On the high road between Calachyle and Salen in Mull, a strong man of the name of Maclean was met at night by Hugh. The horseman spake never a word, but caught Maclean to take him away. Maclean resisted, and in the struggle caught hold of a birch sapling and succeeded in holding it till the cock crew. The birch tree was twisted in the struggle, and one after another of its roots gave way. As the last was yielding the cock crew. The twisted tree may still be seen. The same story is told of a twisted tree near Tobermory, and a similar one is localised between Lochaber and Badenoch.[30]
Other premonitions of death were the howling of dogs, the appearance of lights, loud outcries and sounds of weeping, apparitions of the doomed person’s “fetch,” or coffin, or funeral procession, etc. These sounds and appearances were more apt to precede an accidental and premature death, such as drowning, and to understand them properly it will be necessary to enter into an examination of the doctrine of the Second Sight.
CHAPTER IV.
SECOND SIGHT (an da shealladh).
Freed from a good deal of mystery in which an imperfect understanding of its character has involved it, the gift of second sight may be briefly explained to be the same as being “spectre-haunted,” or liable to “spectre illusions,” when that condition occurs, as it often does, in persons of sound mind. The phenomena in both cases are the same; the difference is in the explanation given of them. In the one case the vision is looked on as unreal and imaginary, arising from some bodily or mental derangement, and having no foundation in fact, while the other proceeds on a belief that the object seen is really there and has an existence independent of the seer, is a revelation, in fact, to certain gifted individuals of a world different from, and beyond, the world of sense. Science has accepted the former as the true and rational explanation, and traces spectral illusions to an abnormal state of the nervous system, exhaustion of mind or body, strong emotions, temperament, and others of the countless, and at times obscure, causes that lead to hallucination and delusion. But before optical and nervous delusions were recognised by science, while the spectres were believed to be external realities having an existence of their own, the visions were necessarily invested with an awe approaching to terror, and the gift or faculty of seeing them could not but be referred to some such explanation as the doctrine of the second sight offers.
“The shepherds of the Hebrid Isles” are usually credited with the largest possession of the gift, but the doctrine was well known over the whole Highlands, and as firmly believed in Ross-shire and the highlands of Perthshire as in the remotest Hebrides. Waldron describes it as existing in his time in the Isle of Man. It is a Celtic belief, and the suggestion that it is the remains of the magic of the Druids is not unreasonable. In every age there are individuals who are spectre-haunted, and it is probable enough that the sage Celtic priests, assuming the spectres to be external, reduced the gift of seeing them to a system, a belief in which formed part of their teaching. This accounts for the circumstance that the second sight has flourished more among the Celts than any other race.
The Gaelic name da-shealladh does not literally mean “the second sight,” but “the two sights.” The vision of the world of sense is one sight, ordinarily possessed by all, but the world of spirits is visible only to certain persons, and the possession of this additional vision gives them “the two sights,” or what comes to the same thing, “a second sight.” Through this faculty they see the ghosts of the dead revisiting the earth, and the fetches, doubles, or apparitions of the living.
The world to which apparitions belong is called by writers on the second sight “the world of spirits,” but the expression does not convey correctly the idea attached to visions of the kind. The object seen, usually that of a friend or acquaintance, the phantasm, phantom, apparition, or whatever else we choose to call it, was recognised to be as independent of the person whose semblance it bore as it was of the person seeing it. He knew nothing of the phantom’s appearance, it was not his spirit, and played its part without his knowledge or his wish. The seer, again, could not, or did not, trace it to anything in himself; it did not arise from any suggestion of his hopes or fears, and was not a reproduction of any former state of his mind or thought. As to its owing its origin to anything abnormal in himself, he was (as far as he could judge) as healthy in mind and body as other people. As long, therefore, as men believed the phantasm to be an external reality, they were compelled to believe in doubles, or semblances, that move in a world which is neither that of sense nor that of spirits. The actions and appearances of these doubles have no counterpart in any past or present event, and naturally are referred to the future and the distant.
The object seen, or phantasm, is called taibhs (pron. taïsh), the person seeing it taibhsear (pron. taïsher), and the gift of vision, in addition to its name of second sight, is known as taibhsearachd. It is noticeable that many words referring to spirits and ghosts begin with this syllable ta. The following are worth noticing: