Witchcraft & Second Sight in the Highlands & Islands of Scotland / Tales and Traditions Collected Entirely from Oral Sources

by John Gregorson Campbell

Weeping and crying were heard at midnight near the mill-dam in Tiree, on a dark and rainy night, by a young man going for a midwife for his brother’s wife. He heard the same sounds on his return. The woman died in that childbed, and it was observed that at the very spot where the young man said he heard the sounds of lamentation, her two sisters first met after her death, and burst into tears and outcries. The person to whom this incident occurred is now past forty years of age, is intelligent, and to be relied on as a person who would not tell a lie. There can be no doubt he heard the lamentation, whatever may have been the cause of his impression. Strange noises, of which the natural cause is not known, are readily associated with the first incident that offers any explanation.

In the island of Mull, lamentation (tuireadh) was recollected to have been heard where a young man was accidentally killed ten years after.

Thirty years ago horrible screaming and shouting (sgiamhail oillteil agus glaodhaich) were heard about eight o’clock on a summer evening across Loch Corry in Kingairloch. In a line with the shouting lay a ship at anchor, and the burying-ground on the other side of the loch. The cry was like that of a goat or buck being killed, a bleating which bears a horrible resemblance to the human voice. Next night the master of the ship was drowned, no one knew how. The man on the watch said that when sitting in the stern of the ship he saw the skipper go below, and then a clanking as if the chain were being paid out. He heard and saw nothing further. The night was fine.

In July, 1870, a ship struck on a sunken rock in the passages between the Skerryvore lighthouse and Tiree, and sprang a leak. The shore was made for at once, but when within 150 yards of it the ship sank. The crew betook themselves to the rigging, and were ultimately rescued; but the skipper, in trying to swim ashore, was caught by the current that sweeps round Kennavara Hill, and drowned. The crying heard in Kennavara Hill four years previous was deemed to have portended this event.

Crying was heard several times on the reefs to the east end of Coll, and to the best of the hearer’s belief, it was in English. In the same year (1870), a boat or skiff with two East Coast fishermen, following their calling in that neighbourhood, went amissing, and was never heard of. Many were of opinion it must have been lost on the reefs, where the cries had long previously been heard.

LIGHTS.

It was deemed a good sign when lights were seen previous to a person’s death. The dreag was a light seen in the sky, leaving a tail (dreallsach) behind it, and, according to some, stopping above the house where the death was to occur; according to others, proceeding from above the house to the churchyard, along the line the funeral was to take. The dreag was seen only when a person of consequence was near his dissolution. Hence an irreverent tailor in East-side, Skye, said he wished the sky was full of dreags.

It was also a belief that the death-light went along the road a funeral was to take.

An old man in Druim-a-chaoin, in Lower Rannoch, being sceptical on this point, was one night called to the door to believe his own eyes. His house overlooked the public road, and stepping boldly down he stood in the middle of the road awaiting the approach of the death-light. When it reached him, it also stood, right before him. The old man gazed fixedly at the unearthly light, and at last an indistinct and shadowy form became visible in the middle of it. The form slowly placed the palms of its two hands together, and extended them towards him. With a startling suddenness it said “Whish!” and passed over his head. That old man never afterwards said a word against death-lights.

In another instance of the death-light proceeding along the highway in the same district, a hare-brained young man went to meet it, and stood waiting it behind his dirk, which he stuck in the middle of the road. When the light came to the dirk it stopped, and the young man gazing at it, at last saw a child’s face in its feeble glare. He then stooped down and drew his dirk from the ground. As he did so the light passed over his head.