“Charles,” says Home, “almost reduced to despair, in his discourse with Boisdale, addressed the two Highlanders with great emotion, and, summing up his arguments for taking arms, conjured them to assist their Prince, their countryman, in his utmost need. Clanronald and his friend, though well inclined to the cause, positively refused, and told him that to take up arms without concert or support was to pull down certain ruin on their own heads. Charles persisted, argued, and implored. During this conversation (they were on shipboard) the parties walked backward and forward on the deck; a Highlander stood near them, armed at all points, as was then the fashion of his country. He was a younger brother of Kinloch Moidart, and had come off to the ship to enquire for news, not knowing who was aboard. When he gathered from their discourse that the stranger was the Prince of Wales; when he heard his chief and his brother refuse to take arms with their Prince; his colour went and came, his eyes sparkled, he shifted his place, and grasped his sword. Charles observed his demeanour, and turning briskly to him, called out, ‘Will you assist me?’—‘I will, I will,’ said Ronald: ‘though no other man in the Highlands should draw a sword, I am ready to die for you!’ Charles, with a profusion of thanks to his champion, said, he wished all the Highlanders were like him. Without farther deliberation, the two Macdonalds declared that they would also join, and use their utmost endeavours to engage their countrymen to take arms.”—Home’s History of the Rebellion of 1745.
An account of the second sight, in Irish called “Taish,” is thus given in Martin’s “Description of the Western Isles of Scotland,” p. 3-11:—
“The second sight is a singular faculty of seeing an otherwise invisible object, without any previous means used by the person who sees it for that end. The vision makes such a lively impression upon the seers, that they neither see nor think of anything else except the vision as long as it continues; and then they appear pensive or jovial according to the object which was represented to them.
“At the sight of a vision the eyelids of the person are erected, and the eyes continue staring until the object vanish. This is obvious to others who are standing by when the persons happen to see a vision; and occurred more than once to my own observation, and to others that were with me.
“There is one in Skye, of whom his acquaintance observed, that when he sees a vision the inner parts of his eyelids turn so far upwards, that, after the object disappears, he must draw them down with his fingers, and sometimes employs others to draw them down, which he finds to be much the easier way.
“This faculty of the second sight does not lineally descend in a family, as some have imagined; for I know several parents who are endowed with it, and their children are not; and vice versa. Neither is it acquired by any previous compact. And after strict enquiry, I could never learn from any among them, that this faculty was communicable to any whatsoever. The seer knows neither the object, time, nor place of a vision before it appears; and the same object is often seen by different persons living at a considerable distance from one another. The true way of judging as to the time and circumstances is by observation; for several persons of judgment who are without this faculty are more capable to judge of the design of a vision than a novice that is a seer. If an object appears in the day or night, it will come to pass sooner or later accordingly.
“If an object is seen early in a morning, which is not frequent, it will be accomplished in a few hours afterwards; if at noon it will probably be accomplished that very day; if in the evening perhaps that night; if after candles be lighted, it will be accomplished that night; the latter always an accomplishment by weeks, months, and sometimes years, according to the time of the night the vision is seen.
“When a shroud is seen about one, it is a sure prognostic of death. The time is judged according to the height of it about the person; for if it is not seen above the middle, death is not to be expected for the space of a year, and perhaps some months longer: and as it is frequently seen to ascend higher towards the head, death is concluded to be at hand within a few days, if not hours, as daily experience confirms. Examples of this kind were shown me, when the person of whom the observations were then made was in perfect health.
“It is ordinary with them to see houses, gardens, and trees in places void of all these, and this in process of time is wont to be accomplished; as at Mogslot, in the Isle of Skye, where there were but a few sorry low houses thatched with straw; yet in a few years the vision, which appeared often, was accomplished by the building of several good houses in the very spot represented to the seers, and by the planting of orchards there.
“To see a spark of fire is a forerunner of a dead child, to be seen in the arms of those persons; of which there are several instances. To see a seat empty at the time of sitting in it, is a presage of that person’s death quickly after it.