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 (?)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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]
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.
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.