But it is chiefly as precursors of misfortune that the poet has availed himself of their supposed influence as omens of future fate. There are few passages in his dramas more terrific than the dreams of Richard the Third and Clarence; the latter, especially, is replete with the most fearful imagery, and makes the blood run chill with horror.
Dæmoniacal voices and shrieks, or monitory intimations and appearances from the tutelary genius of a family, were likewise imagined to precede the deaths of important individuals; a superstition to which Shakspeare alludes in the following lines from his Troilus and Cressida:
"Troil. Hark! you are call'd: Some say, the Genius so
Cries, Come! to him that instantly must die."[355:C]
This superstition was formerly very prevalent in England, and still prevails in several districts of Ireland, and in the more remote parts of the Highlands of Scotland. Howell tells us, that he saw at a lapidary's in 1632, a monumental stone, prepared for four persons of the name of Oxenham, before the death of each of whom, the inscription stated a white bird to have appeared and fluttered around the bed, while the patient was in the last agony[355:D]; and Glanville, remarks Mr. Scott, mentions one family, the members of which received this solemn sign by music, the sound of which floated from the family-residence, and seemed to die in a neighbouring[355:E] wood. It is related, that several of the great Highland families are accustomed to receive intimations of approaching fate by domestic spirits
or tutelary genii, who sometimes assume the form of a bird or of a bloody spectre of a tall woman dressed in white, shrieking wildly round the house. Thus, observes Mr. Pennant, the family of Rothmurcas had the Bodach-an-dun, or the Ghost of the Hill; the Kinchardines, the Spectre of the Bloody Hand; Gartinley house was haunted by Bodach-Gartin; and Tullock Gorms by Maug-Moulach, or the Girl with the Hairy Left Hand. In certain places, he says, the death of the people is supposed to be foretold by the cries of Benshi, or the Fairy's Wife, uttered along the very path where the funeral is to pass; and it has been added by others, that when the Benshi becomes visible, she appears in the shape of an old woman, with a blue mantle and streaming hair.
Of this omen, and of another of a similar kind, Mr. Scott has made his usual poetical use in the Lady of the Lake, where he relates of Brian, the lone Seer of the Desert, that
"Late had he heard in prophet's dream,
The fatal Ben-Shie's boding scream,
Sounds, too, had come in midnight blast,