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

by John Gregorson Campbell

APPARITIONS OF THE DEAD.

A taïsher in Tiree came upon a dead body washed ashore by the sea. The corpse had nothing on in the way of clothing but a pair of sea-boots. Old people considered it a duty, when they fell in with a drowned body, to turn it over or move it in some way. In this case, the seer was so horrified that, instead of doing this, he ran away. Other people, however, came, and the body was duly buried. Afterwards the dead man haunted the seer, and now and then appeared and terrified him exceedingly. One night on his way home he saw the corpse before him, wherever he turned, and on reaching the house it stood between him and the door. He walked on till close to the house, and then called to his wife to take the broomstick and sprinkle the door-posts with urine. When this was done, he boldly walked forward. The spectre, on his approach, leapt from the ground, and stood above the door with a foot resting on each side on the double walls. The seer entered between its legs, and never saw the horrible apparition again.

A taïsher in Coll had no second sight till some time after his marriage. Working one day with a companion near the shore, he left for a short time, but stayed away so long that, on his return, he was asked what kept him? He said he had been looking at the body of a drowned man, which the waves were swaying backwards and forwards near the rocks. Others, however, were of opinion he had found the body on the shore, ransacked its clothes, and then thrown it again into the sea, and that the second sight was a curse sent upon him for the deed. Certain it is that from that day he had the second sight. His friends at first doubted him, when he said he saw visions, till he one day told his sister a certain rope in the house would be sent for before morning, to be used about a body lying on the “straight-board.” This proved to be the case, and his reputation as a taïsher was established.

A noted seer, named Mac Dhòmhnuill Oig, in Kilmoluag, Tiree, was sitting one day at home, when his brother entered, and opening a chest in the room, took out some money. In reply to the seer’s inquiries, the brother said he was going to pay such and such a shoemaker for a pair of shoes recently got from him. The brother died soon after, and the shoemaker claimed the price of the shoes. The seer warmly resisted the claim, as he himself had seen his brother taking the money expressly to pay them. That same night, however, he saw the shade of his deceased brother crossing the room, and, as it were, fumbling in a particular place on the top of the inner wall of the house. Next day the seer himself searched in the same spot, and found there the money that had been taken out of the chest to pay the shoes. He could only think it had been placed there by his brother when alive, and had been forgotten.

A taïsher, whose house was at Crossapol, where the burying-ground of the island of Coll is, on his way home from the harbour of Arnagour, about six miles away, experienced many mischances (driod-fhortain), such as falling, etc. He arrived at home to find his only child, a boy about twelve years of age, dead in the burying-ground, where he had gone to play and fallen asleep. Its entrails (màthair a mhionaich) were protruding. The seer, in his distraction, belaboured the surrounding graves with his stick, accusing their tenants, in his outcries, of indifference to him and his, and saying he had many of his kindred among them, though they had allowed this evil to befall his child. That night a voice came to him in his sleep, saying, he should not be angry with them (shades of the dead), seeing they were away that day in Islay keeping “strange blood” from the grave of Lachlan Mor (cumail na fuil choimhich a uaigh Lachuinn Mhòir), and were not present to have rescued the child. This Lachlan Mor was a man of great stature and bodily strength, chief of the Macleans of Dowart, and therefore related to the Macleans of Coll, who had been killed at the bloody clan battle of Gruinard Beach, in Islay, and was buried at Kilchoman Churchyard. On hearing of the seer’s vision the Laird of Coll dispatched a boat to Islay, and it was found that on the day the child was murdered an attempt had been made to lift the chief’s gravestone for the burial of a sailor, whose body had been cast ashore on a neighbouring beach. The attempt had failed, and the stone was left partly on its edge (air a leth-bhile). The shades had laid their weight upon it, so that it could not be moved further.

This story the writer has heard more than once adduced as positive proof of the reality of the second sight (tabhsearachd), that is, of the capacity of some men to see and hear spirits, or whatever else the spectres are. The power of the dead to lay a heavy weight upon persons as well as things, and even to punish the living, is shown by the following stories.

In the same island of Coll the wife of Donald the Fair-haired (Dòmhnull Bàn) was lying ill. She had strange feelings of oppression and sickness (tinneas ’us slachdadh). Donald’s father was a taïsher, and came to see her. After sitting and watching for some time he told her she had herself to blame for her sickness, that she must have done some act of unkindness or wrong to her mother, and that her feelings of oppression were caused by the spirit of her dead father coming and lying its weight upon her. The seer professed to see the spirit of the dead leaning its weight upon the sick person.

A woman (the tale, which comes from Perthshire, does not say where), being ill-treated by her husband, wished, too strongly and unduly, her brother, who had some time previously died in Edinburgh, were with her to take her part. Soon after, when she was alone, her brother’s shade appeared, and in a tone of displeasure asked her what was wrong, and what she wanted him for. She told. Her husband was at the time ploughing in a field in front of the house. The woman saw the shade going towards him, and when it reached, her husband fell dead.

STRONG AND UNDUE WISHES.

It is in fact part of the creed in the Second Sight that a person should never indulge in strong wishes, lest he overstep proper bounds, and wish what Providence has not designed to be. Such wishes affect others, especially if these others have anything of the Second Sight.