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

by John Gregorson Campbell

The shades that go for a coffin are called tathaich air ciste, i.e. frequenters for a chest. They are heard at night long after the joiner has ceased his day’s labour. The workshop is closed, and the wright has retired to rest, when the sound of a hammer, a shuffling for nails, and the working of a plane, are heard as if someone were at work. If anyone has the courage to enter the workshop, nothing is to be seen, and no answer is given though he speak.

Some fifty years ago there was a wright in Kinloch Rannoch, in Perthshire, who complained of having the Second Sight, and who, in emigrating to Australia, assigned as his chief reason for leaving his native land, the frequency with which he saw or heard people coming beforehand for coffins. The tools of his trade, plane, hammers, saw, etc., were heard by him at work as distinctly as though he himself were working, and the frequency of the omen preyed so much on his mind that he left the country in the hope of relief. The shades were not those of the people whose death was imminent, but those of their friends and acquaintances, who afterwards proved actually to be the parties who came for the coffin.

A few years ago a medical student, in the west of Inverness-shire, sat up late on a summer night “grinding” for his examination. A joiner’s workshop adjoined the house in which he was. About two o’clock in the morning he heard the sound of hammers, plane, etc., as though some one were at work in the shop. The sounds continued till about three. The evening was calm. Next day when he told what he had heard his friends laughed at him. Next night again, however, the noises were resumed and continued till he fell asleep. They were this night heard also by the other inmates; and as they were repeated every night for a week, every person in the house, including the joiner himself, who was brought in for the purpose, heard them. Shortly after a woman in the neighbourhood died in childbed, and the joiner, in whose workshop the noises were heard, made her coffin. The mysterious hammering only discontinued when the coffin was finished. The person who heard the noises were neither taïshers nor sons of taïshers.

A Tiree man assured the writer that he and a brother of his heard most distinctly (ga farumach) the sound of a hammer all night till morning on a chest in an empty room, near which they slept. A woman next door died suddenly on the following day, and it was on that chest another brother of his made her coffin. The truthfulness of the persons who told this can be assured, whatever be the explanation given of the noise.

A very intelligent informant says that the only thing of the kind he himself was personally witness to occurred above fifty years ago, when he was a young lad. An old woman of the neighbourhood lay on her death-bed, and while the rest of the household, of which he was a member, sat up, he was on account of his youth packed off to bed. Through the night he heard what he took to be the trampling of dogs on a loft above his sleeping place, and this he heard so distinctly that he asked his father next day what made him put the dogs there. He also heard a plank sliding down from the loft and striking on end in the passage between the doors. The following night the old woman died, and the lad himself was sent up to the loft to bring down planks to make her coffin. A plank slipped from his hands, and, falling on end in the passage, made exactly the same noise as he had before heard.

Some forty or fifty years ago the trampling of horses and the rattling of a conveyance (stararaich agus gliongarsaich) were heard after dark, coming to the farm-house of Liaran in Rannoch. Every person in the house thought a conveyance was really there. The horses were distinctly heard turning round in the courtyard. On looking out nothing was to be seen or heard. In four or five days after, a hearse (a kind of conveyance till then unknown in the country) came from Appin of Menzies (Apuinn na Meinearach) with the remains of a cousin of the family, who had been suddenly killed by a kick from a horse.

As late as 1867 a coach was seen proceeding silently through the streets of a village in Ayrshire to the burying-ground, and was believed by the common people to be that of a rich lady in the neighbourhood, known as Brimstone Betty, who died shortly after, not in the odour of sanctity.

NOISE OF GLASSES TO BE USED AT FUNERALS.

Some thirty years ago in Appin, Argyleshire, noises were heard in a cupboard upstairs, above a room which formed part of a neighbour’s house, as if some one were fumbling among bottles. The noises were heard by the inmates of both houses for several nights previous to a somewhat sudden death occurring in the house below. It turned out that bottles from that cupboard were used at the funeral.

It was also a belief in Tiree that glasses, to be used before long for refreshments at a funeral, were heard rattling, as if being moved. Not many years ago there was an instance of this in the village of Kilmoluag. Skilful women professed to be able to tell by the baking board and the “griddle” whether the bread of that baking would be used at a funeral.