The Seer was at one time in the Culloden district on some important business. While passing over what is now so well known as the Battlefield of Culloden, he exclaimed, “Oh! Drummossie, thy bleak moor shall, ere many generations have passed away, be stained with the best blood of the Highlands. Glad am I that I will not see that day, for it will be a fearful period; heads will be lopped off by the score, and no mercy will be shown or quarter given on either side.” It is perhaps unnecessary to point out how literally this prophecy has been fulfilled on the occasion of the last battle fought on British soil. We have received several other versions of it from different parts of the country, almost all in identical terms.
“The time will come when whisky or dram shops will be so plentiful that one may be met with almost at the head of every plough furrow.” (Thig an latha ’s am bi tighean-oil cho lionmhor ’s nach mor nach fhaicear tigh-osda aig ceann gach claise.) “Policemen will become so numerous in every town that they may be met with at the corner of every street.” “Travelling merchants” [pedlars and hawkers] “will be so plentiful that a person can scarcely walk a mile on the public highway without meeting one of them.”
The following is from “A Summer in Skye,” by the late Alex. Smith, author of “A Life Drama”. Describing Dunvegan Castle and its surroundings, he says:—“Dun Kenneth’s prophecy has come to pass—‘In the days of Norman, son of the third Norman, there will be a noise in the doors of the people, and wailing in the house of the widow; and Macleod will not have so many gentlemen of his name as will row a five-oared boat round the Maidens’. If the last trumpet had been sounded at the end of the French war, no one but a Macleod would have risen out of the churchyard of Dunvegan. If you want to see a chief (of the Macleods) now-a-days you must go to London for him.” There can be no question as to these having been fulfilled to the letter.
“The day will come when a fox will rear a litter of cubs on the hearthstone of Castle Downie.” “The day will come when a fox, white as snow, will be killed on the west coast of Sutherlandshire.” “The day will come when a wild deer will be caught alive at Chanonry Point, in the Black Isle.” All these things have come to pass.
With respect to the clearances in Lewis, he said—“Many a long waste feannag (rig, once arable) will yet be seen between Uig of the Mountains and Ness of the Plains.” That this prediction has been fulfilled to the letter, no one acquainted with the country will deny.
The following would appear to have been made solely on account of the unlikelihood of the occurrence:—“A Lochalsh woman shall weep over the grave of a Frenchman in the burying-place of Lochalsh.” People imagined they could discern in this an allusion to some battle on the West Coast, in which French troops would be engaged; but there was an occurrence which gave it a very different interpretation. A native of Lochalsh married a French footman, who died, shortly after this event, and was interred in the burying-ground of Lochalsh, thus leaving his widow to mourn over his grave. This may appear a commonplace matter enough, but it must be remembered that a Frenchman in Lochalsh, and especially a Frenchman whom a Highland woman would mourn over, in Coinneach’s day, was a very different phenomenon to what it is in our days of railways, tourists, and steamboats.
The Seer also predicted the formation of a railway through the Muir of Ord, handed down in the following stanza:—
Nuair a bhios da eaglais an Sgire na Toiseachd,
A’s lamh da ordaig an I-Stian’,
Da dhrochaid aig Sguideal nan geocaire,