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.