All the private diaries and quaint chronicles, of late years published by the various literary clubs in England and Scotland, teem with such marvels, but the latter country was more particularly afflicted by them; omens, warnings, and predictions of coming peril rendering it, by their number and character, extremely doubtful whether Heaven or the other place was most interested in Scottish affairs.
In 1638, fairy drums were heard beating on the hills of Dun Echt, in Aberdeenshire, according to the narrative of the parson of Rothiemay; in 1643, we hear of the noise of drums "and apparitions of armyes" at Bankafoir in the same county. "The wraith of General Leslie in his buff-coat and on horseback, carrying his own banner with its bend azure and three buckles or, appeared on the summit of a tower at St. Johnstown. Science now explains such visions as the aerial Morgana, produced by the reflection of real objects on a peculiar atmospheric arrangement; but then they were a source of unlimited terror." Law, in his Memorials, records that, in 1676, a wondrous star blazed at noon on the hill of Gargunnock, and a great army of spectres was seen to glide along the hills near Aberdeen.
A folio of Apparitions and Wonders, preserved in the British Museum, records that, at Durham, on the 27th September, 1703, when the evening sky was serene and full of stars, a strange and prodigious light spread over its north-western quarter, as if the sun itself was shining; then came streamers which turned to armed men ranked on horseback. J. Edmonson, the writer of the broadsheet, adds: "It was thought they would see the apparition better in Scotland, because it appeared a great way north; the same," he continues gravely, "was seen in the latter end of March, 1704," and the battle of Hochstadt followed it. This must refer to the second battle fought there, which we call Blenheim, when Marshal Tallard was defeated and taken prisoner by Marlborough. But this wonderful light which turned to armed men at Durham was outdone by a marvel at Churchill, Oxfordshire, where (in the same collection) we find that, on the 9th January, 1705, four suns were all visible in the air at once, "sent for signs unto mankind," adds the publisher, Mr. Tookey of St. Christopher's Court, "and having their significations of the Lord, like the hand-writing unto his servant Daniel."
In 1744, a man named D. Stricket, when servant to Mr. Lancaster of Blakehills, saw one evening, about seven o'clock, a troop of horse riding leisurely along Souter Fell in Cumberland. They were in close ranks, and ere long quickened their pace. As this man had been sharply ridiculed as the solitary beholder of a spectre horseman in the same place in the preceding year, he watched these strange troopers for some time ere he summoned his master from the house to look too. But ere Stricket spoke of what was to be seen, "Mr. Lancaster discovered the aerial troopers," whose appearance was as plainly visible to him as to his servant. "These visionary horsemen seemed to come from the lowest part of Souter Fell, and became visible at a place named Knott; they moved in successive troops (or squadrons) along the side of the Fell till they came opposite to Blakehills, where they went over the mountain. They thus described a kind of curvilinear path, their first and last appearances being bounded by the mountain." They were two hours in sight; and "this phenomenon was seen by every person (twenty-six in number) in every cottage within the distance of a mile," according to the statement attested before a magistrate by Lancaster and Stricket, on the 21st of July, 1745.
During the middle of the last century, a toll-keeper in Perthshire affirmed on oath, before certain justices of the peace, that an entire regiment passed through his toll-gate at midnight; but as no such force had left any town in the neighbourhood, or arrived at any other, or, in fact, were ever seen anywhere but at his particular turnpike, the whole story was naturally treated as a delusion; though the Highlanders sought in some way to connect the vision with the unquiet spirits of those who fought at Culloden, for there, the peasantry aver, that "in the soft twilight of the summer evening, solitary wayfarers, when passing near the burial mounds, have suddenly found themselves amid the smoke and hurly-burly of a battle, and could recognize the various clans engaged by their tartans and badges. On those occasions, a certain Laird of Culduthil was always seen amid the fray on a white horse, and the people believe that once again a great battle will be fought there by the clans; but with whom, or about what, no seer has ventured to predict."
Shadowy figures of armed men were seen in Stockton Forest, Yorkshire, prior to the war with France, as the Leeds Mercury and local prints record; and so lately as 1812, much curiosity and no small ridicule were excited by the alleged appearance of a phantom army in the vicinity of hard-working prosaic Leeds, and all the newspapers and magazines of the time show how much the story amused the sceptical, and occupied the attention of the scientific.
It would appear that between seven and eight o'clock on the evening of Sunday, the 28th October, Mr. Anthony Jackson, a farmer, in his forty-fifth year, and a lad of fifteen, named Turner, were overlooking their cattle, which were at grass in Havarah Park, near Ripley, the seat of Sir John Ingilby, when the lad suddenly exclaimed: "Look, Anthony; what a number of beasts!" "Beasts? Lord bless us!" replied the farmer with fear and wonder, "they are men!" And, as he spoke, there immediately became visible "an army of soldiers dressed in white uniforms, and in the centre a personage of commanding aspect clad in scarlet." These phantoms (according to the Leeds Mercury and Edinburgh Annual Register) were four deep, extended over thirty acres, and performed many evolutions. Other bodies in dark uniforms now appeared, and smoke, as if from artillery, rolled over the grass of the park. On this, Jackson and Turner, thinking they had seen quite enough, turned and fled.
Like the spells of the Fairy Morgana, which were alleged to create such beautiful effects in the Bay of Reggio, and which Fra Antonio Minasi saw thrice in 1773, and "deemed to exceed by far the most beautiful theatrical exhibition in the world," science has explained away, or fully discovered the true source of all such spectral phenomena. The northern aurora was deemed by the superstitious, from the days of Plutarch even to those of the sage Sir Richard Baker, as portentous of dire events; and the fancies of the timid saw only war and battle in the shining streamers; but those supposed spectral armies whose appearance we have noted, were something more, in most instances, than mere deceptio visus, being actually the shadows of realities—the airy reproductions of events, bodily passing in other parts of the country, reflected in the clouds, and imaged again on the mountain slopes or elsewhere, by a peculiar operation of the sun's rays.