CHAPTER V.
PHANTASMAGORIA.
On the 29th of January, 1719, a Scottish gentleman, named Alexander Jaffray, Laird of Kingswells, was riding across a piece of wide and waste moorland to the westward of Aberdeen, when, about eight o'clock in the morning, he beheld—to his great alarm and bewilderment, as he states in a letter to his friend, Sir Archibald Grant of Monymusk (printed by the Spalding Club)—a body of about seven thousand soldiers drawn up in front of him, all under arms, with colours uncased and waving, and the drums slung on the drummers' backs. A clear morning sun was shining, so he saw them distinctly, and also a commander who rode along the line, mounted on a white charger.
Dubious whether to advance or retire, and sorely perplexed as to what mysterious army this was, the worthy Laird of Kingswells and a companion, an old Scottish soldier, who had served in Low Country wars, reined in their horses, and continued to gaze on this unexpected array for nearly two hours; till suddenly the troops broke into marching order, and departed towards Aberdeen, near which, he adds, "the hill called the Stockett tooke them out of sight."
Nothing more was heard or seen of this phantom force until the 21st of the ensuing October, when upon the same ground—the then open and desolate White-myres—on a fine clear afternoon, when some hundred persons were returning home from the yearly fair at Old Aberdeen, about two thousand infantry, clad in blue uniforms faced with white, and with all their arms shining in the evening sun, were distinctly visible; and after a space, the same commander on the same white charger rode slowly along the shadowy line. Then a long "wreath of smoak apiered, as if they had fired, but no noise" followed.
To add to the marvel of this scene, the spectators, who, we have said, were numerous, saw many of their friends, who were coming from the fair, pass through this line of impalpable shadows, of which they could see nothing until they came to a certain point upon the moor and looked back to the sloping ground. Then, precisely as before, those phantoms in foreign uniform broke into marching order, and moved towards the Bridge of the Dee. They remained visible, however, for three hours, and only seemed to fade out or melt gradually away as the sun set behind the mountains. "This will puzzle thy philosophy," adds the laird at the close of his letter to the baronet of Monymusk; "but thou needst not doubt of the certainty of either."
Scottish tradition, and even Scottish history, especially after the Reformation, record many such instances of optical phenomena, which were a source of great terror and amazement to the simple folks of those days; and England was not without her full share of them either; but science finds a ready solution for all such delusions now. They are chiefly peculiar to mountainous districts, and may appear in many shapes and in many numbers, or singly, like the giant of the Brocken, the spectator's own shadow cast on the opposite clouds, and girt with rings of concentric light—or like the wondrous fog-bow, so recently seen from the Matterhorn.
Almost on the same ground where the Laird of Kingswells saw the second army of phantoms, and doubtless resulting from the same natural and atmospheric causes, a similar appearance had been visible on the 12th of February, 1643, when a great body of horse and foot appeared as if under arms on the Brimman Hill. Accoutred with matchlock, pike, and morion, they looked ghost-like and misty as they skimmed through the gray vapour about eight o'clock in the morning; but on the sun breaking forth from a bank of cloud, they vanished, and the green hill-slopes were left bare, or occupied by sheep alone. Much about the same time, another army was seen to hover in the air over the Moor of Forfar. "Quhilkis visons," adds the Commissary Spalding, "the people thocht to be prodigious tokens, and it fell out owre trew, as may be seen hereafter."
Many such omens are gravely recorded as preceding and accompanying the long struggle of the Covenant, and the fatal war in which the three kingdoms were plunged by Charles I. and his evil advisers.
Indigestion, heavy dinners, and heavier drinking had doubtless much to do in creating some of the spectral delusions of those days; and inborn superstition, together with a heated fancy, were often not wanting as additional accessories. But in the gloomy and stormy autumn that preceded the march of the Scottish Covenanters into England, omens of all kinds teemed to a wonderful extent in the land. When Alaster Macdonnel, son of Coll the Devastator, as the Whigs named him, landed from Ireland, at the Rhu of Ardnamurchan, in Morven, to join the Scottish cavaliers under the Marquis of Montrose, then in arms for the king, it was alleged that the hum of cannon-shot was heard in the air, passing all over Scotland from the Atlantic to the German Sea; that many strange lights appeared in the firmament; and that, on a gloomy night in the winter of 1650, a spectre drummer, beating in succession the Scottish and English marches, summoned to a ghostly conference, at the castle-gate of Edinburgh, Colonel Dundas of that Ilk, a corrupt officer, who, on being bribed by gold, afterwards surrendered to Cromwell the fortress, together with some sixty pieces of cannon.