectres to be
external, reduced the gift of seeing them to a system, a belief in which
formed part of their teaching. This accounts for the circumstance that
the second sight has flourished more among the Celts than any other race.
The Gaelic name _da-shealladh_ does not literally mean “the second
sight,” but “the two sights.” The vision of the world of sense is _one_
sight, ordinarily possessed by all, but the world of spirits is visible
only to certain persons, and the possession of this additional vision
gives them “the two sights,” or what comes to the same thing, “a second
sight.” Through this faculty they see the ghosts of the dead revisiting
the earth, and the fetches, doubles, or apparitions of the living.
The world to which apparitions belong is called by writers on the
second sight “the world of spirits,” but the expression does not
convey correctly the idea attached to visions of the kind. The object
seen, usually that of a friend or acquaintance, the phantasm, phantom,
apparition, or whatever else we choose to call it, was recognised to be
as independent of the person whose semblance it bore as it was of the
person seeing it. He knew nothing of the phantom’s appearance, it was
not his spirit, and played its part without his knowledge or his wish.
The seer, again, could not, or did not, trace it to anything in himself;
it did not arise from any suggestion of his hopes or fears, and was not
a reproduction of any former state of his mind or thought. As to its
owing its origin to anything abnormal in himself, he was (as far as
he could judge) as healthy in mind and body as other people. As long,
therefore, as men believed the phantasm to be an external reality, they
were compelled to believe in doubles, or semblances, that move in a world
which is neither that of sense nor that of spirits. The actions and
appearances of these doubles have no counterpart in any past or present
event, and naturally are referred to the future and the distant.
The object seen, or phantasm, is called _taibhs_ (pron. _taïsh_), the
person seeing it _taibhsear_ (pron. _taïsher_), and the gift of vision,
in addition to its name of second sight, is known as _taibhsearachd_. It
is noticeable that many words referring to spirits and ghosts begin with
this syllable _ta_. The following are worth noticing:
_Tannas_, or _tannasg_, a spectre, generally of the dead, and in the
idea attached to it more shadowy, unsubstantial, and spiritual than a
_Bòchdan_.
_Tamhasg_ (pron. _taüsg_), the shade or double of a living person, is
the common name for apparitions by which men are haunted, and with
which, according to the doctrine of the second sight, they have to hold
assignations.
_Tàchar_, a rare and almost obsolete word, but the derivatives of which,
_tacharan_ and _tachradh_, are still in common use. The only instances
known to the writer of its occurrence are in the names of places.
_Sròn an tàchair_, the Ghost-haunted Nose, is a rock between Kinloch
Rannoch and Druim-a-chastail, in Perthshire, where faint mysterious
noises were heard, and on passing which the wayfarer was left by the
mysterious sprite which joined him in the hollow below. _Imire tàchair_,
in the island of Iona, is a ridge leading from near the ecclesiastical
buildings to the hill, and, till the moor through which it runs was
drained in recent years, formed an elevation above a sheet of water,—a
very likely place to have been haunted by goblins. The natives of the
island have no tradition or explanation of the name. The derivatives
_tachradh_ and _tacharan_ are applied to a weak and helpless person: when
the first syllable is long, in pity; when short, contemptuously, as,
_e.g._, _an tăchradh grànda_, “the ugly wretch.”
_Tàslaich_, a supernatural premonition, felt or heard, but not seen.
Also applied to the ghosts of the living. For instance, a native of Skye
being asked the reason why dogs were barking at night near a churchyard,
said it was because they saw _tàslaich nan daoine beò_, the ghosts of the
living, the premonition of a funeral.
_Tàradh_, noises (_straighlich_) heard at night through the house,
indicating a change of tenants, a premonition by mysterious sounds of a
coming event.
_Taran_, the ghost of an unbaptised child (Dr. Macpherson, p. 307), not
now a common word.
_Tàsg_, perhaps a contraction of _tamhasg_, used commonly in the
expression _eigheach tàisg_, the cry or wail of a fetch. Cf. _taghairm_,
the spirit-call.
The whole doctrine of these apparitions of the living, or, as they are
called in Cumberland, _swarths_, and premonitions of coming events,
proceeds on the supposition that people have a counterpart or other
self, an _alter ego_, which goes about unknown to themselves, with
their voices, features, form, and dress, even to their shoes, and is
visible to those who have the unhappy gift of the second sight. This
phantasm, or other self, is not the life or the spirit of the person whom
it represents. He has nothing to do with it; he may, at the time it is
seen, be sunk in unconscious sleep, or his attention and wishes may be
otherwise taken up, and death may not be at all in his thoughts. At the
same time, it is not without some connection with him. Strongly wishing
is apt to make one’s _tàradh_ be heard at the place where he wishes to
be, and if the person whose spectre is seen be spoken to the apparition
disappears; but in general the _taibhs_ is independent of all thought,
or action, or emotion of the person whom it represents. The doctrine
does not assert that all men have got such a double, much less that
those who are most largely gifted with the second sight see it always,
or even frequently. The spectres are visible to the seer only under
exceptional circumstances, in certain situations, and at certain times.
The most usual of these are after dusk and across a fire, when a sudden
or violent death has occurred, or is to occur, when a friend is ill, when
strangers are to come, or any event is impending calculated to make a
deep impression on the mind.
Spectres are often seen with as much distinctness as external objects,
and it would be a great injustice to the poor man, who claims to have
visions of things that are not there at all, to say he is telling an
untruth. To him the vision is really there, and it is but natural for
him to think it has an existence separate from himself, instead of
referring it to an abnormal state of his mind and nervous system. Some
spectres “move with the moving eye,” being what the poet calls “hard
mechanic ghosts”; others have their own proper motion, and probably arise
in the brain. The former are the most common, and it was a test among
_taïshers_, whether the figure seen was a wraith or not, to stoop down
and raise themselves up again suddenly. If the figure did the same, it
was an apparition, a _tamhasg_.
The gift of second sight was not in any case looked upon as enviable or
desirable. Seers frequently expressed a wish that they had no such gift.
In some instances it ran in the family; in others, but rarer cases, the
seer was the only one of his kindred who “saw sights” (_chì sealladh_).
Some had it early in life, upon others it did not come till they were
advanced in life. These characteristics alone show it to be in its
origin the same as spectral illusions. It arose from hereditary disease,
malformation, or weakness of the visual organs, and derangements of mind
or bodily health. It was not _voluntary_; the visions went and came
without the option of the seer, and his being visited by them was deemed
by himself and others a misfortune rather than a gift. A difference
was also recognised in the kinds of apparitions visible to different
individuals.
When the figure of an acquaintance was seen, the manner in which the
_taibhs_ was clothed afforded an indication to the skilful seer of the
fate then befalling, or about to befall, the person whose _taibhs_ it
was. If the apparition was dressed in the dead-clothes, the person was
to die soon; but if in every-day clothes, his death would not occur
for some time. If the clothes covered the entire face, his death would
be very soon; if the face was uncovered, or partly covered, death was
proportionately more remote. Others saw the dead-clothes first about
the head, and lower down at each succeeding vision. When the feet were
covered death was imminent. There were, however, grave-clothes of good
fortune (_lion-aodach àigh_) as well as grave-clothes indicative of death
(_lion-aodach bàis_), and it was considered extremely difficult for the
most skilful seer to distinguish between them. He required, he said, a
close view of the spectre to tell which it had on.
The time of day at which the vision was seen was also an indication. The
later in the day, the sooner the death. If as late as 5 p.m., soon; but
if as early as 2 a.m., the man might live for years.
If the person seen was to be drowned at sea, phosphorescent gleams
(_teine-sionnachain_), such as are common in the Hebridean seas on summer
nights, appeared round the figure, or its clothes seemed to drip, or
there was water in its shoes.
The _swarths_, or doubles, were believed to go through all the actions
and occupy the places which the originals would afterwards perform or
occupy. This was particularly the case with regard to funerals. They
went for the glasses to be used on the occasion, for the coffin, and
even for the wood to make it, and marched in melancholy procession to
the churchyard. When the funeral procession was seen, the seer was
unable to say, except by inference, whose funeral it was. For anything
he could directly tell, it might be, as it sometimes was, his own. He
could only tell the dress, position in the procession, and appearance
of those performing the sad duty. It is dangerous to walk in the middle
of the road at night, in case of meeting one of these processions, and
being thrown down or forced to become one of the coffin-bearers to the
graveyard. Persons in the latter predicament have experienced great
difficulty in keeping on the road, the whole weight of the coffin seeming
to be laid upon them, and pushing them off the path. If the seer goes
among the swarths he will likely be knocked down, but in some districts,
as Moidart, he is said to have one of the staves or bearers (_lunn_) of
the coffin thrust into his hand, and to be compelled to take his part in
the procession till relieved in due time. In Durness, in Sutherlandshire,
the cry of “Relief!” there used at every change of coffin-bearers, has
been heard at night by persons whose houses were near the high-road
called out by the phantasms in their ghostly procession. Persons have
been caught hold of by those reputed to have the second sight, and pulled
to a side to allow a spectral funeral to pass; and it was universally
believed that when the seer saw a procession of the kind, or, indeed,
any of his supernatural visions, he could make others see the same sight
by putting his foot on theirs and a hand on their shoulder. He should,
therefore, never walk in the middle of the road at night. Taïshers never
did so. At any moment the traveller may fall in with a spectral funeral,
and be thrown down or seized with the oppression of an unearthly weight.
The visions of the seer did not always relate to melancholy events,
impending death, funerals, and misfortunes. At times he had visions of
pleasant events, and saw his future wife, before he ever thought of
her (at least so he said), sitting by the fireside in the seat she was
afterwards to occupy. He could tell whether an absent friend was on his
way home, and whether he was to have anything in his hands when coming.
He could not tell what the thing was to be, but merely the general
appearance of the absent man when returning, and whether he was to come
full or empty handed.
It has been said that the phantasm (_taibhs_ or _tamhasg_) was
independent of all thought and volition on the part of those whom it
represented, as well as on the part of the seer himself. At the same
time, it was part of the creed that if the person whose double was seen
was spoken to and told to cease his persecutions, the annoyance came to
an end. The person spoken to, being utterly unconscious that his phantasm
was wandering about and annoying any one, got very angry, but somehow
the spectre ceased to appear. Before taking a final leave, however, it
gave the person whom it had haunted (as an informant described it) “one
thundering lashing.” After that it was no more seen.
When a double is first met, if it be taken to be the man himself whose
semblance it bears, and be spoken to, it acquires the power of compelling
the person who has accosted it to hold nightly assignations with it in
future. The man, in fact, from that hour becomes “spectre-haunted.”
Hence it was a tenet of the second sight never to be the first to speak,
on meeting an acquaintance at night, till satisfied that the figure
seen was of this world. The seer did not like, indeed did not dare, to
tell to others whose figure it was that haunted him. If he did so, the
anger of the spectre was roused, and on the following evening it gave
him a dreadful thrashing. When he resisted, he grasped but a shadow,
was thrown down repeatedly in the struggle, and bruised severely. This
form of the disease was well known in the Western Islands. The haunted
person, as in the case of those who had Fairy sweethearts, had to
leave home at a certain hour in the evening to meet the spectre, and if
he dared for one night to neglect the assignation he received in due
course a sound thrashing. Sometimes at these meetings the spectre spoke
and gave items of information about the death of the seer and others.
Ordinarily, however, it had merely an indistinct murmuring kind of speech
(_tormanaich bruidhinn_).
People noted for the second sight have been observed to have a peculiar
look about the eyes. One of them, for instance, in Harris was described
as “always looking up and never looking you straight in the face.”
Those who are of a brooding, melancholy disposition are most liable to
spectral illusions, and it is only to be expected that the gloom of their
character should appear in their looks, and that many of their visions
should relate to deaths and funerals.
Among a superstitious and credulous people the second sight, or a
pretence to it, must have furnished a powerful weapon of annoyance, and
there is reason to believe that, in addition to cases of nervous delusion
and of men being duped by their own fancies, there were many instances of
imposture and design. So much, indeed, was this the case, that a person
of undoubted good character, born and brought up among believers in the
second sight, and himself not incredulous on the subject, said: “I never
knew a truthful, trustworthy man (_duine fìrinneach creideasach_) who
was a taïsher.” While being spectre-haunted was honoured by the name of
a Second Sight, and was invested with mystery and awe, no doubt many laid
claim to it for the sake of the awe with which it invested them to annoy
those whom they disliked, or to make capital out of it with those anxious
about the future or the absent.
SPECTRES OF THE LIVING (_Tamhasg_).
Some thirty years ago a man in Tiree, nicknamed the Poult (_am Big-ein_),
was haunted for several months by the spectre of the person with whom he
was at the time at service. The phantom came regularly every evening for
him, and if its call was disregarded it gave him next evening a severe
thrashing. According to the man’s own account, the spectre sometimes
spoke, and, when he understood what it said, gave good advice. Its speech
was generally indistinct and unintelligible. The person whose spectre it
was, on being spoken to on the subject, got very angry, but the visits of
the spectre ceased.
Only a few years ago a young man, also in Tiree, was on his way home
about midnight from the parish mill, where he had been kiln-drying corn.
He had to go against a strong gale of north-west wind, and, having his
head bent down and not looking well before him, ran up against a figure,
which he took to be that of a young man of his acquaintance. He spoke to
it, and the figure answered in broken, inarticulate speech (_tormanaich
bruidhinn_). Every evening afterwards during that half-year he had to
leave the house in which he was at service to meet, he himself said, the
spectre that had thus met him. A person who doubted this followed one
evening, and saw him, immediately on leaving the house, squaring out in
boxing style to some invisible opponent, and falling at every round. The
haunted youth said the apparition gave him much information. It said
the person whose semblance it itself bore was to die of fever, that the
coffin was to be taken out of the house by certain individuals, whom it
named, and was to be placed on two creels outside the door. On speaking
to the lad whose apparition haunted him, the persecution ceased. The
common opinion was that this was a case of imposture and design.
Near Salen, in Mull, a workman, when going home from his employment in
the evening, forgot to take his coat with him. He returned for it, and
the apparition (_tamhasg_) of a woman met him, and gave him a squeezing
(_plùchadh_) that made him keep his bed for several days.
In the same island a man was said to have been knocked off his horse by
an apparition.
A crofter (or tenant of a small piece of land of which he has no lease)
in Caolas, Tiree, went out at night to see that his neighbour’s horses
were not trespassing on some clover he had in his croft. He was a man
who had confessedly the second sight. He observed on this occasion a
man going in a parallel direction to himself, and but a short distance
off. At first he thought it was only a neighbour, Black Allan, trying to
frighten him, but, struck by the motion and silence of the figure, he
stooped down, and then raised himself suddenly. The figure did the same,
proof of its being a _tamhasg_ or phantasm. The seer reached home, pale
and ready to faint, but nothing further came of his vision.
Three years ago a man, who claims to have the second sight, was on his
way home at night to Barrapol, in the west end of Tiree, from the mill
(which is in the centre of the island) with a sack of meal on his back.
He laid down the sack, and rested by the wayside. When swinging the
burden again on his shoulder he observed a figure standing beside him,
and then springing on the top of the sack on his back. It remained there,
rendering the sack very oppressive, till he reached home, some miles
further on.
The son of a seer in Coll was away in the south country. The seer
when delving saw his son several times lending assistance, and on two
occasions when coming home with a creelful of peats, after taking a rest
by the way, saw him helping to lift the creel again on his back. Before
long word came of his son’s death.
Alexander Sinclair, from Erray, in Mull, was grieve at Funery in
Morven. Two, if not three, of the servant women fell in love with him.
He had to cross one night a bridge in the neighbourhood, between Savory
and Salachan, and was met by the apparitions of two women, whom he
recognised as his fellow-servants. One, he said, was the figure of a
dark little woman, and lifted him over the parapet. The other was that
of the dairymaid, in the house in which he was, and it rescued him. The
adventure ended by his marrying the dairymaid.
A man, going home at night to Ledmore (_Leudmòr_), near Loch Frisa,
in Mull, saw the kitchen-maid of the house in which he was at service
waiting for him on the other side of a ford that lay in his way.
Suspecting the appearance, he went further up the stream to avoid it,
but it was waiting for him at every ford. At last he crossed, and held
on his way, the apparition accompanying him. At the top of the first
incline, the apparition threw him down. He rose, but was again thrown. He
struggled, but the figure, he said, had no weight, and he grasped nothing
but wind. On the highest part of the ascent, called _Guala Spinne_, the
apparition left him. After going home, the man spoke to the woman whose
spectre had met him. “The next time,” he said, “you meet me, I will stab
you.” This made the woman cry, but he was never again troubled by her
apparition.
A native of Glenbeg in Ardnamurchan, Henderson by name, was at service
in Kilfinichen in Mull. One of the servant maids there made him a present
of a pair of worsted gloves. After returning home from service, he
had, one evening towards dusk (_am bial an anmuich_, lit. in the mouth
of lateness) to go from Glenbeg to Kilchoan, by a path across a steep
incline on the side of the lofty Ben-shianta, towards the projection
known as “The Nose of the Macleans” (_Sròin Chloinn Illeathain_). Steep
mountain paths of this kind are called _Catha_, and this particular catha
is called _Catha na Muice_ (the pig’s pass). Near the top of the ascent
(_aonaich_), and where the difficult path ceases (_bràighe na Catha_),
there is a narrow step (_aisre_), which only one person at a time can
cross, leading towards another ascent (_aonaich_). When going up the
first ascent, or cadha, Henderson was joined by the apparition of the
woman who had made him the gloves in Kilfinichen. She was on the up side
of him, and he saw, when he came to the _aisre_, if she chose to give him
a push, he would be precipitated into the black shore (_du-chladach_),
which the rocks there overhang, and become a shapeless bundle (_seirgein
cuagach_). He blessed himself, and taking courage crossed in safety.
When he got on more level ground, over towards Correi-Vulin, he took the
gloves she had given him, and threw them at her, saying “that is all the
business you have with me.” He stayed that night in _Laga Fliuch_, and
next day went to Kilchoan. On his return he looked for the gloves, and
saw them where he had thrown them. He had no return of the vision.
APPARITIONS OF THE DEAD.
A taïsher in Tiree came upon a dead body washed ashore by the sea. The
corpse had nothing on in the way of clothing but a pair of sea-boots.
Old people considered it a duty, when they fell in with a drowned
body, to turn it over or move it in some way. In this case, the seer
was so horrified that, instead of doing this, he ran away. Other
people, however, came, and the body was duly buried. Afterwards the
dead man haunted the seer, and now and then appeared and terrified him
exceedingly. One night on his way home he saw the corpse before him,
wherever he turned, and on reaching the house it stood between him and
the door. He walked on till close to the house, and then called to his
wife to take the broomstick and sprinkle the door-posts with urine. When
this was done, he boldly walked forward. The spectre, on his approach,
leapt from the ground, and stood above the door with a foot resting on
each side on the double walls. The seer entered between its legs, and
never saw the horrible apparition again.
A taïsher in Coll had no second sight till some time after his marriage.
Working one day with a companion near the shore, he left for a short
time, but stayed away so long that, on his return, he was asked what
kept him? He said he had been looking at the body of a drowned man, which
the waves were swaying backwards and forwards near the rocks. Others,
however, were of opinion he had found the body on the shore, ransacked
its clothes, and then thrown it again into the sea, and that the second
sight was a curse sent upon him for the deed. Certain it is that from
that day he had the second sight. His friends at first doubted him, when
he said he saw visions, till he one day told his sister a certain rope in
the house would be sent for before morning, to be used about a body lying
on the “straight-board.” This proved to be the case, and his reputation
as a taïsher was established.
A noted seer, named _Mac Dhòmhnuill Oig_, in Kilmoluag, Tiree, was
sitting one day at home, when his brother entered, and opening a chest
in the room, took out some money. In reply to the seer’s inquiries, the
brother said he was going to pay such and such a shoemaker for a pair
of shoes recently got from him. The brother died soon after, and the
shoemaker claimed the price of the shoes. The seer warmly resisted the
claim, as he himself had seen his brother taking the money expressly to
pay them. That same night, however, he saw the shade of his deceased
brother crossing the room, and, as it were, fumbling in a particular
place on the top of the inner wall of the house. Next day the seer
himself searched in the same spot, and found there the money that had
been taken out of the chest to pay the shoes. He could only think it had
been placed there by his brother when alive, and had been forgotten.
A taïsher, whose house was at Crossapol, where the burying-ground of
the island of Coll is, on his way home from the harbour of Arnagour,
about six miles away, experienced many mischances (_driod-fhortain_),
such as falling, etc. He arrived at home to find his only child, a boy
about twelve years of age, dead in the burying-ground, where he had gone
to play and fallen asleep. Its entrails (_màthair a mhionaich_) were
protruding. The seer, in his distraction, belaboured the surrounding
graves with his stick, accusing their tenants, in his outcries, of
indifference to him and his, and saying he had many of his kindred among
them, though they had allowed this evil to befall his child. That night a
voice came to him in his sleep, saying, he should not be angry with them
(shades of the dead), seeing they were away that day in Islay keeping
“strange blood” from the grave of Lachlan Mor (_cumail na fuil choimhich
a uaigh Lachuinn Mhòir_), and were not present to have rescued the child.
This Lachlan Mor was a man of great stature and bodily strength, chief of
the Macleans of Dowart, and therefore related to the Macleans of Coll,
who had been killed at the bloody clan battle of Gruinard Beach, in
Islay, and was buried at Kilchoman Churchyard. On hearing of the seer’s
vision the Laird of Coll dispatched a boat to Islay, and it was found
that on the day the child was murdered an attempt had been made to lift
the chief’s gravestone for the burial of a sailor, whose body had been
cast ashore on a neighbouring beach. The attempt had failed, and the
stone was left partly on its edge (_air a leth-bhile_). The shades had
laid their weight upon it, so that it could not be moved further.
This story the writer has heard more than once adduced as positive
proof of the reality of the second sight (_tabhsearachd_), that is, of
the capacity of some men to see and hear spirits, or whatever else the
spectres are. The power of the dead to lay a heavy weight upon persons as
well as things, and even to punish the living, is shown by the following
stories.
In the same island of Coll the wife of Donald the Fair-haired (_Dòmhnull
Bàn_) was lying ill. She had strange feelings of oppression and sickness
(_tinneas ’us slachdadh_). Donald’s father was a taïsher, and came to see
her. After sitting and watching for some time he told her she had herself
to blame for her sickness, that she must have done some act of unkindness
or wrong to her mother, and that her feelings of oppression were caused
by the spirit of her dead father coming and lying its weight upon her.
The seer professed to see the spirit of the dead leaning its weight upon
the sick person.
A woman (the tale, which comes from Perthshire, does not say where),
being ill-treated by her husband, wished, too strongly and unduly, her
brother, who had some time previously died in Edinburgh, were with her
to take her part. Soon after, when she was alone, her brother’s shade
appeared, and in a tone of displeasure asked her what was wrong, and what
she wanted him for. She told. Her husband was at the time ploughing in a
field in front of the house. The woman saw the shade going towards him,
and when it reached, her husband fell dead.
STRONG AND UNDUE WISHES.
It is in fact part of the creed in the Second Sight that a person should
never indulge in strong wishes, lest he overstep proper bounds, and
wish what Providence has not designed to be. Such wishes affect others,
especially if these others have anything of the Second Sight.
A woman in the island of Harris, known as _Fionnaghal a Mhoir_, was
celebrated for her gift of Second Sight. A young man related to her went
to Appin, in Argyleshire, with a boat. One day, when taking a smoke, he
expressed a wish that _Fionnaghal a Mhoir_ had a draw of his pipe. Next
day, and long before it could be known in Harris the youth had expressed
such a wish, Flora, daughter of the Big Man (for that is the meaning of
her name), told her friends that a pipe was being offered her all night
by the young man, and that she was anxious enough to have a smoke from
it, but could not.
A young girl in Kennovay, Tiree, holding a bowl of milk in her hands,
expressed a wish a certain woman (naming one, who was a _taibhsear_) had
the bowl to drink. Next day the woman indicated in the wish told the girl
she had a sore time of it all night keeping the bowl away from her lips.
In very recent times, not above four years ago, as the driver of
the mail-gig was going through the Wood of Nant (_Coill an Eannd_),
between Bonawe and Loch Awe, at night, he was met by the figure of his
sweetheart, and received from it such a severe thrashing that he had to
turn back. On telling this to herself, afterwards, she acknowledged,
that on the night referred to she was very anxious about him, and wished
she could intercept him in case, at his journey’s end, he should go to a
house where fever had broken out.
A woman in Lismore, making a bowl of gruel (_brochan blàth_) in the
evening, expressed a wish her husband, who was then away at the fishing
at Corpach, near the entrance to the Caledonian Canal, had the drink she
was making. When her husband came home, he said to her, “I tell you what
it is, you are not to come again with porridge to me at Corpach.” He said
he had seen her all night at his bedside offering him his gruel.
The power ascribed to strong wishes, or rather the evil consequences by
which they may be followed, is still more forcibly illustrated by the
following tale.
A young woman at Barr, Morvern, beautiful and much esteemed in her own
neighbourhood, was about to be married. Other maidens were in the house
with her, sewing the dresses for the marriage. As they sat at work, she
sighed and said, she wished her intended was come. At that moment, he
was on his way coming over the shoulder of Ben Iadain, a lofty mountain
near hand, of weird appearance and having the reputation of being much
frequented by the Fairies. He observed his sweetheart walking beside him,
and as the shadowy presence threw him down, he struck at it repeatedly
with his dirk. The bride got unwell, and, before the bridegroom reached
the house, died. The ‘fetch’ left him shortly before his arrival, and her
death was simultaneous with its disappearance.
It has been said that the appearance of the spectre was considered
entirely independent of the thoughts or volition of the person whose
image it bears. Yet the tales of the Second Sight indicate some
mysterious connection between men and their doubles. Strongly wishing, as
in the above instances, causes at times a person’s likeness to be seen or
heard at the place where he wishes to be, and the original (so to call
him) may be affected through his double.
A man in Islay encountered a ghost, and threw his open penknife at it.
The weapon struck the phantom in the eye, and at that moment, a woman,
whose likeness it bore, though several miles away, was struck blind of an
eye.
A young woman, residing in Skye, had a lover, a sailor, who was away
in the East Indies. On Hallowe’en night she went, as is customary in
country frolics, to pull a kail plant, that she might know, from its
being crooked or straight or laden with earth, what the character or
appearance or wealth of her future husband might be. As she grasped a
stock to pull it, a knife dropped from the sky and stuck in the plant.
When her lover came home, she learned from him, that on that very night
and about the same hour, he was standing near the ship’s bulwark, looking
over the side, with a knife in his hand. He was thinking of her, and in
his reverie the knife fell out of his hand and over the side. The young
woman produced the knife she found in the kail-stock, and it proved to be
the very knife her sailor lover had lost.
TÀRADH.
When a person strongly wishes to be anywhere, as for instance when a
person on a journey at night wishes to be at home, his footsteps coming
to the house, or the sounds of his lifting the door latch are heard, or
a glimpse of his appearance is seen, at the time of his conceiving or
expressing the wish, and even without any wish being present to the
absent person’s mind, sights or sounds indicative of his coming may be
seen or heard. This previous intimation is called his _tàradh_, and
his double or shade, which is the cause of it, his _tàslach_. These
mysterious intelligences are also called _manadh nan daoine bèo_, “the
omens of living men.” The family, sitting round the evening fire, hear
a footstep approaching the house, and even a tapping at the door. The
sounds are so life-like that some one goes to open the door, but there
is no one there. The sound is only the _tàradh_ of an absent friend,
storm-tossed or wayworn, and wishing he were at home.
The _tàradh_ may be that of a complete stranger, who is not thinking of,
and perhaps does not even know the place to which his _tàradh_ has come.
When there is to be a change of tenants the advent of the stranger is
heralded, it may be years beforehand, by his double. It is said “_thàinig
a thàradh_,” _i.e._ his wraith or forewarning has come. When a shepherd,
for instance, from another part of the country, is to come to a place,
his likeness, phantom, or _tàradh_, is seen perhaps years beforehand on
the hills he is afterwards so frequently to traverse. It is not every
kind of men who have this phantom or double, neither does it appear
wherein those who have it differ from other men. At all events if all men
have it, it is not always to be seen.
A feeling of oppression at night, and the sound of footsteps through the
house and the noise of furniture being moved about, is the omen of a
change of tenants, and the _tàradh_ of the incoming tenant.
In the island of Coll, the chiefs of which in former times were among the
most celebrated in the West Highlands, and where the return of the former
lairds is talked about, and believed in, and prayed for among the few of
the native population left, the figure of the Laird who is to come is
said to have been seen by the castle servants, sitting in an empty chair,
with a long beard flowing down to his breast.
A young man, sleeping alone in a house, in which a shop was kept by his
father at Scarinish, Tiree, one night felt such an oppression on his
chest that he could not sleep, and heard noises as if there were people
in the house. He got up and made a thorough search, but found no one.
Before long there was a change in the occupancy of the house.
On the uninhabited and lonely islet of _Fladdachuain_, to the east of
Skye, some storm-stayed fishermen were boiling potatoes in a deserted
bothy, and heard the noise of voices outside. On going out they could
find no one. This occurred thrice. Some days after, and before the
fishermen got away, a boat passing to the outer Hebrides was forced by
stress of weather to take refuge in the same islet. The voices of its
crew were exactly those previously heard. Nothing further occurred in
connection with the sounds.
The spirit, thus coming in a visible or audible form about a treasure,
by which the thoughts are too much occupied, or where a person wishes
too much to be, is also denominated “_falbh air fàrsaing_,” _i.e._ going
uncontrolled (?)
MARRIAGE.
Those gifted with the second sight were sometimes able to tell the
appearance of a person’s future wife. They saw her taïsh, or appearance,
sitting beside her husband, and this long before the event occurred, or
was spoken of. For instance, a seer has been known to remark to a young
man, who did not dream of marrying at the time, “I think your wife must
belong to a big house, for she has a white apron on,” etc.
The event has proved the vision to be real. The woman was housemaid in
a gentleman’s house. Seers also said they saw their own future wives
sitting opposite to them at the fireside.
A native of Coll, Hugh, son of Donald the Red (_Eoghan MacDhòmhnuill
Ruaidh_), while serving with his regiment in Africa, said he saw, almost
every evening, for a period of five years, glimpses of the woman whom
he afterwards married, and whom he never saw in reality till his return
from the wars. Wherever he sat, after the day’s march, the figure of a
woman came beside him, and sometimes seemed to him to touch him lightly
on the shoulders. On each occasion he merely caught a glimpse of her.
When he left the army, and was on his way home, he came to the village
at Dervaig, in Mull, from the neighbourhood of which the ferry across to
Coll lay. He entered by chance a house in the village, and his attention
was unexpectedly attracted by the sound of a weaver’s loom at work in the
house. On looking up he saw sitting at the loom the identical woman whose
figure had for five years haunted him in Africa. He married her.
COMING MISFORTUNE.
A taïsher in Caolas, Tiree, was observed to have great objections to
going home to take his meals. Being questioned on the subject, he said
that at home he saw a horrible-looking black woman, with her head
“as black as a pot,” and if he chanced to catch a glimpse of her at
meal-times, her hideous appearance made him rise from his food. He said
he did not recognise the woman, and was unable to say who or what she
was. This was continued for three months, when the place was visited with
smallpox, and the seer’s own sister took the disease very badly. Her
head became hideous, and literally “as black as a pot,” and the people
understood the meaning of the vision.
A celebrated seer in the same village, Donald Black (_Domhnull Mac an
dui_), was married for the fourth time. In his day lucifer matches
were unknown, and when corn was kiln-dried a person had to sit up all
night to keep the fire alive. As Donald sat at this work in a solitary
hut—such as small kilns are still kept in—the figure of his first wife
appeared, and told him to beware, for “the terror” (_an t-eagal_) was
coming, it was at the Horse-shoe (_crudh an eich_), a spot on the public
road leading to Caolis, about a mile and a half distant, deriving its
name from the plain likeness of a horse-shoe indented in the rock. He,
however, was dozing over into sleep again when his second wife, in more
distressed tones, warned him the “terror” was nearer hand—at the Gateway
of the Fuel enclosure (_Cachlaidh na Cuil Connaidh_). He neglected this
warning also, and was dozing again when his third wife warned him the
“terror” was at the upper village (_Bail’ uachdrach_). He immediately
went home, and had hardly got into bed when a sound like the rushing of
a violent blast of wind passed, and the whole house was shaken, so that
the walls were like to fall. If this was not “the terror” of which he had
been so strangely warned, Donald could give no other explanation.
EVENTS AT A DISTANCE.
Some sixty years ago a seer in Ruaig, Tiree, the neighbouring village to
the preceding, was one day employed in the harvest-field, tying sheaves
after the reapers, a work assigned to old people. One of his sons was
away in the Ross of Mull for a cargo of peats. All of a sudden the old
man cried out “Alas! alas! my loss!” (_och! och! mo chreach!_) His
children gathered round him in great anxiety as to the cause of his
distress. He told them to wait a minute and in a short time said it was
all right, his son was safe. It turned out that at the very time of his
exclamation, the boat in which his son was on its way from the Ross of
Mull, was run into by another boat at the Dutchman’s Cap (_Am Bac Mòr_),
a peculiarly shaped island on the way, and his son was thrown overboard,
but was rescued in time. The view of this incident which his mystic gift
gave the seer was the cause of his exclamation.
DEATH.
Visionary delusions are so frequently to be traced to a brooding, gloomy
disposition, that it is no wonder sorrowful sights were those usually
seen by persons having the Second Sight, or that death was an event of
which taïshers had particular cognisance. The doctrine is, that the
whole ceremony connected with a funeral is gone through in rehearsal by
spectres which are the shades, phantoms, appearances, taïshs, doubles,
swarths, or whatever else we choose to call them, of living men, not
merely by the shade of the person who is to die, but by the shades of all
who are to be concerned in the ceremony. The phantoms go for the wood
that is to make the coffin, the nails, the dead clothes, and whatever
else may be required on the occasion; the sounds of the coffin being
made are heard, of presses being opened, of glasses rattling; and the
melancholy procession has been met in the dead of night wending its way
to the churchyard. These weird sights and sounds have been seen and heard
by others as well as taïshers. The only difference is, that he who has
the Second Sight is more apt to see them.
COFFIN.
The shades that go for a coffin are called _tathaich air ciste_, _i.e._
frequenters for a chest. They are heard at night long after the joiner
has ceased his day’s labour. The workshop is closed, and the wright has
retired to rest, when the sound of a hammer, a shuffling for nails, and
the working of a plane, are heard as if someone were at work. If anyone
has the courage to enter the workshop, nothing is to be seen, and no
answer is given though he speak.
Some fifty years ago there was a wright in Kinloch Rannoch, in
Perthshire, who complained of having the Second Sight, and who, in
emigrating to Australia, assigned as his chief reason for leaving his
native land, the frequency with which he saw or heard people coming
beforehand for coffins. The tools of his trade, plane, hammers, saw,
etc., were heard by him at work as distinctly as though he himself were
working, and the frequency of the omen preyed so much on his mind that
he left the country in the hope of relief. The shades were not those
of the people whose death was imminent, but those of their friends and
acquaintances, who afterwards proved actually to be the parties who came
for the coffin.
A few years ago a medical student, in the west of Inverness-shire, sat
up late on a summer night “grinding” for his examination. A joiner’s
workshop adjoined the house in which he was. About two o’clock in the
morning he heard the sound of hammers, plane, etc., as though some one
were at work in the shop. The sounds continued till about three. The
evening was calm. Next day when he told what he had heard his friends
laughed at him. Next night again, however, the noises were resumed and
continued till he fell asleep. They were this night heard also by the
other inmates; and as they were repeated every night for a week, every
person in the house, including the joiner himself, who was brought in
for the purpose, heard them. Shortly after a woman in the neighbourhood
died in childbed, and the joiner, in whose workshop the noises were
heard, made her coffin. The mysterious hammering only discontinued when
the coffin was finished. The person who heard the noises were neither
taïshers nor sons of taïshers.
A Tiree man assured the writer that he and a brother of his heard most
distinctly (_ga farumach_) the sound of a hammer all night till morning
on a chest in an empty room, near which they slept. A woman next door
died suddenly on the following day, and it was on that chest another
brother of his made her coffin. The truthfulness of the persons who told
this can be assured, whatever be the explanation given of the noise.
A very intelligent informant says that the only thing of the kind he
himself was personally witness to occurred above fifty years ago, when he
was a young lad. An old woman of the neighbourhood lay on her death-bed,
and while the rest of the household, of which he was a member, sat up, he
was on account of his youth packed off to bed. Through the night he heard
what he took to be the trampling of dogs on a loft above his sleeping
place, and this he heard so distinctly that he asked his father next day
what made him put the dogs there. He also heard a plank sliding down
from the loft and striking on end in the passage between the doors. The
following night the old woman died, and the lad himself was sent up to
the loft to bring down planks to make her coffin. A plank slipped from
his hands, and, falling on end in the passage, made exactly the same
noise as he had before heard.
Some forty or fifty years ago the trampling of horses and the rattling
of a conveyance (_stararaich agus gliongarsaich_) were heard after dark,
coming to the farm-house of Liaran in Rannoch. Every person in the house
thought a conveyance was really there. The horses were distinctly heard
turning round in the courtyard. On looking out nothing was to be seen
or heard. In four or five days after, a hearse (a kind of conveyance
till then unknown in the country) came from Appin of Menzies (_Apuinn na
Meinearach_) with the remains of a cousin of the family, who had been
suddenly killed by a kick from a horse.
As late as 1867 a coach was seen proceeding silently through the streets
of a village in Ayrshire to the burying-ground, and was believed by the
common people to be that of a rich lady in the neighbourhood, known as
Brimstone Betty, who died shortly after, not in the odour of sanctity.
NOISE OF GLASSES TO BE USED AT FUNERALS.
Some thirty years ago in Appin, Argyleshire, noises were heard in a
cupboard upstairs, above a room which formed part of a neighbour’s house,
as if some one were fumbling among bottles. The noises were heard by the
inmates of both houses for several nights previous to a somewhat sudden
death occurring in the house below. It turned out that bottles from that
cupboard were used at the funeral.
It was also a belief in Tiree that glasses, to be used before long for
refreshments at a funeral, were heard rattling, as if being moved. Not
many years ago there was an instance of this in the village of Kilmoluag.
Skilful women professed to be able to tell by the baking board and the
“griddle” whether the bread of that baking would be used at a funeral.
FUNERAL PROCESSION.
A boy in Rannoch was playing with his companions in sight of the public
road, when all of a sudden he exclaimed, “Lord! will you not look at my
grandmother’s funeral?” (_Dhia! nach fhaic sibh tòrradh mo sheanamhair._)
His grandmother was ill at the time, but was not thought near her
dissolution. In a few days after her funeral took place, as the boy
described it, with a red-haired character of the neighbourhood dancing at
its head.
The following incident is told by a person whose truthfulness is beyond
question. He is a person of talents and education, and a clergyman of the
Church of Scotland.
“A young lad, herd-boy in the village in the Western Islands to which I
belong, was one day with me on the moors (_sliabh_), above the cultivated
land, when he said he saw two men carrying a coffin between them from
a wright’s workshop then in sight to the door of a house, which he
mentioned. He called my attention to the vision, but I could see nothing
of the kind. He described the dress the two men had on, particularly grey
trousers, such as seafaring people of the place then wore. In about ten
days after an event exactly corresponding occurred.”
A Tiree taïsher told how he had seen a funeral procession leave a certain
house, and persons whom he named acting as coffin-bearers when leaving
the house. This was at Beltane, the first day of summer. Next Christmas
a death occurred in that house, and one of those to whom the seer had
told his vision, took a good look at the funeral, to see if matters would
prove as the seer had said. They did so exactly.
“On one occasion,” said a native of Harris, “I was out fishing till
twelve or one o’clock in the morning, with several others, of whom one,
a man about 35, was reputed to have the Second Sight. As we were coming
home, I kept the middle of the road, thinking it was the safest place,
and that no evil could come near me there. Suddenly the man, who had the
Second Sight, caught me by the shoulder and pulled me to the side of the
road. As he laid his hand on my shoulder I saw a funeral procession—a
coffin and men carrying it. I was afterwards at that funeral myself, and
at the place where I met the taïsh, the men were in the same order in
which I had seen them.”
A young man going home at night, along the south side of Loch Rannoch,
was joined by a funeral procession. One of the poles of the bier was
thrust into his hands, and he had to march in the procession above a
mile. He was on the lochside of the coffin, and had great difficulty in
keeping on the road. The other bearers of the ghostly coffin were laying
the weight to push him off the road.
A woman, near Loch Scavaig (_Scathabhaig_), in Skye, saw a funeral
procession, with the coffins, passing along a hillside, where no road
lay, and no one was ever observed to pass. After the woman’s death, and
two years after her vision, a boat was lost in Loch Scavaig, and the
bodies of three persons lost in her were buried near the shepherd’s house
at the loch side. They were afterwards raised and carried along in the
direction the woman had pointed out as that taken by her vision.
One of these mystic processions was seen in Strathaird, in the same
neighbourhood, carrying something in a grey plaid. A man was drowned in
a river there, and his body was not recovered for a week. It was then
carried in a grey plaid in the same direction the spectral procession had
taken.
A man in Skye met at night a funeral procession, and some occult
influence made him walk along with it till he came to Portree churchyard.
He then for the first time asked whose funeral it was. He received for
answer, “Your own.”
A man living in the Braes of Portree went daily to Portree, four miles
away, to work. A neighbour, whose house was a little further away, was
engaged in the same work, and was in the habit of calling him as he
passed in the morning. The two then walked together to the scene of
their labour. One clear moonlight night he was awakened by what he took
to be his companion’s call. He hastily threw on his clothes and followed.
Every now and then he heard a call before him on the road telling him
to make haste. He followed, without thought, till he came to Portree
churchyard. It did not strike him till then that the call was from no
earthly voice.
WRAITHS SEEN BEFORE DEATH.
When a person was about to die, especially if his death was to be by
violence or drowning, his wraith or phantom was seen by those who had the
Second Sight, or it might be by those who had no such gift.
In the island of Lismore, in the beginning of the nineteenth century, the
minister was said to have seen the fetch of the man at whose funeral the
custom was introduced of having the refreshments (_cosdas_) after the
funeral. In former times it was the practice in the Highlands to have
the refreshments before starting, and consequently the funeral party
were sometimes far advanced in drink before starting on their melancholy
journey. There are even stories of their having forgot the coffin.
On the farm of Kirkapol, in Tiree, where the burying-place of the east
end of the island is, the figure of a man in a dress not belonging to the
island—light trousers and blue jacket with white buttons—was seen about
forty years ago by several people in the evenings going in the direction
of the kirkyard. A celebrated seer in the neighbouring village saw it,
and said it was not the taïsh of any man or any man’s son in Tiree. Some
time after a ship was wrecked in the east end of Tiree, and one of the
sailors, whose dress when his body was found corresponded to that of the
taïsh, was taken and buried in Kirkapol. After that the apparition was no
more seen.
The body of a young man drowned in the same neighbourhood, before being
coffined, was laid first on a rock and then on the green sward. A person
who came to the scene after the body was laid on the grass asked if
the body had been laid on the rock mentioned. He was told it had, and
was asked why he enquired. He said his uncle had told him that his
grandfather, who was a taïsher, had said a dead body would yet be laid on
that rock. This shows that the fulfilment of the seer’s vision does not
necessarily take place soon after, or even within a number of years.
The taïsher in Caolas, Tiree, already mentioned as having seen the fetch
of his sister in the smallpox, on a New-Year night accompanied his
brother-in-law, who had spent the evening with him (and from whom the
story has been got), a piece of the way home. When his brother-in-law
urged him to return, as he had come far enough, he asked to be allowed,
as this was the last New Year he would be with his friends. He was asked
what made him think so gloomily of the future. He said the matter was
to be so, and there was no chance of its being otherwise, for he had
seen his own phantom three or four times. In March following the man was
drowned.
A Tiree taïsher was going out to Tobermory, and taking his passage along
with him was a neighbour going to consult the doctor. There was no
medical officer in those days resident in Tiree. The seer said to one
of the boatmen, he wished he had not the sight he had, for he saw his
fellow-passenger with the dead clothes up to his eyes. “You may,” he
said, “take off my ear if the man’s death is not near hand.” The event
proved the correctness of his vision, and the right to take off his ear
did not arise.
DROWNING.
It is a common story that a taïsher saw the figure of an acquaintance
passing with dripping clothes and water in its shoes (_aodach fliuch agus
bogan na bhròig_). Soon after word was received of the drowning of the
person, whose resemblance it was, at the time the figure was seen.
The seeing of spectres about boats in which people are to be drowned,
is also common. When the superstition was in full force, a sure way of
making a boat useless was to say that voices had been heard about it
when it was drawn upon the beach, or that figures had been seen, which
disappeared mysteriously, “whether the earth swallowed them, or the sky
lifted them.” After that no one having a regard for his own life would
put his foot in that boat.
A person from Tiree went for wood to Loch Creran, and at Tobermory
forgot the parcel in which he had a change of clothes. One day he got
wet, soaked through to the skin, and had to sit all evening in his wet
clothes. On his return home to Tiree a woman, who was reputed to have
the gift of second sight, asked him if, on a certain day of the week
(mentioning the one on which this accident occurred), he had got himself
wetted, that she had seen him, and thought he had been drowned. The man
himself tells the story, and says he cannot conceive of any ordinary
channel of information by which the woman could have become aware of his
condition.
A man named Conn was drowned at Sorisdal, in Coll. A seer, who had been
at daily work with him, had long seen his boots full of water (_bogan
uisge_), when there was no water in them in reality; and for twelve
months after the event, was haunted wherever he went by the vision of
Conn’s drowning.
A seer in Skye saw, when in reality there was no such object, a woman
sitting in the stern of a boat, which afterwards drowned people in
Portree Bay.
A fishing boat or skiff belonging to the people of Gortendonald, in the
west end of Tiree, was sold, because “things” were said to have been
seen about it, till no one belonging to the village would venture to sea
in it. It was bought by some persons in Scarinish, in the east end of
the island, who professed not to believe in _taibhsearachd_, or second
sight. They gave the loan of it to people in Vaul, on the north side of
the island. Here sights began again to be seen about it, and it was even
said that at a time when it was hauled up on dry land, six men were seen
rowing in it and one steering. At last no one at all would venture to sea
in the boat, and it was sent back to Scarinish. So strong was the feeling
that the Vaul men would not venture with it through the Black Water (_am
Bun dubh_), as the sound between Coll and Tiree is called, but drew it
across the land to Gott Loch, whence the Scarinish people took it home.
After this, its odour in the east end of Tiree became so bad that it
was sold again to villagers in the west end, at some distance from the
place it originally came from. Here it terminated its career in Tiree by
drowning six men.
Sights were similarly seen about a boat in Iona, and it had to be sold.
It went to Islay, and the visions were believed to have received their
fulfilment from the boat being employed to convey dead bodies from a ship
wrecked on the Rhinns of Islay (_an Roinn Ileach_, lit. the sharp edge of
Islay).
Not many years ago, a man told about a boat on the south side of Tiree,
that he had heard voices about it, like those of people talking, but on
going near found no person there. He did not know, he said, whether the
air had lifted the people whom he thought were there, or the earth had
swallowed them, but he had heard voices, and no person was there. The
boat became worthless, it would drown some one some day, and no one would
go out to fish in it. The owner, therefore, summoned the seer before the
Sheriff and got him fined.
HORSES AND DOGS.
These animals were deemed to have the gift of seeing spectres in a larger
measure than the best seers. They are observed to be frightened, or to
have their fury raised, without any visible or intelligible cause; they
show signs of terror and distress when human eyes can see no cause,
and it is part of the Celtic belief in the second sight that this
excitement is caused by seeing the taïsh, or shades of the living, in
those circumstances, and engaged in those services in which the persons,
whose similitude they are, will afterwards be. Dogs bark at night, and
when this occurs on clear moonlight nights, they are said in English to
“bay the moon.” The Celtic belief does not deny that they often bark
at the moon, but it asserts further their clamour arises, as the event
afterwards proves, from their seeing the forms of that world, in which
fetches and doubles move, the omens of an impending death. Horses are
better spectre-seers than even dogs. At places where a violent or sudden
death is to occur, they take fright, and no effort of the rider can get
them to pass the spot, till at last he has to dismount and lead them
past. This is caused by their seeing the “fetch” of the subsequent event,
but ordinary people pass it over merely as an “unaccountable fright.”
“I have heard,” said a Skyeman, “scores of times the dogs howling before
a funeral was to take place in Kilmuir churchyard. It was because they
saw the wraiths of the living” (_tàslaich nan daoine beò_). It is a
universal Highland belief that certain dogs cry at night when any one in
the house is to die.
In Lorn, a woman, going with leather to a neighbouring shoemaker, had on
her way to cross a wooden bridge thrown over a mountain stream. She was
accompanied by a young child, whom she left, while she herself crossed
the bridge to leave the parcel of leather on the other side. As she was
crossing a second time, leading the child, the stream came down in flood,
as mountain streams do, and carried away the bridge. The woman and child
were drowned, and their bodies were found further down the stream, at a
place where, for fourteen days previously, a grey tailless bitch (_galla
chutach ghlas_), belonging to a neighbour, used to go and howl piteously.
The fierce growling of a dog at night, when nothing is known to be in
the house to excite its fury, is also supposed to arise from its seeing
spirits, or the spectres, it is not known which, of the living or of the
dead. Stories of this class usually run in the same groove. A shepherd
or servant-man has a very good dog, which is in the habit of sleeping in
the same room with himself. One night it suddenly gets up growling, and
is heard making its way to the other end of the room. It returns howling
faintly, springs into bed, and, lying with its forepaws resting on its
master, snarls fiercely at something invisible. The occupant of the bed,
not seeing anything to account for the dog’s fury, puts his head below
the bedclothes and quakes with fear till daylight.
A horse in Vaul, Tiree, ordinarily a quiet beast used, when carting, to
be most unaccountably startled especially when passing a certain boat,
drawn up on the beach. This same boat has been mentioned already as
having, in consequence of being spectre-haunted, been sold by people in
the west end of Tiree to some villagers in the east end, who gave the
loan of it to Vaul people. Lights began also to be seen about it, and it
was ultimately sent back to the lenders, who again sold it to people in
the west end. Here a melancholy loss of life occurred in it. A gale off
the land suddenly sprang up, when the boat, with its six of a crew, was
within a few hundred yards of the shore. The men were seen rowing hard
to bring the boat to land, but they had at last to give up the attempt.
Some days after, the boat came ashore in Coll, with only one of the crew
in it. He was reclining on one of the thwarts dead. It was the horse and
cart mentioned that took home his body. After that day the horse was
never known to be unaccountably startled or frightened. Its former fits
entirely forsook it.
CRYING HEARD BEFORE DEATH.
A wailing or unusual cry heard at night, where no one is known to be,
or can be, is an indication that at that place some one will break into
lamentation for the death of a friend, of which he will there first
receive intimation, or will have otherwise cause to cry. The voice heard
is not that of the “fetch” of the man, who is to be killed or drowned,
but that of some mourner—a wife, or sister, or near relation. In these
cries before a sudden death, the voices of women are the most frequently
recognised.
A cry or scream, indicative of death, and believed to be uttered by a
wraith, was called _tàsg_, and _éigheach tàisg_ or _éigheach tàsg_,
_i.e._ the cry of a wraith.
In the case of a man accidentally drowned on Trabay Beach in Tiree, a cry
described as “a healthy cry” (_glaodh fallain_) was heard at night in the
west end of the island several days previous to the disaster, and four
miles from the scene of the accident, at the spot where the man’s brother
first received the melancholy intelligence. The cry consisted of “òh”
said thrice, and each time at the full length of a man’s breath (_fad
analach_).
At the old quay in Port Appin, Argyleshire, the wailing of a woman was
heard at night. Some days after, the mother of a young man who had been
accidentally killed in Glasgow, there met the remains, which came by
steamer, and she broke into loud lamentation.
At the Big Bridge (_an Drochaid Mhor_) above Portree Manse, on the
road to Braes, in the Isle of Skye, strange sounds are heard by people
passing there at night, such as the moaning of a dying person, sounds of
throttling, etc. Mysterious objects, dogs, and indistinct moving objects
are also seen at the haunted spot. These are supposed to denote that a
murder will some time be committed here.
Weeping and crying were heard at midnight near the mill-dam in Tiree,
on a dark and rainy night, by a young man going for a midwife for his
brother’s wife. He heard the same sounds on his return. The woman died in
that childbed, and it was observed that at the very spot where the young
man said he heard the sounds of lamentation, her two sisters first met
after her death, and burst into tears and outcries. The person to whom
this incident occurred is now past forty years of age, is intelligent,
and to be relied on as a person who would not tell a lie. There can be no
doubt he heard the lamentation, whatever may have been the cause of his
impression. Strange noises, of which the natural cause is not known, are
readily associated with the first incident that offers any explanation.
In the island of Mull, lamentation (_tuireadh_) was recollected to have
been heard where a young man was accidentally killed ten years after.
Thirty years ago horrible screaming and shouting (_sgiamhail oillteil
agus glaodhaich_) were heard about eight o’clock on a summer evening
across Loch Corry in Kingairloch. In a line with the shouting lay a ship
at anchor, and the burying-ground on the other side of the loch. The cry
was like that of a goat or buck being killed, a bleating which bears a
horrible resemblance to the human voice. Next night the master of the
ship was drowned, no one knew how. The man on the watch said that when
sitting in the stern of the ship he saw the skipper go below, and then a
clanking as if the chain were being paid out. He heard and saw nothing
further. The night was fine.
In July, 1870, a ship struck on a sunken rock in the passages between
the Skerryvore lighthouse and Tiree, and sprang a leak. The shore was
made for at once, but when within 150 yards of it the ship sank. The crew
betook themselves to the rigging, and were ultimately rescued; but the
skipper, in trying to swim ashore, was caught by the current that sweeps
round Kennavara Hill, and drowned. The crying heard in Kennavara Hill
four years previous was deemed to have portended this event.
Crying was heard several times on the reefs to the east end of Coll, and
to the best of the hearer’s belief, it was in English. In the same year
(1870), a boat or skiff with two East Coast fishermen, following their
calling in that neighbourhood, went amissing, and was never heard of.
Many were of opinion it must have been lost on the reefs, where the cries
had long previously been heard.
LIGHTS.
It was deemed a good sign when lights were seen previous to a person’s
death. The _dreag_ was a light seen in the sky, leaving a tail
(_dreallsach_) behind it, and, according to some, stopping above the
house where the death was to occur; according to others, proceeding from
above the house to the churchyard, along the line the funeral was to
take. The _dreag_ was seen only when a person of consequence was near
his dissolution. Hence an irreverent tailor in East-side, Skye, said he
wished the sky was full of dreags.
It was also a belief that the death-light went along the road a funeral
was to take.
An old man in Druim-a-chaoin, in Lower Rannoch, being sceptical on this
point, was one night called to the door to believe his own eyes. His
house overlooked the public road, and stepping boldly down he stood in
the middle of the road awaiting the approach of the death-light. When it
reached him, it also stood, right before him. The old man gazed fixedly
at the unearthly light, and at last an indistinct and shadowy form
became visible in the middle of it. The form slowly placed the palms of
its two hands together, and extended them towards him. With a startling
suddenness it said “Whish!” and passed over his head. That old man never
afterwards said a word against death-lights.
In another instance of the death-light proceeding along the highway in
the same district, a hare-brained young man went to meet it, and stood
waiting it behind his dirk, which he stuck in the middle of the road.
When the light came to the dirk it stopped, and the young man gazing at
it, at last saw a child’s face in its feeble glare. He then stooped down
and drew his dirk from the ground. As he did so the light passed over his
head.
Lights were also seen where a violent or accidental death was to occur,
and might be seen by the person whose death they fore-tokened. Thus, at
Brae-Glen (_Bràighe Ghlinne_) in Glen-Iuchar, where a river falls into
Loch Sgamadail, in Lorn, lights were seen two years previous to the
drowning of a man of the name of Maclachlan, in the stream when drunk.
Maclachlan had seen these lights himself.
Lights, to which these mysterious meanings are attached, are generally
mere _ignes fatui_. They have of late years become prevalent in the
Hebrides, and various explanations are given of them. In Tiree they are
called “Fairy light” (_Teine sìth_), and are said to be produced by a
bird. In Skye and the northern islands they are called the “Uist light”
(_Solus Uithist_), and the following extraordinary account is given of
their origin:
A young girl one Sunday night insisted, in spite of her mother’s
remonstrances, on starting with a hook and creel to gather plants in the
field for some species of dye before the Sabbath was expired. Finding her
counsels of no avail, the mother in a rage told her to go then and never
return: the young girl never returned, but her hook and creel were found
in the fields, and marks of fighting at the spot. When encountered, the
light jumps three times, and its appearance is that of human ribs with a
light inside of them. It is only an odd number that can see this light.
Two will not see it, but three can. Like other supernatural appearances
it could only speak when spoken to. A young lad once had the courage
to speak to it. The light answered that it was the young girl whom the
above fate befell: that she had done wrong in disobeying her mother, and
breaking the Sabbath day; that it was her mother’s prayer that was the
cause of her unrest; and that she was now doomed to wander about in the
shape of this light till the end of the world.
SPIRITS SEEN BEFORE DEATH.
Shortly before death greenish bright lights were seen moving from one
place to another, when no other light was in the room. These were said
to be spirits awaiting the soul of the dying person. When the body
lay stretched out, previous to being coffined, these lights were seen
hovering near, and perhaps seven or eight butterflies (_dealan-dé_)
fluttered through the room. They moved about the chest, in which were the
bannocks to be used at the funeral, or the winding-sheet (_blà-lìn_),
and about the cupboard in which the glasses were. The belief in these
appearances was not commonly entertained.
A belief in the occurrence of something supernatural at the moment of
death seems to have been not altogether uncommon. On an occasion already
mentioned of a sudden death at Port Appin, Argyleshire, which was
preceded by the noise of bottles rattling, a girl opened the door of a
side room at the moment of the sick man’s dissolution. She returned in
a state bordering on hysteria, cursing and swearing, that she would not
take the world and go in. She said every article in the room seemed to
meet her at the door.
RETURN OF THE DEAD.
The plant _mòthan_ (_sagina procumbens_), or Trailing Pearlwort, was
placed by old women in Tiree above the door, on the lintel (_san
àrd-dorus_), to prevent the spirits of the dead, when they revisited
their former haunts, from entering the house, and it was customary in
many places to place a drink of water beside the corpse previous to the
funeral, in case the dead should return.
There is a sept of Macdonalds called MacCannel, of whom it is said in
Tiree, that when one dies and the body is laid out to be waked, all the
dead of the race enter the room, go round the body, upon which each lays
his hand, and then in solemn procession march out again. This is the case
at every death of one of the sept, but only those who have the second
sight can see the shades. A man married to one of the MacCannels, whose
father had been long dead, enraged her beyond measure, on the occasion
of the death of one of the sept, by asking her why she had not gone to
Ballevullen (where the death had occurred), last night to see her father.
The spirits of the dead came back to reveal secrets and give good advice.
Those who hid iron during their lifetime, and died without telling
where, could not rest till they had told their secret. Notoriously bad
men, misers, oppressors of the poor, and all whose affections were set
too much on the things of this world, were believed after death to
wander about their former haunts. They seek to be where they left their
treasure. They do not speak till they are spoken to, and it requires
great courage in a living person to address the spirits of the dead. The
last buried had to watch the churchyard till the next funeral; and if the
strings of the winding-sheet were not untied, it was also a belief that
the spirit could not rest.
It is very imprudent to enter into a compact with another, that whoever
dies first will come back to tell his fate to the survivor. The agreement
is unholy, and will entail sorrow, whether the dead man’s position is in
weal or woe.
Two herdsmen at the summer pastures for the cattle (_bothan àiridh_) in
“the wilds of far Kintail” entered into a compact of this kind. One of
them died, and a substitute came in his place. The newcomer observed that
his companion was anxious not to be alone for any time, however short,
but one day he had to go to the strath for yeast (_deasgainn_), the two
being engaged in brewing spirits, and did not return till far on in the
night. The survivor of the two who had made the paction, being thus left
alone, when night came on took to mending his shoes and singing at his
work to keep his courage up. His thoughts constantly reverted to his dead
companion, and the bargain made with him, and the more he thought the
more uneasy he became. At midnight a scraping noise began on the top of
the house, as if some one were trying to make an entrance. The scraping
became louder and louder, and the shoemaker, in the agony of terror, but
pretending to think the noise was made by his comrade who had gone to
the strath, called out, “I know it is you trying to frighten me” (_cuir
eagal orm_). As soon as he spoke, a man, whom he recognised as his dead
companion, entered the hut, wrapped in the grave clothes, but after
saying it was a good thing for him where he (the dead man) had gone, went
away and left him unharmed.
In another case of a similar agreement between two youths in the same
district, the survivor forgot all about the paction, till one night he
was met on the public road by the figure of his departed friend, which
told him to meet it alone at a certain place (which it named) at a
certain hour, otherwise it would be worse for himself. The man, terrified
beyond measure, consulted the parish minister as to what he ought to do,
but the minister merely advised him to pray that no evil would come of
his rash and unguarded compact. He consulted an old man, who told him to
go to the place appointed and take a ball of iron in his hand, and hold
it out to the ghost when shaking hands. The man went, the ghost crushed
the ball of iron and the man escaped, otherwise the spirit, which could
only have come from a bad place, would have crushed his hand into atoms.
A woman in Flodigarry, in Skye, whose husband had been killed by
witchcraft (_buidseachd_), saw him after his death sitting by the
fireside. On being spoken to, the ghost asked, why they had not shaved
him before putting his body in a coffin?[31]
BONES OF THE DEAD AND PLACE OF BURIAL.
It was part of the lesson impressed on the young Highlander, to treat
that which belonged to the dead with reverence. The unnecessary or
contemptuous disturbing of graves, bones, or other relics of humanity
was reprobated, and sometimes warmly resented. This praiseworthy feeling
towards the dead was strengthened by the pride of race and ancestry,
which formed so prominent a feature of the Highland character, and by
sundry tales of wide circulation.
The story has been already told of the tailor who irreverently gave a
kick to a skull, and was ever after haunted by the man to whom it had
belonged. It is told of one who disturbed a grave at night, that, on his
taking up a skull in his hand, a feeble voice, that of the disturbed
spirit, said, “That’s mine.” He dropped that skull and took up another,
when a like voice said, “That’s mine.” The man cried out, “Had you two
skulls?”
Tradition says the island of Islay derives its name from Ile, a
Scandinavian princess, who went to bathe in a loch there, and sticking
in the soft mud, was drowned. The head and footstones of her grave are
some distance from each other, and of three persons, who successively
attempted to open the grave to see what the bones were like, each died
mad! Very likely this was the fate awaiting them at any rate. Their
action in opening a grave, to satisfy an idle curiosity, was in keeping
with a morbid character, and they only died as they lived.
Stones from a disused burying-ground, called “The Burial-place of the Big
Women,” on the farm of Heynish, in Tiree, were used for building one of
the farm out-houses. In this house, a servant man from Mull was sent to
sleep. Through the night he was disturbed by his dog jumping into bed,
between him and the wall, and with its fore feet resting upon his body,
snarling fiercely at something he could not see. He heard feeble voices
through the house, saying, “This is the stone that was at my head.”
Nothing more came of this visit of the spirits, than that the Mull man
(who was likely the victim of a hoax) positively refused to sleep in that
house again.
The manner in which shades haunt the places where their bodies are, is
very clearly shown in the following tale.
The body of a woman was cast ashore by the sea on the North Beach,
called the Beach of Fell (_Tràigh Feall_), in the island of Coll, and
was buried in the neighbouring sandbanks. After this, the semblance of a
woman was seen in the evenings on the beach, close to the tide. Maclean,
the then tenant of Caolas, a farm near hand, ridiculed the belief. One
evening, however, when going home across the North Beach, at the White
Stream (_Sruth Bàn_), he thought of the numerous stories he had heard of
the apparition, and, looking seaward, saw a woman sitting by the tide,
rocking herself (_ga turruman fhein_), and apparently in the utmost
distress. He went where she was, and asked her what she was doing? “Hand
of cleverness” (_làmh thapaidh_), she answered, “I have been long here;
I try to go home, but I cannot. I was a poor woman belonging to Uist; I
was lost on a rock; my body came ashore here, and I try to go home, but
cannot; my body keeps me.” Maclean asked what reward she would give, if
he took her body home. She promised to be with him in every quarrel or
fight, in which he might be involved. This offer he declined, saying his
own hand was strong enough to extricate him in any difficulty of that
kind. She then offered him the gift of knowing the thief, if anything
should be stolen in Coll. This gift he accepted, and the stones that
marked the grave being told him, he sent for the woman’s brothers, the
body was taken home, and the spectre was no more seen on the North Beach.
SPIRITS APPEARING IN DREAMS.
A deceased sister’s ghost appeared to a woman in a dream, and told her,
their brother had been buried the day before in Ireland. She also told
the signs, by which next day the truth of the dream was to be proved. The
words of the ghost form in Gaelic a singularly beautiful and plaintive
song. Each line is repeated twice in singing, first with one and then
another of those meaningless choruses to be found in Gaelic melody, and
suiting well with the genius of the language.
E ha na hoo-roo
Loving sister, are you sleeping?
Ho lo va, hoo-roo,
E ha na hao-lo-ro hee.
Loving sister, are you sleeping?
The brother, whom we had in Erin,
Went yesterday away on bearers.
I was there, but no one saw me.
A while on foot, a while on horseback,
Another while my hands wringing.
I will give proofs of thy vision,
The big byre, where the kine are,
Will be wrapped in flames to-morrow,
And the infant in your bosom,
You’ll find dead on your bedside.
It is told of a widower, who was unkind to his children, that the ghost
of his deceased wife in a similar manner appeared to him, and said:
“Man, who hast shut the door upon me,
And left me lying here!
Before the Christmas comes
A greater loss will befall you.
Man, who hast the children,
Rearing them unpeaceably,
If oft your hand be raised,
I will not be long at peace with you.”
TO GET RID OF THE SECOND SIGHT.
It was a belief in the island of Coll that a person afflicted with the
second sight might get rid of his unhappy gift, and, as it were, bind
it away (_nasg_) from himself, by giving alms (_déirc_) and praying the
gift may depart. A seer living near Arinagour in that island had two sons
in the army, then engaged in foreign wars, and in his visions saw what
was happening to them. The visions preyed so much on his mind that, to
rid himself of them, he gave half-a-crown to an old woman, and prayed
his second sight might be taken away. After this he saw nothing of his
sons, and, anxious to know their fate, he went to Tiree for a celebrated
taïsher, and brought him to Coll with him. He placed him beside the fire,
which was on the middle of the floor. It was held by the best seers that
visions are best seen through the fire (_roi’ n teine_). Before long the
Tiree seer began to sweat, and the other, who knew that this was caused
by a painful vision, begged him to tell what he saw, and hide nothing.
He told that both the sons were killed—the one by a bullet through the
head, the other shot through the heart and through the neck. Soon after a
letter came to the Laird of Coll corroborating the seer’s vision.