It was usual for the Seers to see any man that was shortly to arrive at the house. If unknown to the Seer he would give such a description of the person he saw as to make him to be at once recognised upon his arrival. On the other hand, if the Seer knew the person he saw in the vision, he would tell his name, and know by the expression of his countenance whether he came in a good or bad humour.
The Seers often saw houses, gardens, and trees, in places where there were none, but in the course of time these places became covered with them.
To see a spark of fire fall upon one’s arm or breast, was a forerunner of a dead child to be seen in the arms of those persons. To see a seat empty when one was sitting on it, was a presage of that person’s immediate death.
There are now few persons, if any, who pretend to this faculty, and the belief in it is almost generally exploded. Yet it cannot be denied that apparent proofs of its existence have been adduced which have staggered minds not prone to superstition. When the connexion between cause and effect can be recognised, things which would otherwise have appeared wonderful and almost incredible, are viewed as ordinary occurrences. The impossibility of accounting for such an extraordinary phenomenon as the alleged faculty, on philosophical principles, or from the laws of nature, must ever leave the matter suspended between rational doubt and confirmed scepticism. The strong-minded but superstitious Dr. Johnson appears, from the following passage, to have been inclined to believe in the genuineness of the faculty. “Strong reasons for incredulity,” says Dr. Johnson, “will readily occur. This faculty of seeing things out of sight is local, and commonly useless. It is a breach of the common order of things, without any visible reason or perceptible benefit. It is ascribed only to a people very little enlightened; and among them, for the most part, to the mean and ignorant. To the confidence of these objections it may be replied, that by presuming to determine what is fit, and what is beneficial, they presuppose more knowledge of the universal system than man has attained; and therefore depend upon principles too complicated and extensive for our comprehension; and that there can be no security in the consequence, when the premises are not understood: that the Second Sight is only wonderful because it is rare, for, considered in itself, it involves no more difficulty than dreams, or perhaps than the regular exercises of the cogitative faculty; that a general opinion of communicative impulses, or visionary representations, has prevailed in all ages and all nations; that particular instances have been given, with such evidence as neither Bacon, nor Bayle, has been able to resist; that sudden impressions, which the event has verified, have been felt by more than own or publish them; that the Second Sight of the Hebrides implies only the local frequency of a power which is no where totally unknown; and that where we are unable to decide by antecedent reason, we must be content to yield to the force of testimony.”[490]
Among the various modes of social intercourse which gladdened the minds and dissipated the few worldly cares of the Highlanders, weddings bore a distinguished part, and they were longed for with a peculiar earnestness. Young and old, from the boy and girl of the age of ten to the hoary-headed sire and aged matron, attended them. The marriage invitations were given by the bride and bridegroom, in person, for some weeks previous, and included the friends of the betrothed parties living at the distance of many miles.
When the bride and bridegroom had completed their rounds, the custom was for the matrons of the invited families to return the visit within a few days, carrying along with them large presents of hams, beef, cheese, butter, malt, spirits, and such other articles as they inclined or thought necessary for the approaching feast. To such an extent was this practice carried in some instances in the quantity presented, that, along with what the guests paid (as they commonly did) for their entertainment at the marriage, and the gifts presented on the day after the marriage, the young couple obtained a pretty fair competence, which warded off the shafts of poverty, and even made them comfortable in after-life.
The joyous wedding-morning was ushered in by the notes of the bagpipe. A party of pipers, followed by the bridegroom and some of his friends, commenced at an early hour a round of morning calls to remind the guests of their engagements. These hastened to join the party, and before the circuit, which sometimes occupied several hours, had ended, some hundreds, perhaps, had joined the wedding standard before they reached the bridegroom’s house. The bride made a similar round among her friends. Separate dinners were provided; the bridegroom giving a dinner to his friends, and the bride to hers. The marriage ceremony was seldom performed till after dinner. The clergyman sometimes attended, but the parties preferred waiting on him, as the appearance of a large procession to his house gave additional importance and eclat to the ceremony of the day, which was further heightened by a constant firing by the young men, who supplied themselves with guns and pistols, and which firing was responded to by every hamlet as the party passed along; “so that, with streamers flying, pipers playing, the constant firing from all sides, and the shouts of the young men, the whole had the appearance of a military army passing, with all the noise of warfare, through a hostile country.”
On the wedding-day, the bride and bridegroom avoided each other till they met before the clergyman. Many ceremonies were performed during the celebration of the marriage rites. These ceremonies were of an amusing and innocent description, and added much to the cheerfulness and happiness of the young people. One of these ceremonies consisted in untying all the bindings and strings about the person of the bridegroom, to denote, that nothing was to be bound on the marriage day but the one indissoluble knot which death only can dissolve. The bride was exempted from this operation from a delicacy of feeling towards her sex, and from a supposition that she was so pure that infidelity on her part could not be contemplated.
To discontinue practices in themselves innocent, and which contribute to the social happiness of mankind, must ever be regretted, and it is not therefore to be wondered at, that a generous and open-hearted Highlander, like General Stewart, should have expressed his regret at the partial disuse of these ceremonies, or that he should have preferred a Highland wedding, where he had himself “been so happy, and seen so many blithe countenances, and eyes sparkling with delight, to such weddings as that of the Laird of Drum, ancestor of the Lord Sommerville, when he married a daughter of Sir James Bannatyne of Corehouse.”[491]
The festivities of the wedding-day were generally prolonged to a late hour, and during the whole day the fiddlers and pipers never ceased except at short intervals, to make sweet music. The fiddlers performed in the house, the pipers in the field;[492] so that the company alternately enjoyed the pleasure of dancing within and without the house, as they felt inclined, provided the weather permitted.