‘Guidsake, faither! what are ye talkin’ aboot? There’s nae Wullie here,’ answered Margaret, startled out of her usual composure.
‘But I saw him come roon’ the house-en’, and he had a queer drawn look aboot his face that fairly fleyed me! I houp there’s naething happened him!’
The old man, almost absently, looked at the brass-faced clock ticking in the corner between the fireplace and the white-scoured dresser, and saw that it was ten minutes to twelve. In the evening twilight a messenger rode up to the little homestead and broke the sad news of the death by drowning of ‘Wullie,’ a few minutes before twelve that day, when the tide was at its full, and almost at the very time that his father had seen his semblance, with drawn face, pass the house-en’. He had fallen between the side of the sloop and the quay wall, to almost immediately disappear, very probably having received serious injury as he fell.”
Another typical example may be cited from the Glencairn district, the folk-lore of which has been so exhaustively collected by Mr John Corrie:—
“One afternoon a well-known lady, Mrs G——, was setting out to call upon a neighbour who lived about half-a-mile distant across the moor, when she saw her friend, evidently bent upon the same errand, coming towards herself. Retracing her steps, she entered the house again to wait her friend’s arrival. Her expected visitor not appearing, Mrs G—— went to the door to see what detained her, but although she looked in every direction there was no one to be seen. As the afternoon was now well advanced, Mrs G—— decided to defer her visit until the following day. Walking across on the morrow, she remarked in the course of conversation:
‘I saw you on the way to see me yesterday! What made you turn half-road?’
‘Me coming to see you!’ exclaimed her friend, ‘I can assure you I wasna that, for I was scarce frae my ain fireside the hale day.’
A week later Mrs G——’s friend and neighbour died, and her corpse was carried to the churchyard, over the very track her wraith had appeared on the afternoon of her intended call.”[(67)]
At Dunreggan, Moniaive, as curious an instance happened some fifty years ago, when the father of a schoolboy, sitting at the fireside with his wife, saw the semblance of his son enter the cottage and pass “doon the hoose.” Not greatly surprised, but still wondering, he called his wife’s attention to the early return of the boy from school. Very sceptical, and assuring him that he must be mistaken, the good woman went herself into the room, to find nothing there, although she looked behind the door and elsewhere to make sure that no boyish prank was being played. Despite her assurances the husband was not convinced, and remained in a very uneasy state of mind, when soon afterwards his worst fears were realised, and the body of the boy was brought home, to pass through the kitchen to be laid upon the bed—“doon the hoose.”
MacTaggart, in his Gallovidian Encyclopedia, gives several examples, of which the following instance which happened to a very intimate friend, of whose intelligence and probity he had the highest regard, may be given:—