Folklore of the Scottish Highlands (7 page)

He enquired here (Skye) if there were any remains of the second sight. Mr M’Pherson, Minister of Slate, said, he was
resolved
not to believe it, because it was founded on no principle.

— Johnson:

There are many things then, which we are sure are true, that you will not believe. What principle is there, why a loadstone attracts iron? why an egg produces a chicken by heat? why a tree grows upwards, when the natural tendency of all things is downwards? Sir, it depends upon the degree of evidence that you have.

Young Mr M’Kinnon mentioned one M’Kenzie, who is still alive, who had often fainted in his presence, and when he recovered, mentioned visions which had been presented to him. He told Mr M’Kinnon that at such a place he should meet a funeral, and that such and such people would be the bearers, naming four; and three weeks afterwards he saw what M’Kenzie had predicted. The naming the very spot in a country where a funeral comes a long way, and the very people as bearers, when there are so many out of whom a choice may be made, seems extraordinary. We should have sent for M’Kenzie, had we not been informed that he could speak no English. Besides, the facts were not related with sufficient accuracy. Mrs M’Kinnon, who is a daughter of old Kingsburgh, told us that her father was one day riding in Sky, and some women who were at work in a field on the side of the road, said to him, they had heard two
taiscks
(that is, two voices of persons about to die) and what was remarkable, one of them was an English
taisck
which they never heard before. When he returned, he at that very place met two funerals, and one of them was that of a woman who had come from the main land, and could speak only English. This, she remarked, made a great impression upon her father.

The most famous seer in the last few centuries was the so-called Brahan Seer, Coinneach Odhar Fiosaiche, ‘Sombre Kenneth of the Prophecies’, Kenneth MacKenzie, who lived, according to tradition, in the seventeenth century. He was born at Uig in the Island of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides. The story of how he got the magical stone which enabled him to determine the future is as follows. His mother was at the shieling (hill-grazing) and was keeping her eye on the cattle one night, round about midnight, on a hill overlooking an ancient burial-ground. She suddenly saw that all the graves were opening in it and their occupants emerging from them and going off in all directions. After about an hour they returned and re-entered their tombs, and the graves closed over them again. The woman noticed that one grave alone remained open. With great courage she went to the grave and placed her distaff over it, because it was believed that, being of rowan wood, the spirit could not enter the grave while it was there. Soon she saw a beautiful woman who rushed at her and demanded that she should remove her stick from the grave. The mother refused to do this until the occupant of the grave told her why she came back so much later than the others. The spirit told her why she came back so late; she was a daughter of a king of Norway who had been drowned near the island and her body recovered from the nearby beach. While she was released from the grave she had gone back to Norway to look at her old home. As a result of the woman’s courage, the spirit gave her instructions on where to find a small, round, blue stone which would empower her son to foresee future events. This she must give to the boy.

As soon as he received the stone, Kenneth began to make prophecies, and he soon became famous in the west. He had been born on Seaforth territory and so was closely connected with the MacKenzies of Seaforth. When the family moved to Loch Ussie on the Brahan estate in Ross-shire he went with them. There are various other traditions as to how Kenneth obtained the magic stone of knowledge. Some versions of the legend maintain that the stone was white, others hold that it was blue; in some traditions, it had a hole in the centre and this is in keeping with the widespread belief that magic stones were holed. Some of the Brahan Seer’s prophecies became widely famed in the Highlands and it is maintained that all, except one, have come true to date, and that the last will eventually be fulfilled. It is one of his prophecies, which was made 150 years before the Caledonian Canal was constructed, that ships would sail round the back of Tomnahurich Hill (the Hill of the Yew-trees) at Inverness. This is of course remarkable, and it seemed to be completely impossible at the time. Apparently, when an Inverness man, who was recording Kenneth’s prophecies from oral tradition, heard this one, he thought it so ridiculous that he destroyed his manuscript believing the whole thing to be a fraud.

The Seer also prophesied the clearance of the Highlands to make way for sheep and deer forests, and he foretold the breakdown of the clan system. He said there would be a white house on every hillock, and this is taken to mean the shooting lodges that came to be scattered all over the Highlands, although there was, of course, no thought of them in Kenneth’s day. One of his most remarkable prophecies was, again, about Tomnahurich (also called
Tom-na-Sithichean
, ‘The Fairies Hill’). He said the day would come when the hill would be under lock and key and the fairies which were alleged to inhabit it would be secured within. He could have had no knowledge that a large cemetery would be built there long after his death. The chained fairies — being some two to three feet in height, according to my own informants — would be the spirits of the dead (as they are often alleged to be); there is a strong link between the fairy ‘host’ and the souls of the departed according to Celtic belief. The hill was not, in fact, turned into a cemetery until after 1859. One prophecy, as yet unfulfilled, was that the Island of Lewis would be laid waste by a violent battle which would continue until the contending parties, after great losses on both sides, reached Tarbert in Harris. After this event, there was to be a great period of peace for Lewis; this kind of prophecy evidently refers to clan warfare, and so seems unlikely to be realised now.

Many of these prophecies can still be heard in the Highlands, where the name of the Brahan Seer is legendary. Kenneth prophesied that a loch above Beauly would burst its banks and the flood would destroy a nearby village, and, although that has not yet come about, people were concerned about it even as recently as the twentieth century. He also made a prophecy about Clach-an-t-Seasaidh (a standing stone), near the Muir of Ord. This stone originally stood upright to a considerable height, and was pointed at the top. Now it lies broken on the ground. According to one version of the legend about its destruction, the Seer said that the day would come when ravens would gorge themselves on the blood of the Clan MacKenzie from the top of the stone after a violent battle which would be fought on the Muir of Ord. He also said that the MacKenzies would be so decimated after this fight that the remainder of the clan would be taken over to Ireland in an open fishing boat. Ireland was believed to have been their place of origin. It is thought that Clach-an-t-Seasaidh refers to the remains of a so-called Druidical Circle still visible near Beauly, at a place called Windhill. Another traditional prophecy concerns an Iron Age fort on Knockfarrel, near Loch Ussie where Kenneth lived, in the Strathpeffer Valley. There is a well there called Fingal’s Well, inside the fort ruins. Local tradition has it that this well was used by the fort-dwellers until one day Fingal (the famous Irish hero, Fionn mac Cumhaill) drove them away, put a large stone (known as
Clach an Tiompain
) over the well to keep the waters in control and then jumped over the valley; this is one of the numerous tales of Fingal’s famous leaps. Fingal’s son Ossian (
Oisín
) was allegedly the last survivor of this great confederation of warriors, who were banded together under the overall leadership of Fionn. They are always described as being huge in size, like the pagan Celtic deities amongst whom their origins are clearly to be found. They are usually referred to as giants in the vast oral tradition of both Ireland and Gaelic Scotland where many a long and dreary winter was ameliorated by the heroic tales, told night after night by the
sgeulaiche
in the different townships and districts.

The people never tired of listening to the exploits of these huge men and their womenfolk, and even St Patrick is alleged to have requested that he should meet Fionn and he would go with the giant on a tour of the ancient places of Ireland. After heavy rain, if a stick is struck against the stone, a hollow sound is produced, indicating a cavity below, and water can be seen. The Seer prophesied that if ever this stone should be moved, Loch Ussie would force its way up through the well and flood the valley below so that ships could sail up Strathpeffer and be fastened to Clach an Tiompain; this would occur when the stone should be moved after having fallen three times. It has fallen twice, and is propped up a few steps from the roadside as one approaches the Strathpeffer wells. Kenneth MacKenzie’s magic stone is locally believed to lie at the bottom of Loch Ussie. He is alleged to have thrown it into a pool, which immediately swelled, and became Loch Ussie. This is a typical story of the origins of some loch or river.

No matter how garbled and conflicting many of the traditions of the seventeenth-century Seer are, there is no doubt his prophetic powers made a deep and lasting impact on the folk mind in the Highlands of Scotland. Kenneth obtained his gift from the possession of a magical stone. People possessed of straightforward Second Sight, however, do not require any ‘aid’ for their vision; it comes upon them at random, and, usually, against their will. They dread their mysterious power, which may suddenly manifest itself at any period of their life — in youth, middle years, or old age. It is believed that these people have the power of seeing a person’s
doppelgänger
or ‘other self’. If a person sees his own ghost then his death is believed to be imminent. It sometimes happens that a person returning to his township from some journey stands aside to let a funeral procession pass by. He recognises the dead from his relations and goes home to say he is sorry to know that such and such a person has died; sometimes he is made to join the procession and act as a bearer and the supernatural weight of the coffin can throw him down on the ground; he then cannot avoid seeing the real burial.

The writer has met people with this unhappy gift, and witnessed the veracity of what they ‘see’, and their distress at this faculty they would wish to lose. The person in question is not dead at the time of the experience, but the premonition of his death by a seer usually means that death will follow soon after. Sometimes this gift — or curse — would seem to run in families and therefore to be inherited; at others, it can begin suddenly, with no family history of such powers. The appearance of the apparition often indicated what was to befall the person in question. If he had been actually laid in a coffin, or was wearing grave-clothes, that would indicate that his death was imminent; if he was wearing ordinary clothes then he would not die for some time. The appearance and behaviour of the apparition would be repeated in detail when the real event occurred. The seer could become unhappily haunted by an apparition and be forced to meet it regularly; he never dared to divulge whose spectre it was. These spectres of the living and the ability to see them constitute a totally different group of supernatural phenomena from ghosts proper, and isolated unnatural experiences. Apparitions of this kind could, on occasion, be actually physically dangerous and attack the living seer. Examples of this extraordinary gift of the Second Sight are numerous; it seems to be very much a feature of Celtic societies, and belief in the Sight is ancient as the traditions of Fionn and his magic power of seeing things in the early Irish tales indicates.

Some examples of the things witnessed by people with the gift of Second Sight are as follows. Urine was regarded as a powerful substance in combating the supernatural. There is a story on record about a man from the Island of Tiree who had the Sight. It was a custom in the island that anyone coming upon a drowned body should turn it over. The seer, coming upon such a corpse, was overcome with fear and ran away, without first moving it as tradition demanded. The body was in due course buried, but the dead man began to haunt the seer and caused him great terror. At last things became so bad that one night the apparition dogged his steps home and then stood between him and his own door, barring his entrance. He shouted desperately to his wife to come and sprinkle the doorposts with urine. When she had done this, the ghost leapt above the door and the man entered his house and was no longer disturbed by the menacing vision. It was believed widely in the Highlands that the dead had the power to lay heavy burdens on the living, and to physically punish them. It was also thought by those with faith in the Second Sight that one should never wish too ardently for anything. Such wishes could affect a person with the Sight. He could be fatally wounded by means of his ‘double’, or spiritual body. There are many tales told of people seeing such spirits and throwing dirks, or other missiles at them, and hitting them; some person, whose ‘fetch’ they in fact were, would, at that moment, be struck blind. People gifted with the Second Sight were often believed to be capable of telling the appearance of someone’s future bride or groom. They could see the
taish
(‘appearance’) of the woman, sitting beside her husband to be. Death was, however, unfortunately the most common event foretold by
taishers
. Seers could also witness events happening at a distance and see if they resulted in evil or good; i.e. someone’s son falls overboard and his father is deeply agitated until he is rescued. He ‘sees’ the whole episode, which is later confirmed. Glasses which were destined to be used at the feast after a funeral were believed to rattle before someone’s death. There are a great number of variants of actual experiences people have had, but they all add up to the basic ability to see the person doomed to die before his death, even that of the seer himself, and to see the fetch or spectre of the living long before his actual death.