A man in Skye met at night a funeral procession, and some occult influence made him walk along with it till he came to Portree churchyard. He then for the first time asked whose funeral it was. He received for answer, “Your own.”
A man living in the Braes of Portree went daily to Portree, four miles away, to work. A neighbour, whose house was a little further away, was engaged in the same work, and was in the habit of calling him as he passed in the morning. The two then walked together to the scene of their labour. One clear moonlight night he was awakened by what he took to be his companion’s call. He hastily threw on his clothes and followed. Every now and then he heard a call before him on the road telling him to make haste. He followed, without thought, till he came to Portree churchyard. It did not strike him till then that the call was from no earthly voice.
WRAITHS SEEN BEFORE DEATH.
When a person was about to die, especially if his death was to be by violence or drowning, his wraith or phantom was seen by those who had the Second Sight, or it might be by those who had no such gift.
In the island of Lismore, in the beginning of the nineteenth century, the minister was said to have seen the fetch of the man at whose funeral the custom was introduced of having the refreshments (cosdas) after the funeral. In former times it was the practice in the Highlands to have the refreshments before starting, and consequently the funeral party were sometimes far advanced in drink before starting on their melancholy journey. There are even stories of their having forgot the coffin.
On the farm of Kirkapol, in Tiree, where the burying-place of the east end of the island is, the figure of a man in a dress not belonging to the island—light trousers and blue jacket with white buttons—was seen about forty years ago by several people in the evenings going in the direction of the kirkyard. A celebrated seer in the neighbouring village saw it, and said it was not the taïsh of any man or any man’s son in Tiree. Some time after a ship was wrecked in the east end of Tiree, and one of the sailors, whose dress when his body was found corresponded to that of the taïsh, was taken and buried in Kirkapol. After that the apparition was no more seen.
The body of a young man drowned in the same neighbourhood, before being coffined, was laid first on a rock and then on the green sward. A person who came to the scene after the body was laid on the grass asked if the body had been laid on the rock mentioned. He was told it had, and was asked why he enquired. He said his uncle had told him that his grandfather, who was a taïsher, had said a dead body would yet be laid on that rock. This shows that the fulfilment of the seer’s vision does not necessarily take place soon after, or even within a number of years.
The taïsher in Caolas, Tiree, already mentioned as having seen the fetch of his sister in the smallpox, on a New-Year night accompanied his brother-in-law, who had spent the evening with him (and from whom the story has been got), a piece of the way home. When his brother-in-law urged him to return, as he had come far enough, he asked to be allowed, as this was the last New Year he would be with his friends. He was asked what made him think so gloomily of the future. He said the matter was to be so, and there was no chance of its being otherwise, for he had seen his own phantom three or four times. In March following the man was drowned.
A Tiree taïsher was going out to Tobermory, and taking his passage along with him was a neighbour going to consult the doctor. There was no medical officer in those days resident in Tiree. The seer said to one of the boatmen, he wished he had not the sight he had, for he saw his fellow-passenger with the dead clothes up to his eyes. “You may,” he said, “take off my ear if the man’s death is not near hand.” The event proved the correctness of his vision, and the right to take off his ear did not arise.