THE SHADOW-SEERS
I
THE SIGHT[7]
[7] These four short episodes are reprinted, by courteous consent of the Editor of Harper’s Magazine, where they appeared, interpolated in “From the Hebrid Isles.”
THE “vision,” or second-sight, is more common in the Western Isles than in the Highlands; now at least, when all things sacred to the Celtic race, from the ancient language to the degenerate and indeed all but vanished Beltane and Samh’in rites, are smiled at by the gentle and mocked by the vulgar. A day will come when men will lament more what is irrecoverable than ever a nation mourned for lapsed dominion. It is a bitter cruel thing that strangers must rule the hearts and brains, as well as the poor fortunes, of the mountaineers and islanders. Yet in doing their best to thrust Celtic life and speech and thought into the sea, they are working a sore hurt for themselves that they shall discern in the day of adversity. We of the passing race know this thing: that in a day to come the sheep-runs shall not be in the Isles and the Highlands only—for we see the forests moving south, and there will be lack, then, not of deer and of sheep, but of hunters and shepherds.
That which follows is only a memento of what was told me last summer by a fisherman of Iona. If I were to write all I have heard about what is called second-sight, it would be a volume and not a few pages I should want. The “sight” has been a reality to me almost from the cradle, for my Highland nurse had the faculty, and I have the memory of more than one of her trances.
There is an old man on the island named Daibhidh (David) Macarthur.[8] It was Ivor McLean, my boatman friend, who took me to him. He is a fine old man, though “heavy” a little; with years, perhaps, for his head is white as the crest of a wave. He is one of the very few of Iona, perhaps of the two or three at most, who do not speak any English.
[8] As there are several Macarthurs on Iona, I may say that the old man I allude to was not so named. Out of courtesy I disguise his name: though, since the above was written, he is no more.
“No,” he told me, “he had never had the sight himself. Ivor was wrong in saying that he had.”