DIVINATION.
Divination (Fiosachd).—The same causes which in other countries led to oracles, astrology, necromancy, card-reading, and other forms of divination, in the Scottish Highlands led to the reading of shoulder-blades and tea-cups, palmistry, and the artless spinning of tee-totums (dòduman). In a simple state of society mummeries and ceremonies, dark caves, darkened rooms, and other aids to mystification are not required to bring custom to the soothsayer. The desire of mankind, particularly the young, to have pleasant anticipations of the future, supply all deficiencies in his artifices. One or two shrewd guesses establish a reputation, and ordinarily there is no scepticism or inquiry as to the sources of information. It is noticeable that the chief articles from which the Highland soothsayer drew his predictions, supplied him with a luxury.
Shoulder-blade Reading (Slinneineachd).—This mode of divination was practised, like the augury of the ancients, as a profession or trade. It consisted in foretelling important events in the life of the owner of a slaughtered animal from the marks on the shoulder-blade, speal or blade-bone. Professors of this difficult art deemed the right speal-bone of a black sheep or a black pig the best for this purpose. This was to be boiled thoroughly, so that the flesh might be stripped clean from it, untouched by nail or knife or tooth. The slightest scratch destroyed its value. The bone being duly prepared was divided into upper and lower parts, corresponding to the natural features of the district in which the divination was made. Certain marks indicated a crowd of people, met, according to the skill of the diviner, at a funeral, fight, sale, etc. The largest hole or indentation was the grave of the beast’s owner (úaigh an t-sealbhaduir), and from its position his living or dying that year was prognosticated. When to the side of the bone, it presaged death; when in its centre, much worldly prosperity (gum biodh an saoghal aige).
Mac-a-Chreachaire, a native of Barra, was a celebrated shoulder-blade reader in his day. According to popular tradition he was present at the festivities held on the occasion of the castle at Bàgh Chiòsamul (the seat of the MacNeills, then chiefs of the island) being finished. A shoulder-blade was handed to him, and he was pressed again and again to divine from it the fate of the castle. He was very reluctant, but at last, on being promised that no harm would be done him, he said the castle would become a cairn for thrushes (càrn dhruideachun), and this would happen when the Rattle stone (Clach-a-Ghlagain) was found, when people worked at sea-weed in Baile na Creige (Rock-town, a village far from the sea), and when deer swam across from Uist, and were to be found on every dung-hill in Barra. All this has happened, and the castle is now in ruins. Others say the omens were the arrival of a ship with blue wool, a blind man coming ashore unaided, and that when a ground officer with big fingers (maor na miar mòra) came, Barra would be measured with an iron string. A ship laden with blue cloth was wrecked on the island, and a blind man miraculously escaped; every finger of the ground officer proved to be as big as a bottle (!), and Barra was surveyed and sold.
When Murdoch the Short (Murchadh Gearr), heir to the Lordship of Lochbuy in the Island of Mull, circ. A.D. 1400, was sent in his childhood for protection from the ambitious designs of his uncle, the Laird of Dowart, to Ireland, he remained there till eighteen years of age. In the meantime his sister (or half-sister) became widowed, and, dependant on the charity and hospitality of others, wandered about the Ross of Mull from house to house with her family. It was always “in the prophecy” (san tairgneachd) that Murdoch would return. One evening, in a house to which his sister came, a wedder sheep was killed. After the meal was over, her oldest boy asked the farmer for the shoulder-blade. He examined it intently for some time in silence, and then, exclaiming that Murdoch was on the soil of Mull (air grunnd Mhuile), rushed out of the house and made for Lochbuy, to find his uncle in possession of his rightful inheritance.
On the night of the massacre of Glencoe, a party of the ill-fated clansmen were poring over the shoulder-blade of an animal slain for the hospitable entertainment of the soldiers. One of them said, “There is a shedding of blood in the glen” (tha dòrtadh fuil sa ghleann). Another said there was only the stream at the end of the house between them and it. The whole party rushed to the door, and were among the few that escaped the butchery of that dreadful night.
It is a common story that a shoulder-blade seer once saved the lives of a company, of whom he himself was one, who had ‘lifted’ a cattle spoil (creach), by divining that there was only the stream at the end of the house between them and their pursuers.
A shoulder-blade sage in Tiree sat dawn to a substantial feast, to which he had been specially invited, that he might divine whether a certain friend was on his way home or not. He examined the shoulder-bone of the wedder killed on the occasion critically, unable to make up his mind. “Perhaps,” he said, “he will come, perhaps he will not.” A boy, who had hid himself on the top of a bed in the room, that he might see the fun, could not help exclaiming, “They cannot find you untrue.” The bed broke, and the diviner and his companions, thinking the voice came from the skies, fled. When the boy recovered he got the dinner all to himself.
Palmistry (Dearnadaireachd).—Of this mode of divination, as practised in the Highlands, nothing seems now to be known beyond the name. Probably from the first the knowledge of it was confined to gipsies and such like stray characters.
Divination by Tea, or Cup-reading (Leughadh chu-paichean).—When tea was a luxury, dear and difficult to get, the ‘spaeing’ of fortunes from tea-cups was in great repute. Even yet young women resort in numbers to fortune-tellers of the class, who for the reward of the tea spell out to them most excellent matches.
After drinking the tea, the person for whom the cup is to be read, turning the cup deiseal, or with the right-hand turn, is to make a small drop, left in it, wash its sides all round, and then pour it out. The fortune is then read from the arrangement of the sediments or tea-leaves left in the cup. A large quantity of black tea grounds (smùrach du) denotes substance and worldly gear. The person consulting the oracle is a stray leaf standing to the one side of it. If the face of the leaf is towards the grounds, that person is to come to a great fortune; if very positively its back, then farewell even to the hope “that keeps alive despair.” A small speck by itself is a letter, and other specks are envious people struggling to get to the top, followers, etc. Good diviners can even tell to their youthful and confiding friends when the letter is likely to arrive, what trade their admirer follows, the colour of his hair, etc.
CHAPTER X.
DREAMS AND PROPHECIES.
Dreams (Bruadar) have everywhere been laid hold of by superstition as indications of what is passing at a distance or of what is to occur, and, considering the vast numbers of dreams there are, it would be matter of surprise, if a sufficient number did not prove so like some remote or subsequent event, interesting to the dreamer, as to keep the belief alive. On a low calculation, a fourth of the population dream every night, and in the course of a year, the number of dreams in a district must be incredible. They are generally about things that have been, or are, causes of anxiety, or otherwise occupied men’s waking thoughts. “A dream cometh through the multitude of business,” Solomon says, and a Gaelic proverb says with equal truth “An old wife’s dream is according to her inclination” (Aisling caillich mas a dùrachd). Its character can sometimes be traced directly to the health or position of the body, but in other cases, it seems to depend on the uncontrolled association of ideas. Out of the numberless phantasies that arise there must surely be many that the imagination can without violence convert into forebodings and premonitions.
To dream of raw meat indicates impending trouble; eggs mean gossip and scandal; herring, snow; meal, earth; a grey horse, the sea. To dream of women is unlucky; and of the dead, that they are not at rest. In the Hebrides, a horse is supposed to have reference to the Clan Mac Leod. The surname of horses is Mac Leod, as the Coll bard said to the Skye bard:
“Often rode I with my bridle,
The race you and your wife belong to.”[72]
In some districts horses meant the Macgnanean, and a white horse, a letter.
Prophecies (Fàisneachd).—In Argyllshire and Perthshire, the celebrated Thomas the Rhymer (Tòmas Reuvair, T. Réim) is as well known as in the Lowlands of Scotland. He is commonly called “the son of the dead woman” (mac na mna mairbh), but the accounts vary as to the cause of this name. One account says, he was, like Julius Caesar, taken out through his mother’s side, immediately after her death; another, that the cry of the child was heard in the mother’s tomb after her burial, and on the grave being opened Thomas was found in the coffin. A third account says, that a woman, whose husband had been cut in four pieces, engaged a tailor, at the price of the surrender of her person, to sew the pieces together again. He did so in two hours time. Some time after the woman died and was buried. Subsequently, she met the tailor at night, and leading him to her tomb, the child was found there. Both the Highland and Lowland accounts agree that Thomas’s gift of prophecy was given him by a Fairy sweetheart, that he is at present among the Fairies, and will yet come back.
The Highland tradition is, that Thomas is in Dunbuck hill (Dùn buic) near Dunbarton. The last person that entered that hill found him resting on his elbow, with his hand below his head. He asked, “Is it time?” and the man fled. In the outer Hebrides he is said to be in Tom-na-heurich hill,[73] near Inverness. Hence MacCodrum, the Uist bard, says:
“When the hosts of Tomnaheurich come,
Who should rise first but Thomas?”[74]
He attends every market on the look-out for suitable horses, as the Fairies in the north of Ireland attend to steal linen and other goods, exposed for sale. It is only horses with certain characteristics that he will take. At present he wants but two, some say only one, a yellow foal with a white forehead (searrach blàr buidhe). The other is to be a white horse that has got “three March, three May, and three August months of its mother’s milk” (trì Màirt, trì Màigh, agus trì Iuchara ’bhainne mhàthar); and in Mull they say, one of the horses is to be from the meadow of Kengharair in that island. When his complement is made up he will become visible, and a great battle will be fought on the Clyde.
“When Thomas comes with his horses,
The day of spoils will be on the Clyde.
Nine thousand good men will be slain,
And a new king will be set on the throne.”[75]
You may walk across the Clyde, the prophecy goes on to relate, on men’s bodies, and the miller of Partick Mill (Muilionn Phearaig), who is to be a man with seven fingers, will grind for two hours with blood instead of water. After that, sixteen ladies will follow after one lame tailor,[76] a prophecy copied from Isaiah iv. 1. A stone in the Clyde was pointed out as one, on which a bird (bigein) would perch and drink its full of blood, without bending its head, but the River Trustees have blasted it out of the way that the prophecy may not come true. The same prophecy, with slight variation, has been transferred to Blair Athole in Perthshire. “When the white cows come to Blair, the wheel of Blair Mill will turn round seven times with people’s blood.”[77] The writer was told that the Duke of Athole brought white cattle to Blair more than fifteen years ago, but nothing extraordinary happened.
Other prophecies, ascribed to the Rhymer, are, “the sheep’s skull will make the plough useless,” “the south sea will come upon the north sea,” and “Scotland will be in white bands, and a lump of gold will be at the bottom of every glen.”[78] The former has received its fulfilment in the desolation caused by the extension of sheep farms, the second in the making of the Caledonian canal, and the last in the increase of highroads and houses.
In the North Highlands, prophecies of this kind are ascribed to Coineach Odhar (i.e. Dun Kenneth), a native of Ross-shire, whose name is hardly known in Argyllshire. He acquired his prophetic gift from the possession of a stone, which he found in a raven’s nest. He first found a raven’s nest with eggs in it. These he took home and boiled. He then took them back to the nest, with a view to finding out how long the bird would sit before it despaired of hatching them. He found a stone in the nest before him, and its possession was the secret of his oracular gifts. When this became known an attempt was made to take the stone from him, but he threw it out in a loch, where it still lies.
He prophesied that “the raven will drink its fill of men’s blood from off the ground, on the top of the High Stone in Uig,”[79] a place in Skye. The High Stone is on a mountain’s brow, and it is ominous of the fulfilment of the prophecy, that it has fallen on its side. Of the Well of Ta, at Cill-a-chrò in Strath, in the same island, he said:
“Thou well of Ta, and well of Ta,
Well where battle shall be fought,
And the bones of growing men,
Will strew the white beach of Laoras;
And Lachlan of the three Lachlans be slain
Early, early,
At the well of Ta.”[80]
In Harris a cock will crow on the very day on which it is hatched, and a white calf, without a single black hair, will be born, both which remarkable events have, it is said, occurred. A certain large stone will roll up the hill, turning over three times, and the marks of it having done so, and the proof of the prophecy, are still to be seen. On the top of a high stone in Scaristavor parks,[81] the raven will drink its fill of men’s blood, and the tide of battle will be turned back by Norman of the three Normans (Tormod nan trì Tormoidean) at the Steps of Tarbert (Càthaichean an Tairbeart).[82]
The Lady of Lawers.—Of similar fame for her prophetic gifts was the Lady of Lawers (Bantighearna Lathuir), one of the Breadalbane family, married to Campbell of Lawers. Her prophecies relate to the house and lands of Breadalbane, and are written, it is believed, in a book shaped like a barrel, and secured with twelve iron hoops or clasps in the charter room of Taymouth Castle. This book is called ‘The Red Book of Balloch.’
An old white horse will yet take the lineal heirs of Taymouth (or, according to another version, the last Breadalbane Campbells) across Tyndrum Cairn. When she said this there were thirty sons in the family, but soon after twenty-five of them were slain in the battle at Sron-a-chlachair near Killin (Cill-Fhinn).
If the top stone were ever put on Lawers Church no word uttered by her would ever come true, and when the red cairn on Ben Lawers fell the church would split. In the same year that the cairn, built by the sappers and miners on Ben Lawers, fell, the Disruption in the Church of Scotland took place.
“A mill will be on every streamlet,
A plough in every boy’s hand,
The two sides of Loch Tay in kail gardens;
The sheep’s skull will make the plough useless,
And the goose’s feathers drive their memories from men.”[83]
This was to happen in the time of “John of the three Johns, the worst John that ever was, and there will be no good till Duncan comes.”
A stone called the ‘Boar Stone’ (Clach an Tuirc), a boulder of some two or three hundred tons in a meadow near Loch Tay, will topple over when a strange heir comes to Taymouth, and the house will be at its height of honour when the face of a certain rock is concealed by wood.
CHAPTER XI.
IMPRECATIONS, SPELLS, AND THE BLACK ART.
IMPRECATION (Guidhe).
The imprecations, which form so important a part of the vocabulary of thoughtless and profane swearing, are in Gaelic corruptions of English expressions. Thus, one of the commonest—diabhul Mac-eadhar is a corruption of ‘devil may care,’ and though no language has a monopoly of oaths and curses, and English is not always to blame, it is some satisfaction that needless profanity is not entirely of native growth.
Most Gaelic imprecations are mere exclamations, condemnatory not so much of the person himself as of what he is saying or doing. Of these the following are of common use:
A bad meeting to you! (Droch còmh ’l ort!).
A bad growth to you! (Droch fàs ort!).
Bad understanding to you! (Droch ciall ort!).
Bad accident to you! (Droch sgiorram ort!).
Bad —— ? to you! (Gum bu droch drùileach!
or drùthalach dhuit!).
Black water upon you! (Bùrn du ort!).[84]
A down mouth be yours! (Beul sìos ort!).[85]
A wry mouth be yours! (Beul seachad ort!).
Go to your grandfather’s house! (Tigh do sheamar dhuit!).
The mischief be in your side! (An dunaigh ad chliathaich!).
The burning of your heart to you! (Losgadh do chridhe ort!).
Little increase to you! (Beagan piseach ort!).
Little prosperity to you! (Beagan àidh ort!).
The spell of your death-stroke be yours! (Sian do ghonaidh ort!).
Death without a priest to you! (Bàs gun sagart ort!).
Wind without rising be yours! (Gaoth gun dìreadh ort!), i.e. a
wind that will throw you on your beam-ends, and not allow
you to right.
Your black certain death-stroke to you! (Sàr du do ghonaidh
ort!).
The place of the dead be yours! (Marasg, i.e. marbh-thasg,
ort!).
The number of Friday be yours! “The curse of Friday be
yours!” “The end of the seven Saturdays to you!”
May you be late! (Gu ma h-anamoch dhuit!).
The direction in which you turn the back of your head, may
you never turn your face! (An toabh bheir thusa cùl do
chinn, gar an d’ thig an t-aon latha bheir thu t’ aghaidh!),
etc., etc.
When a curse proceeds from rage or malevolence, it is at the same time a confession of impotence. The party uttering it is unable at the moment to indulge his rancour in any other way. If he had the power he would bring all the woes he threatens or imprecates there and then on his enemy’s devoted head. Patience is no element of wrath and rarely enters the house of malevolence, and if the man who curses his enemy had the artillery of heaven at command, he would at that moment devote his enemy to unspeakable misery. This impotence of rage is the reason why curses are so frequently ascribed to angry old women.
Those who have seen old women, of the Madge Wildfire school, cursing and banning, say their manner is well calculated to inspire terror. Some fifteen or twenty years ago, a party of tinkers quarrelled and fought, first among themselves, and then with some Tiree villagers. In the excitement a tinker wife threw off her cap and allowed her hair to fall over her shoulders in wild disorder. She then bared her knees, and falling on them to the ground, in a praying attitude, poured forth a torrent of wishes that struck awe into all who heard her. She imprecated “Drowning by sea and conflagration by land; may you never see a son to follow your body to the graveyard, or a daughter to mourn your death. I have made my wish before this, and I will make it now, and there was not yet a day I did not see my wish fulfilled,” etc., etc. “Once,” says one who is now an old man, “when a boy I roused the anger of an old woman by calling her names. She went on her knees and cursed me, and I thought I was going to die suddenly every day for a week after.”
The curse causeless will not come, but a curse deserved is the foreshadowing of the ultimate issue of events. The curse of the oppressed, who have no man to deliver them, is at times but the presage of the retribution which the operation of the laws of the moral world will some day bring about. Hence we find such expressions as, “She cursed him and obtained her wish.” The curse came upon the oppressor, not because of the malediction, but because what was asked for was part of the natural sequence of events in the moral government of the world. For this reason, the curse of the poor is undesirable. There is something wrong in the relation between superior and inferior when it is uttered; authority has been misused, and wisdom and patience have been awanting, selfishness has overstepped its due limit, and the just influence of the superior has degenerated into wantonness of power. In the expatriations from the Highlands, there was much in this respect to be reprobated, and it is most creditable to Highlanders, and is greatly to be ascribed to the influence of religion over them, that in the songs made at the time of the Clearances, there are no curses against the oppressor.
A common expression in the imprecations used by old women was, “May no benefit be in your cheese, and no cheese in your milk.”[86]
There is said to be a curse on an estate in Argyllshire, that a lineal descendant will never succeed to it, and on one of the principal castles in Perthshire, that no legitimate heir (oighre dligheach) will own it till the third generation (gus an treasa linn). This latter curse was paused by the haughtiness of an old woman, a former mistress of the castle, who lived entirely on marrow.
All evil wishes can be counteracted by the bystander saying, after each curse, “The fruit of your wish be on your own body” (Toradh do ghuidhe far, etc.). On the occasion above referred to, of the banning by the tinker wife, her frightful tirade became ludicrous from the earnestness with which this was done by one of the native women who was listening.
SPELLS (Geasan no Geasaibh).
A person under spells is believed to become powerless over his own volition, is alive and awake, but moves and acts as if asleep. He is like St. John’s father, not able or not allowed to speak. He is compelled to go to certain places at certain hours or seasons, is sent wandering or is driven from his kindred and changed to other shapes.
In nursery and winter evening tales (sgialachdun ’us ur-sgeulun) the machinery of spells is largely made use of. In the former class of tales they are usually imposed on king’s children by an old woman dwelling near the palace, called “Trouble-the-house” (Eachrais ùrlair, lit. confusion of the floor). Her house is the favourite place for the king’s children to meet their lovers. She has a divining rod (slacan druidheachd), by a blow from which she can convert people into rocks, seals, swans, wolves, etc., and this shape they must keep till they are freed by the same rod. Nothing else can deliver them from the spell.
The story usually runs that the king is married a second time. His daughter by the first marriage is very handsome, and has a smooth comb (cìr mhìn) which makes her hair, when combed by it, shed gold and precious gems. The daughters by the second marriage are ugly and ill-natured. When they comb their hair there is a shower of fleas and frogs. Their mother bribes Trouble-the-house to lay spells on the daughter of the first marriage. Unless the princess enters the house the old woman is powerless to do this. One day the beautiful princess passes near the house, and is kindly and civilly asked to enter. “Come you in,” says the designing hag, “often did I lick the platters and pick the bones in your father’s house.”[87] Misled by this artful talk, the princess enters, is struck with the magic rod, and converted into a swan.
It is a popular saying that seals and swans are “king’s children under enchantments” (clann sigh fo gheasaibh). On lonely mountain meres, where the presence of man is seldom seen, swans have been observed putting off their coverings (cochull) and assuming their proper shape of beautiful princesses in their endeavours to free themselves from the spells. This, however, is impossible till the magician, who imposed them, takes them away, and the princesses are obliged to resume their coverings again.
The expressive countenance and great intelligence of the seal, the readiness with which it can be domesticated, and the attachment which, as a pet, it shows to man, have not unnaturally led to stories of its being a form assumed by, or assigned to, some higher intelligence from choice or by compulsion. In Caithness, seals are deemed to be the fallen angels, and the Celtic belief that they are “king’s children under spells” is paralleled in the Shetland tales of the Norway Finns. These are persons, a native of these northern islands writes (in a private letter), who come across from Norway to Shetland in the shape of large seals. A Shetlander on his way to the fishing, early in the morning, came across a large seal lying asleep on a rock. Creeping quietly up he managed to stab it with his knife. The animal was only slightly wounded and floundered into the water, taking the knife along with it. Sometime afterwards the fisherman went, with others, to Norway to buy wood. In the first house he entered he saw his own big knife stuck up under a beam. He gave himself up for lost, but the Norwegian took down the knife and gave it back to him, telling him never again to disturb a poor sea-animal taking its rest.
There is a sept in North Uist known as “the MacCodrums of the seals” (Clann ’ic Codrum nan ròm), from being said to be descendants of these enchanted seals. The progenitor of the family, being down about the shore, saw the seals putting off their coverings and washing themselves. He fled home with one of the skins and hid it above the lintel of the door, ‘arabocan’ as it is called in that part of the country. The owner of the covering followed him. He clad her with human garments, married her, and had a family by her. She managed ultimately to regain possession of her lost covering and disappeared.
West of Uist there is a rock called Connsmun, to which the neighbouring islanders are in the habit of going yearly to kill seals. On one of these expeditions a young man, named Egan, son of Egan, killed a large seal in the usual manner by a knock on the head, and put a withe through its paw to secure it, while he himself went to attend to other matters. When he came back, however, the seal was gone. Sometime after he was driven away in a storm, and landed in a district he did not recognize. He made his way to one of the houses, and was very hospitably entertained. His host, who had been surveying him intently, when the meal was over asked his name. He told, and his host said, “Egan, son of Egan, though I have given you meat, and cheese, and eggs, upon your two hands be it, Egan, son of Egan, you put the withe through my fist.”[88]