The phases or changes of the moon were closely observed, and it was only at particular periods of her revolution that they would cut turf or fuel, fell wood, or cut thatch for houses, or go upon any important expedition. They expected better crops of grain by sowing their seed in the moon’s increase. “The moon,” as Dr. Johnson observes, “has great influence in vulgar philosophy,” and in his memory it was a precept annually given in one of the English almanacs, “To kill hogs when the moon was increasing, and the bacon would prove the better in boiling.”
The aid of superstition was sometimes resorted to for curing diseases. For hectic and consumptive complaints, the Highlanders used to pare the nails of the fingers and toes of the patient,—put these parings into a bag made from a piece of his clothes,—and after waving their hand with the bag thrice round his head, and crying, Deis-iuil, they buried it in some unknown place. Pliny, in his natural history, says that this practice existed among the Magi of his time.
To remove any contagious disease from cattle, they used to extinguish the fires in the surrounding villages, after which they forced fire with a wheel, or by rubbing one piece of dry wood upon another, with which they burned juniper in the stalls of the cattle that the smoke might purify the air about them. When this was performed, the fires in the houses were rekindled from the forced fire. Shaw relates in his history of Moray, that he personally witnessed both the last-mentioned practices.
Akin to some of the superstitions we have noticed, but differing from them in many essential respects, is the belief—for superstition it cannot well be called—in the Second Sight, by which, as Dr. Johnson observes, “seems to be meant a mode of seeing, super-added to that which nature generally bestows,”[487] and consists of “an impression made either by the mind upon the eye, or by the eye upon the mind, by which things distant or future are perceived, and seen as if they were present.”[488] This “deceptive faculty” is in Gaelic called Taibhse, i.e. a spectre, or a vision, and is neither voluntary nor constant, but consists “in seeing an otherwise invisible object, without any previous means used by the person that sees it for that end; the vision makes such a lively impression upon the seer, that they neither see nor think of any thing 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.”[489]
It has been observed by lookers-on, that those persons who saw, or were supposed to see, a vision, always kept their eye-lids erect, and that they continued to stare until the object vanished. Martin affirms that he and other persons that were with them, observed this more than once, and he mentions an instance of a man in Skye, the inner part of whose eye-lids was turned so far upwards during a vision, that after the object disappeared he found it necessary to draw them down with his fingers, and would sometimes employ others to draw them down, which he indeed, Martin says, “found from experience to be the easier way.”
The visions are said to have taken place either in the morning, at noon, in the evening, or at night. If an object was seen early in the morning, its accomplishment would take place in a few hours thereafter. If at noon, that very day. If in the evening, perhaps that night; if after the candles were lighted, the accomplishment would take place by weeks, months, and sometimes years, according to the time of night the vision was seen.
As the appearances which are said to have been observed in visions and their prognostics may prove curious to the general reader, a few of them shall be here stated, as noted by Martin.
When a shroud was perceived about one, it was a sure prognostic of death. The time was judged according to the height of it about the person. If not seen above the middle, death was not to be expected for the space of a year, and perhaps some months longer; and as it was frequently seen to ascend higher towards the head, death was concluded to be at hand within a few days, if not hours.
If a woman was seen standing at a man’s left hand, it was a presage that she would be his wife, whether they were married to others, or unmarried at the time of the apparition.
If two or three women were seen at once standing near a man’s left hand, she that was next to him would undoubtedly be his wife first, and so on, whether all three, or the man, were single or married at the time of the vision or not.