SECOND SIGHT: DIVINATION: UNIVERSALITY OF CERTAIN SUPERSTITIONS: FAIRIES IN SCOTLAND.

There are many aspects of the Past which have an interest for the psychological student as well as for the antiquary, and there are not a few to which everybody may occasionally direct their attention with advantage. We are too much inclined to put it aside as a “sealed book,” which none but the scholar can open,—which, when opened, is hardly worth the reading. Or we are attracted only by its picturesque and romantic side, and take no heed of the valuable lessons which may be deduced upon a careful examination. Yet, as all history is more or less the history of human error and human folly, those chapters which treat of the credulities and superstitions of the Past, must surely embody many warnings and much counsel for the present.

Our glance at Halloween superstitions in Scotland reminds us of other old Scottish practices, which serve to point a moral, if not to adorn a tale. We have met with a volume by a Mr. Walter Gregor, which furnishes some curious illustrative instances. On his vivid picture of the gloom and desolation of a Scottish Sabbath, we will not dwell, for our readers will probably have gathered from other sources, or even from personal experience, an idea of the dreariness of that sombre institution in the days when bigotry was mistaken for zeal, and the spirit was killed outright by the letter. It is pleasanter to read of the strong yearning for knowledge that then possessed the hearts of our Scottish youth; and how, in the age before School Boards were conceived of, the parish school supplied for twenty shillings per annum an education which fitted the scholar for entering the University. No Royal Road to Learning had as yet been discovered; and with much sweat of brain did the aspiring student brood over his Homer or Virgil by the flickering light of the peat-fire. When the time came for his removal to Glasgow or Aberdeen, thither he trudged afoot with his little “all” in a knapsack slung from his sturdy shoulders; and during the “sessions” it was a hard hand-to-hand fight with poverty which he stoutly fought, while delving deep into classical and mathematical lore; not forgetting occasional excursions into that vague metaphysical region which has always had so keen an attraction for the strong Scotch intellect. Our “present-day” students would too often shrink, we suspect, from the sacrifices demanded of their forefathers, and give way under the hardships which they endured, when a few potatoes and a salt herring served for dinner, and all the expenses of the academical year were covered by some twelve to sixteen pounds! We are by no means sure that knowledge was not more valued when it was attainable only at such a cost of self-denial and rigid effort; and we certainly believe that it was more thorough, more entirely a man’s own, because it was wrung, so to speak, from the reluctant goddess by strenuous, steadfast work and sheer mental travail. To the Age of Gold and the Age of Iron has succeeded the Age of Veneer; and we trouble ourselves too little now-a-days, in spite of the teaching of Ruskin and Carlyle, about the solidness and durability of the material, so long as it will take a ready polish.

But what a strange world was that of the Scotch peasant in those far off days—far off at least they seem, on account of the immense social revolution that has taken place, and set between the now and the then a profound chasm. Men often speak of the hard-headedness and matter-of-fact stolidity of the Scotch nature; but is it not true that below the surface lies an abundant fountain of wild, quaint, original fancy? And how, in the olden time, it surrounded itself with signs and omens and wonders! How it loved to put itself in communion, as it were, with that other world which lies beyond and yet around us, which perplexes us with its subtle intelligence, which we cannot discern, though of its presence we are always sensible! From the cradle to the grave the Scotch peasant went his way attended by the phantoms of this mysterious world; always recognising its warnings, always seeing the shadows which it cast of coming events, and so burdening himself with a weight of grim and eËry superstition, that we marvel he did not stumble and grow faint, seeing that his dreary Calvinistic creed could have brought him little hope or comfort. Nay, it is a question whether his superstition did not partly grow out of, or was fostered by, his hard, cold religion. Superstition is the shadow of Religion, and from the shadow we may infer the nature of the substance or object that casts it.

But of these darker things we shall not speak. Let us trace a few of the common traditions and customs of the people, though in doing so we digress, perhaps, from the main lines of the present volume. While less impressive than the mere mystical practices, they proceeded from the same source,—an imagination haunted by the formidable presence of Nature, by the forms of lofty mountains, by the mysteries of pine-clad ravines, and the murmurs of storm-swept lochs and falling waters. For it has been truly said that the Scotch people have been made what they are by Scotland; that the Land has moulded and fashioned the People; and that in their literature, their religion, their manners, their history, the influence is seen of the physical characteristics of the country.

On the birth of a child—to begin at the beginning—we read that both mother and offspring were “sained,” a lighted fir-candle being carried three times round the bed, and a Bible, with a bannock or bread and cheese being placed under the pillow, while a kind of blessing was indistinctly uttered. Sometimes a fir-candle was set on the bed to keep off fairies. If the new-born showed any symptoms of fractiousness, it was supposed to be a changeling; and to test the truth of the supposition, the child was placed suddenly before a peat-fire, when, if really a changeling, it made its escape by the “lum,” throwing back words of scorn as it disappeared. Great was the eagerness to get the babe baptised, lest it should be stolen by the fairies. If it died unchristened, it wandered in woods and solitary places, bewailing its miserable fate. In Ramsay’s “Gentle Shepherd,” Bauldy, describing Manse the witch, says of her:—

“At midnight hours o’er the kirkyard she raves,
And howks unchristened weans out of their graves.”

It was considered “unlucky” to mention the name of an “unchristened wean;” and even at baptism the name was commonly written on a slip of paper, which was handed to the officiating minister. What care was taken that the consecrated water should not enter the child’s eyes! For if such a mishap occurred, his future life, wherever he went and whatever he did, would be constantly marred by the presence of wraiths and phantoms. If the babe remained quiet at the font, it was supposed to be destined to a brief career; and hence, to extort a cry, the woman who received it from the father would handle it roughly or even pinch it. If a boy and girl were baptised together, much anxiety was evinced lest the girl should first receive the rite. And why? In the “Statistical Account of Scotland,” the minister of an Orcadian parish says: “Within these last seven years the minister has been twice interrupted in administering baptism to a female child before the male child, who was baptised immediately after. When the service was over, he was gravely told he had done very wrong, for, if the female child was first baptised, she would, on her coming to the years of discretion, most certainly have a strong beard, and the boy would have none.”

Following up the course of human life through the honeyed days of “wooing and wedding,” we find it darkened still by the clouds of Superstition. If a maiden desired to call up the image of her future husband, she read the third verse, seventeenth chapter of the Book of Job after supper, washed the supper dishes, and retired to bed without uttering a single word, placing before her pillow the Bible, with a pin thrust through the verse she had read. It is curious to observe the use of the Bible in these wild and foolish customs: was it not an indirect testimony to the reverence, not always intelligent, perhaps, but certainly sincere, in which the holy book was held? Nor are we certain that it is not sometimes turned to worse purposes in these “enlightened days,” when a pseudo-science seeks to convert it into the battle-field of audacious theories, and an ignorant intolerance too often professes to discover in its bright and blessed pages an excuse for its uncharitable follies.

But we must continue our resumÉ. It is curious to read that the wedding-dress might not be “tried on” before the wedding-day, and if it did not fit, it might not be cut or altered, but was adjusted in the best manner possible. The bride, on the way to church, was forbidden to look back, for to do so was to ensure a succession of disasters and quarrels in the married state. It was considered inauspicious, moreover, if she did not “greet” or weep on the marriage-day; a superstition obviously connected with the wide-spread idea of the necessity of propitiating the Fates which inspired the advice of Amasis to the too fortunate Polycrates,[66] that he should fine himself for his success by throwing some costly thing into the sea. It was thought well to marry at the time of the growing moon, and among fisher-folk a flowing tide was regarded as “lucky.” These customs were puerile enough, undoubtedly, but before we censure them too severely we may ask whether our modern bridals are wholly free from superstitious observances; whether we do not still pretend to “bribe” the fickle Fortune by showers of rice and old slippers rained on the departing couple!

It is needless to say that the “last scene of all” was invested with all the attributes of grotesque terror the wayward popular imagination could invent. Before it took place the light of the “death-candle”—the Welsh call it the “corpse-candle”—might be seen hovering from chamber to chamber; or the cock crowed before midnight; or the “dead-drap,” a sound as of water falling monotonously and lingeringly, broke the silence of the night; or three dismal and fatal knocks were heard, at regular intervals of one or two minutes’ duration; or over the doomed person fluttered the image of a white dove. And when the spirit had departed, the doors and windows were immediately opened wide; the clocks were stopped; the mirrors were covered; and it was held to disturb the rest of the dead, and to be fatal to the living, if a tear fell upon the winding sheet. And thus, from the cradle to the grave, Superstition dogged the steps of life; nor even at the grave did it cease to vex and worry the minds of men with the fancies and visions born of excited imaginations.

That such fancies, that customs so wild and grotesque, should have existed in Scotland, and among a well-educated people, down to a comparatively recent date, might be matter of wonder, if we were not aware of the tenacity with which the heart clings to the “use and wont” of the Past. Nor trivial as some, and inexcusable as all of them seem to the philosophic eye, is it wise to regard them too contemptuously. They seem to us to show how difficult man found it to realise to himself the idea of a living, personal God,—of a God, a Father, ever watching over the welfare of His children, chastening them in His mercy, but never refusing them the light of His countenance when they have sought Him with faith in the hour of sorrow and darkness. For want of this strengthening, consoling, elevating idea, he has endeavoured to support himself by the feeble prop of superstitious credulity, and instead of yielding wholly and trustfully to the love of God the Father, has vainly striven to secure some glimpse or foreshadowing of the Future, and to avert evil by peurile practices and idle traditions.

We may next be allowed to point out the kinship in superstition which prevails all over the world; so that the observance or custom which seems peculiar to England or Scotland, is found in India or Tartary. This remarkable similarity indicates a certain general tendency to attach an “ominous significance” to particular things and events. Take as an illustration, the act of sneezing. In Asia as well as Europe, among Semitic peoples as well as among Aryan, it is usual to connect with the act some form of blessing. Sometimes the sneezer is blessed by the bystander; sometimes he blesses himself; if a Mohammedan, he blesses God. In Italy, for example, the salutation addressed to him runs: “May God preserve you!” or “May you have children!” In Hindi it takes the form of “SadÀji’s” (May you live for ever!) and a similar salutation is used by the Jews of Austria.

But in different places and at different times sneezing has been made to carry a very different meaning. Among the Arabs, if, while a person is making an assertion which some may think hazardous or dubious, another sneezes, the speaker appeals to the omen as a confirmation of what he is saying. A writer in the “Calcutta Review” thinks this notion as old as the Greeks of the time of Xenophon, as appears from a well known passage in Chap. ii. Book iii. of the Anabasis: ?pe? pe?? s?t???a? ??? ?e???t?? ?????? t?? ???? t?? s?t???? ?f???. Sneezing among the Hindus, if it occur behind your back, is regarded as so unfavourable an omen, that they at once abandon the work on which at the time they may have been engaged.

Various but not satisfactory attempts have been made to explain these customs. Thus, the Mohammedan accounts for his “Al hamdu-l Allah” by the tradition that, when the breath of life was breathed into the nostrils of Adam, he sneezed, and immediately uttered those words. While in Europe the custom of blessing the sneezer has been traced to the occurrence in Italy in the middle ages of some fatal epidemic, of which one of the symptoms was sneezing.

The superstition which regards as a favourable omen the throbbing of the eye, was well known to the ancient Greeks, is common in England, and flourishes all over India. In England, it is the man’s right eye and the woman’s left that is auspicious; and so it was in the Greece of Theocritus, and so it is in India and Persia.

The curious superstition that ghosts are visible to dogs, to which we find an allusion in Homer’s Odyssey, still flourishes in India. It may have originated in the place given to the dog in the mythology of both Greek and Hindu, or in the position enjoyed by the watch-dog among all the shepherd peoples of the world. The belief belongs to the Semitic as well as the Aryan races; and its true origin after all may be the apparently causeless howling of the dog at night,—the time when “spirits walk abroad.” Whatever the ground of the belief, it is probably in itself the cause of the superstition that the howling of dogs presages death or misfortune.

Another singular coincidence of this kind is furnished “by the custom of spitting on the breast as a charm against fascination.” In his “Greek Antiquities,” Potter notes that it was an ancient Greek custom to spit three times on the breast at the sight of a madman; and Theocritus has,—

t???de ??????sa t??? e?? ??? ?pt?se ???p??.

“Precisely the same effect is attributed to the act among the Aryan inhabitants of India, where its threefold repetition is also insisted on. No sort of reason that we can imagine, can be found for this belief; and in this case the idea is a complex one.

“The notion of a hiccough being an indication that some one is thinking of the person affected, is equally common in Europe and in India.

“The same may be said of the superstition regarding an itching of the palm of the hand; and further the idea that the palm should be rubbed against something to make the event the more sure, prevails both in India and in England. In England it should be ‘rubbed against wood,’ in India on the forehead.”[67]

We supply but one more illustration, and that shall be in folk lore; a nursery story which presents virtually the same features in the East as in the West. The following is the Hindu parallel to the old Saxon nursery tale of “The Woman that found a Silver Penny.” The coincidence will be seen to be complete.

“Once upon a time, a little bird, on its way through the woods, picked up a pea, and took it to the barbhunja to be split; but, as ill luck would have it, one half of it stuck fast in the mill-handle, and the barbhunja being unable to get it out, the little bird went off to the carpenter, and said, ‘Carpenter, carpenter, come and cut the mill-handle; my pea is in the mill-handle; what shall I eat, what shall I drink, and what shall I take to foreign countries?’ ‘Be off,’ said the carpenter, ‘is it likely I shall come and cut the mill-handle for the sake of a single pea?’“Then the little bird went to the king, and said, ‘King, king, chide the carpenter; the carpenter won’t cut the mill-handle; my pea has stuck in the mill-handle; what shall I eat, what shall I drink, and what shall I take to foreign countries?’ ‘Be off with you,’ said the king, ‘do you think that for the sake of a single pea I am going to chide the carpenter?’

“Then the little bird went to the queen, and said, ‘Queen, queen, speak to the king; the king won’t chide the carpenter; the carpenter won’t cut the mill-handle; my pea is in the socket of the mill-handle; what shall I eat, what shall I drink, and what shall I take to foreign countries?’ But the queen said, ‘Be off with you, do you think that for the sake of a single pea I am going to talk to the king?’

“Then the little bird went to the snake, and said, ‘Snake, snake, bite the queen; the queen won’t talk to the king; the king won’t chide the carpenter; the carpenter won’t cut the mill-handle; my pea is in the socket of the mill-handle; what shall I eat, what shall I drink, and what shall I take to foreign countries?’ But the snake said, ‘Be off with you, do you think that for the sake of a single pea I am going to bite the queen?’

“Then the little bird went to the stick, and said, ‘Stick, stick, beat the snake; snake won’t bite queen; queen won’t talk to king; king won’t chide carpenter; carpenter won’t cut mill-handle; my pea is in the socket of the mill-handle; what shall I eat, what shall I drink, and what shall I take to foreign countries?’ But the stick said, ‘Be off with you, do you think that for the sake of a single pea I am going to beat the snake?’

“Then the little bird went to the fire, and said, ‘Fire, fire, burn stick; stick won’t beat snake; snake won’t bite queen; queen won’t talk to king; king won’t chide carpenter; carpenter won’t cut mill-handle; my pea is in the socket of the mill-handle; what shall I eat, what shall I drink, and what shall I take to foreign countries?’ But the fire said, ‘Be off with you, do you think that for the sake of a single pea I am going to burn the stick?’

“Then the little bird went to the sea, and said, ‘Sea, sea, quench fire; fire won’t burn stick; stick won’t beat snake; snake won’t bite queen; queen won’t talk to king; king won’t chide carpenter; carpenter won’t cut mill-handle; my pea is in the socket of the mill-handle; what shall I eat, what shall I drink, and what shall I take to foreign countries?’ But the sea said, ‘Be off with you, do you think that for the sake of a single pea I am going to quench the fire?’

“Then the little bird went to the elephant, and said, ‘Elephant, elephant, dry up the sea; sea won’t quench fire; fire won’t burn stick; stick won’t beat snake; snake won’t bite queen; queen won’t talk to king; king won’t chide carpenter; carpenter won’t cut mill-handle; my pea is in the socket of the mill-handle; what shall I eat, what shall I drink, and what shall I take to foreign countries?’ But the elephant said, ‘Be off with you, to dry up the sea would take the whole host of elephants; do you think that for the sake of a single pea I am going to assemble all of my kith and kin?’

“Then the bird went to the bhaunr, (a tangled creeping plant,) and said, ‘Bhaunr, bhaunr, snare the elephant; elephant won’t drink up sea; sea won’t quench fire; fire won’t burn stick; stick won’t beat snake; snake won’t bite queen; queen won’t talk to king; king won’t chide carpenter; carpenter won’t cut mill-handle; my pea is in the socket of the mill-handle; what shall I eat, what shall I drink, and what shall I take to foreign countries?’ But the bhaunr said, ‘Be off with you, do you think that for the sake of a single pea I am going to snare the elephant?’

“Then the bird went to the mouse, and said, ‘Mouse, mouse, cut bhaunr; bhaunr won’t snare elephant; elephant won’t drink up sea; sea won’t quench fire; fire won’t burn stick; stick won’t beat snake; snake won’t bite queen; queen won’t talk to king; king won’t chide carpenter; carpenter won’t cut mill-handle; my pea is in the socket of the mill-handle; what shall I eat, what shall I drink, and what shall I take to foreign countries?’ But the mouse said, ‘Be off with you, do you think that for the sake of a single pea I am going to cut the bhaunr?’

“Then the bird went to the cat, and said, ‘Cat, cat, eat mouse; mouse won’t cut bhaunr; bhaunr won’t snare elephant; elephant won’t drink up sea; sea won’t quench fire; fire won’t burn stick; stick won’t beat snake; snake won’t bite queen; queen won’t talk to king; king won’t chide carpenter; carpenter won’t cut mill-handle; my pea is in the socket of the mill-handle; what shall I eat, what shall I drink, and what shall I take to foreign countries?’ And the cat said, ‘By all means; the mouse is my natural prey, why should I not eat it?’

“So the cat went to eat the mouse; and the mouse went to cut the bhaunr, saying,—

‘Hamko khao, a o, mat koi,
Ham bhaunr ko katat loi.’

‘Oh, oh, eat, oh! eat me no one, I will take and cut the bhaunr.’ And the bhaunr went to snare the elephant, saying, ‘Oh, cut, oh! cut me no one, I’ll take and snare the elephant.’ And so on with each one, till it came to the carpenter, who extracted the pea, and the bird took it, and went away rejoicing.”

The close resemblance between this fable and the English one of “The Silver Penny,” attests a common origin. For it cannot be supposed that either was conveyed by means of oral communication from one country to the other; and the only feasible conclusion seems to be that they are different versions of a nursery tale which belonged to our common Aryan forefathers. There can be no doubt as to its antiquity.[68]

Among the earlier superstitions of Scotland was a belief in the efficacy of charms, or metrical incantations; a belief prevailing in almost every country and period, and indirectly attesting man’s strong inward conviction of the existence of another world. That communications could be maintained with the unseen creatures that live in the air, and “the ooze;” above, beneath, and around us; that they could be made to assume a bodily form and presence; that storms could be raised or dispelled, evil prevented, secrets discovered, diseases cured, love engendered,—and that all this was possible by the utterance of certain words arranged in metrical form, though generally perfectly meaningless, was never doubted. Many of those used in Scotland evidently had their origin in the reputed efficacy of verses among the ancients; and being of an early date, they are often “intermixed with the formula of the Roman Catholic ritual.” Thus we read that one Elspeth Reoch (in 1616) had been supernaturally instructed to cure distempers by resting on her right knee while pulling a certain herb “betwixt her midfinger and thumb, and saying of, In nomine Patris, Filii, et Spiritus Sancti.” An old and popular charm for curing cattle (1607), is given by Dalyell as follows:—[69]

“I charge thee for arrow shot,
For deer shot, for womb shot,
For eye shot, for tongue shot,
For liver shot, for lung shot,
For heart shot,—all the most:
In the Name of the Father, the Son, and Holy Ghost.
To wind out of flesh and bone,
Into oak and stone:
In the Name of the Father, the Son, and Holy Ghost.
Amen.”

Sometimes these invocations were accompanied by the administration of medicinal herbs which had been gathered before sunrise. A woman accused of witchcraft, in 1588, declared that she saw “the guid nychtbours makand thair sawis with pains and fyres, and gadderit thair herbis before the sone rysing as sche did.” Among the various remedies prescribed for “the trembling fever,” or ague, by Katharine Oswald, one related to plucking up a nettle by the root, three successive mornings, before sunrise. A favourite time for this herb-gathering rite was Midsummer; a relic of the old Pagan superstition connected with the sun’s position in the Zodiac. The metrical charm then made use of was popular also in England,—

“Haile be thou, holie hearte,
Growing on the ground;
All in the Mount Calvarie
First wast thou found.
Thou art good for manie a sore,
And healest manie a wound;
In the Name of Sweet Jesus,
I take thee from the ground.”“Bleeding at the touch,” has been accepted in several countries as a revelation of guilt. A man suspected of murder was brought to the side of the murdered man’s body, and forced to touch it; if the suspicions were just, blood immediately oozed from the wound, or at the mouth, or nose. Even at the man’s approach this sign of crime would appear. It is easy to see how precarious and dangerous a test was this; how readily it might release the guilty, and betray the innocent. Naturally therefore it was not accepted without reluctance. A man and his sister had quarrelled; he died suddenly, and his body was found in his own house, naked, and with a wound on the face, but bloodless. “Although many of the neighbours in the town came into the house to see the dead corpse, yet she, the sister, never offered to come, howbeit her dwelling was next door, nor had she so much as any seeming grief for his death. But the minister and bailiffs of the town taking great suspicion of her in respect of her carriage, commanded that she should be brought in. But when she came, she came trembling all the way to the house; she refused to come nigh to the corpse, or to touch, saying, that she never touched a dead corpse in her life. But being earnestly entreated by the minister and bailiffs, and her brother’s friends, who was killed, that she would but touch the corpse softly, she granted to do it. But before she did it, the sun shining in at the house, she expressed herself thus: ‘Humbly desiring, as the Lord made the sun to shine and give light into that house, that also He would give light in discovering that murder.’ And with these words, she touching the wound of the dead man very softly, it being white and clean, without any spot of blood or the like, yet immediately, while her finger was upon it, the blood rushed out of it, to the great admiration of all the beholders, who took it as one discovery of the murder, according to her own prayer.”

It will seem astonishing to readers of the present day that a poor creature’s life could be taken away on such fanciful and uncertain evidence.

We read that a Sir James Standsfield was found lying dead in a stream. His body was interred precipitately. Two days afterwards it was exhumed and partially dissected, the neck in particular being laid open, in order to ascertain the cause of death. After being well cleansed, blood burst from that side supported by his son Philip, on returning the body to the coffin for re-interment—not an unlikely result from the straining of the incisions—and it deeply stained his hand. He was arraigned, on this slight ground, for parricide; and in the course of the trial it was gravely argued that it was the will of Providence to disclose by this peculiar incident a secret crime.

The preservation of health and the prolongation of life are necessarily objects of interest to all mankind, and it was natural enough that around them should flourish a rank growth of superstitions.

To ailing or diseased persons all kinds of potions, pills, and powders were administered in the past as they are in the present; but whereas we are now content with the mystic characters endorsed on his formula by the physician, our ancestors were not satisfied unless certain mystical words, numbers, or ceremonies accompanied them. The sign of the cross was in constant requisition; or the medicine was to be taken according to mystical numbers—thrice or nine times, as the case might be. For hooping-cough was prescribed a draught from the horn of a living ox, nine times repeated. The patient was also put “nine several times” in the miller’s hopper.

The importance ascribed to the figure of a circle is probably a relic of the influence of the old sun-worship. Consumptive invalids, or children suffering from hectic fever, were thrice passed through a circular wreath of woodbine, cut during the increase of the March moon, and let down over the body from head to foot. We read of a sorceress who healed sundry women by “taking a garland of green woodbine, and causing the patient to pass thrice through it.” Afterwards, the garland was cut in nine pieces, which were cast into the fire—generally an indispensable particular in ceremonies of this kind. Another passed her patient through a heap of green yarn, which the nurse shook, and then divided it into nine pieces, which were buried in the lands of three owners. A certain Thomas Grieve directed a patient to pass thrice through a heap of yarn, which he duly burned. He also cured the wife of a Michael Glanis by having a hole broken on the north side of the chimney, and putting a hoop of yarn thrice through it, and taking it back at the door; and thereafter compelling the patient to go nine times through the said hoop of yarn.

White of Selborne tells us of a custom, prevalent in his time in the south of England, of stripping feeble and diseased children, and transmitting them head foremost through an artificial cleft in a young tree, the several parts of which were held forcibly asunder. The wound was then bound up carefully, and it was expected that the child would recover as the tree healed. If the cleft did not unite, the remedy proved abortive; and if the tree were cut down, the patient relapsed or died.

Borlase speaks of a similar custom in Cornwall, except that a perforated stone was used instead of a cleft tree.

In Persia, according to Alexander, passage through a long fissure or crevice in a rock, by crawling on hands and knees, is employed as a test of legitimate birth. And in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, to pass between the pillars supporting an altar and the neighbouring wall, was practised as a like test. It has been suggested, as the meaning of these various transmissions through cleft, aperture, skein of yarn, and garland, that they are symbolical of regeneration; a second birth, whereby a living soul is cleansed from its former impurities and imperfections. Wilford speaks of a sanctified fissure in a rock in the East, to which pilgrims resort “for the purpose of regeneration, by the efficacy of a passage through this sacred type.”

The faculty of divining events, passing at a distance from the seer, or of passively receiving a knowledge that such events are taking place, is the well-known “second sight,” which plays so important a part in many Scottish stories. “In the stricter acceptation of this faculty,” we are told, “contemporary objects and incidents are beheld at the time, however remote their locality, but neither those which have passed, nor those which have yet to come. If extending to futurity, the subject of the vision is about to be realised. Therefore the second sight borders only on prognostication. It is affirmed to be more peculiar to Scotland, for very faint analogy to such a property has been claimed for other countries: and that the highlanders chiefly, together with the inhabitants of the insular districts, or that portion of the kingdom less advanced, have enjoyed it in the highest perfection. Marvellous to be told, they have said that their cattle are gifted with it as well as themselves.”

The faculty was one which knew no distinction of age or sex, or class; it was enjoyed by man and woman, young and old, rich and poor, high-born and plebeians, and in many cases was inherited. It might occasionally be imparted by a gifted person, or acquired by study and preparation. It is a proof, were proof needed, of the living influence of the imagination, that the vision beheld by one individual only, might be revealed to a companion visionary, thus confirmed in his belief in the value of his new prerogative; simply by the pressure of the seer’s right foot on the novice’s left, holding one hand on his head, while he was admonished to look over the master’s right shoulder. Thus, Lilly, the astrologer—Butler’s “hight Sidrophel”—relates how one John Scott desired William Hodges, an astrologer in Staffordshire, to show him the person and features of the person he should marry. Hodges carried him into a field not far from his home; pulled out his magic crystal; bade Scott set his foot against his, and after awhile desired him to inspect the crystal, and observe what he saw there. Of course he saw exactly what his fevered wishes were resolved to see.

Ceremonies of a more fantastic character were sometimes involved, and round the novice’s body was coiled a hair rope with which a corpse had been bound to its bier. He was then required to look through a hole left by the removal of a fir knot; and, on stooping, he was instructed to look back between his legs, until an advancing funeral procession should cross the boundary of the estates of two different owners. The inconvenience of this complicated performance is obvious; it might also be dangerous; for if the wind changed while the novice was girded with the mystical cord, he was liable to the penalty of death.

A seer gifted with this wonderful faculty could not divest himself of it, though often he would fain have done so. However acquired, it was a perilous endowment, fraught with physical and mental suffering, and reputed to be no gift from on high, but to have come from the Father of Evil.

The objects seen were generally sad and sorrowful; calamities to persons or nations. Woodrow says that before the Marquis of Argyll went to London in 1660, he was playing “at the bullets,” or bowls, with some Scottish gentlemen; when one of them, as the Marquis stooped down to lift the bullet, “fell pale,” and said to those about him: “Bless me, what is this I see? my lord with his head off, and all his shoulder full of blood?”

On one occasion, a gentleman joined a company, all of whom were very frank and cheerful. He had no sooner entered than one of the guests, who had not previously known him, showed much depression of spirit. Without taking any notice of it the new-comer quickly rose, and went his way. The other thereupon showed great concern, and wished he would remain; for he saw him, he said, with a shroud up to his neck, and he knew that this sign foreboded his death. In vain some of the company would have persuaded the doomed man to take warning, but he departed, and having ridden a short distance, he and his horse fell, and he broke his neck.

On the morning of the battle of Bothwell Bridge, that sore defeat to the Covenanters—so vigorously described by Scott in his “Old Mortality”—Mr. John Cameron, minister at Lochhead in Kintyre, fell into a fit of melancholy, so that Mr. Morison, of his elders, observing him through his chamber door, sore weeping and wringing his hands, knocked until he opened to him. Then he asked what was the matter? Were his wife and children well? “Little matter for them,” he answered; “our friends at Bothwell are gone.” Mr. Morison told him it might be a mistake, and the offcome of his gloomy thoughts: “No, no,” said he, “I see them flying as clearly as I see the wall.” As near as they could calculate by the accounts they afterwards obtained, this incident at the Lochhead of Kintyre was contemporaneous with the flight of the Covenanters at Bothwell.

Munro, the Scotch soldier of fortune, who bore himself so gallantly in the wars of Gustavus Adolphus, tells a story of a vision that was seen by a soldier of his company on the morning of the storm of Stralsund in 1628. One Murdo Macleod, born in Assen, a soldier of tall stature and valiant courage, being sleeping on his watch, awoke at break of day, and “jogged” two of his comrades lying by him, much to their indignation at his “stirring them.” He replied: “Before long, you shall be otherwise stirred.” A soldier called Allan Tough, a Lochaber man, recommending his soul to God, asked him what he had seen: “That you shall never behold your country again.” The other replied, the loss was but small, if the rest of the company were well. He answered: “No, for there was great hurt and dearth of many very near.” The other again asked, what others he had seen who would perish. He then told by name sundry of his comrades who would be killed. The other asked, what would become of himself. Eventually, he described by their clothes all the officers who would be hurt. “A pretty quick boy near by,” asked him, what would become of the Major (that is, Munro himself?) “He would be shot, but not deadly,” was the answer,—and so it proved.

A good deal is said of this Taisch, or “Second Sight,” in Dr. Johnson’s “Journey to the Hebrides,” and some striking anecdotes are told. It was just the thing to interest his moody temperament, with its terrible dread of death and its longing to lift the curtain that hides from us the Unseen. He seems, however, to have been unable to convince himself of the actual existence of such a power; all the evidence he could collect failed to advance his curiosity to conviction, so that he could not believe, while remaining willing to believe. To use the noble words of Goethe, nobly rendered by Coleridge:

“As the sun,
Ere it is risen, sometimes paints its image
In the atmosphere, so often do the spirits
Of great events stride on before the events,
And in To-day already walks To-morrow.”

This it is not difficult to accept. It seems fitting that presages should herald the death of kings and the revolutions of nations; but the mind cannot convince itself that the spirits of the dead will cross the shadowy borders to foretell the trivial accidents that chequer ordinary lives. Yet, as Johnson says: “A man on a journey far from home falls from a horse; another who is perhaps at work about the house, sees him bleeding on the ground, commonly with a landscape of the place where the accident befalls him. Another seer, driving home his cattle, or wandering in idleness, or musing in the sunshine, is suddenly surprised by the appearance of a bridal ceremony or funeral procession, and counts the mourners or attendants, of whom, if he knows them, he relates the names, if he knows them not he can describe the dresses.”

Woodrow tells of “a popish lady,” living near Boroughbridge, who dreamed that she saw a coach, and a lady in it, almost lost in the river. She directed her servants to watch during two nights, to guard against an accident, but nothing happened. “On the third night, pretty late, the Lady Shawfield came, and of a sudden the coach was overturned, and filled with water. The coachman got upon one of the horses, to save his life. The good and religious Lady Shawfield was for some time under water: and upon the cry rising, the popish lady’s servants came to their assistance. With much difficulty, the coach and lady in it were got out of the water.” And the Lady Shawfield, being laid upon the bank, gradually recovered her senses.

In the early months of the Commonwealth, while Mackenzie of Tarbat, afterwards Earl of Cromarty, was riding in a field among his tenants, who were manuring barley, a stranger “called that way on his foot, and stopped likewise, and said to the countrymen, ‘You need not be so busy about that barley, for I see the Englishmen’s horses tethered among it; and other parts mowed down for them.’ Tarbet asked him how he knew them to be Englishmen, and if he had ever seen any of them? He said, ‘No; but he saw them strangers, and heard the English were in Scotland, and guessed it could be no other than they.’ In the month of July, the thing happened directly as the man said he saw it.”

The influence exercised on the imagination by events in which we are deeply interested, and the manner in which our hopes or fears are mistaken for predictions, may be illustrated by two examples from antiquity. On the day that CÆsar and Pompey contended at Pharsalia for the mastery of the world, Cornelius, a priest and patrician of Padua, declared, under a sudden impulse of passion, that he beheld the eddies and currents of a desperate battle, and the fall and flight of many of the combatants, eventually exclaiming: “CÆsar has conquered!” His hearers laughed at him, but his words were afterwards verified, and it appeared that he had foretold not only the day, but the incidents, and the result of the famous battle in Thessaly. The anecdote is related on the authority of the “Noctes AtticÆ” of Aulus Gellius.

Dio Cassius tells a similar story about the assassination of the Emperor Domitian at Rome, by his freedman Stephanus. “It is to be admired,” he says, “that, as accurately proved by persons in either place, Apollonius ThyanÆus, ascending an eminence at Ephesus or elsewhere, cried out before the multitude: ‘Well done, Stephanus, well done! Strike the murderer! thou hast struck him, thou hast wounded him, he is slain!’” But it may well be supposed that a secret understanding existed between Apollonius and the murderer.

From “second sight” we pass on to “prediction” or “divination,” another of the superstitious modes by which humanity has endeavoured to read the book of the Future. In the north this power of prophecy was largely assumed by women, a circumstance of which Scott has made ample and picturesque use in more than one of his admirable fictions.

A woman foretold the tragical end of James I. of Scotland, in 1436. In the early stage of a journey from Edinburgh to Leith, and in the midst of the way, arose a woman of Ireland, who claimed to be a soothsayer, and as soon as she saw the king, she cried with a loud voice, saying, “My lord king, an ye pass this water, ye shall never turn again to live.” The king was astonished at her words, for but shortly before he had fallen in with a prophecy, that in the self-same year the King of Scots should be slain. And as he rode onward, he called to him one of his knights, and commanded him to return and speak with this woman, and ask of her what she would, and what she meant by her loud crying: and she began and told him what would befall the king if he passed that water. The king asked her how she knew so much, and she said that Huthart told her so. “Sire,” quoth the knight, “men may gallantly talk, nor take heed of yonder woman’s words, for she is but a drunken fool, and wots not what she saith.” And so with his folk he passed the water called the Scottish Sea, towards S. John’s town [Perth,] about four miles from the country of the wild Scots, and there, in a convent of Black Friars, outside the town, he held a great feast. In the course of the revel came “the said woman of Ireland, who called herself a divineress,” and made several vain attempts to gain access to the king. Meanwhile the conspirators matured their plot, removed the king’s guards, attacked him, and slew him.[70]

All the predictions which come true are preserved; we hear nothing of those which fail, for no one has an interest in recording or repeating them; hence an undue importance is gradually attached to what are nothing more than remarkable coincidences. Many others are prophecies “after the event.” Others are based on a careful calculation of probabilities. As in the following example: An Orkney warlock, full of displeasure with James Paplay, a proud and haughty chief, with whose character, doubtless, she was well acquainted, broke forth into a torrent of predictive utterances: “Thou art now the highest man that ever thou shalt be! Thou art gone to shear thy corn, but it shall never do you good! Thou art going to set house with thy wife,—ye shall have no joy of one another. Oil shall not keep you and her; ye shall have such a meit-will [craving,] and shall have nothing to eat, but be fain to eat grass under the stones and wair (sea-weed) under the rocks.” It was seriously asserted that not only were these predictions—or menaces—uttered, but that they were all fulfilled; and it is possible that the prophet may have had something to do with their fulfilment.

A curious anecdote is related of a Scottish minister, who, on the day of the battle of Killiecrankie, was preaching at Anworth, and in his preface before his prayer, according to his usual mode of homely expression, began to this purpose: “Some of you will say, What news, minister? What news about Clavers, who has done so much mischief in this country? That man sets up to be a young Montrose, but as the Lord liveth, he shall be cut short this day. Be not afraid,” added he, “I see them scattered and flying: and as the Lord liveth, and sends this message by me, Claverhouse shall no longer be a terror to God’s people. This day I see him killed—lying a corpse.” And on that day, and at that hour, Claverhouse fell[71] (July 27th, 1689.)

In their anxiety to obtain a glimpse of the dread writing in the Book of Fate, men have resorted to divers strange expedients, applying to warlocks and witches, or seeking to wring a response to their questionings from the creatures of the Invisible World. The ceremony known as Taghairm, or “Echo,” seems to have been peculiar to Scotland. The inquirer was wrapped in a cow’s hide, his head being left free, and was carried by assistants to a solitary spot, or left under the liquid arch formed by the “sheeted column’s silvery perpendicular” in waterfall or cataract: there he remained during the watches of the night, with phantoms fluttering round about him, from whence he was supposed to derive the burden of the oracular response he delivered to his comrades on the following day.

It is probable that this ceremony is the relic of some ancient form of ritual. At all events, the skins of animals played an important part in the old worship. When the Thebans slew a cow on the festival of Jupiter Ammon, his image was clothed with the skin: all present in the temple then struck the carcase, which was buried in a consecrated place.

Pausanias records that a temple in honour of the soothsayer Amphiaraus, the reputed son of Apollo, stood in the territory of Oropus in Attica. Votaries who resorted thither for the purpose of divination, underwent certain lustrations, or purifying rites, sacrificed a ram, and, in expectation of seeing visions, slept upon its skin.

Virgil, in one of the most elaborate scenes of the Æneid, represents to us a similar oblation as being offered at a consecrated fountain, where the priest, to prepare himself for the delivery of responses, slept on the skin:—

“Et cÆsarum ovium sub nocte silenti
Pellibus incubuit stratis, somnosque petivit;
Multa modis simulacra videt volitantia miris
Et varias audit voces.”[72]

It seems to have been an important part of the heathen ritual to make use of the skin of the sacrificed animal for the purposes of clothing. Lucian, describing the ceremonies practised in the temple of Hierapolis, says that, on his arrival, the head and eyebrows of the novice were shaved; a sheep was then sacrificed; he knelt on the skin, and covering his own head with the head and feet of the animal, prayed that his offering might be accepted while promising a worthier one.

The Spanish invaders of the New World discovered that the religion of its most civilised race, the Aztecs, was founded upon human sacrifices. The number of victims offered up to the Aztec gods is stated in figures which seem almost incredible. Peculiar to the Aztec kingdom was the horrid ceremony entitled “the flaying of men.” The Aztecs having demanded the daughter of some neighbouring potentate as their queen, she was flayed on the very night of her arrival by command of their deity, and a young man clothed in her skin. In this originated the custom that a captive slave, distinguished by the name, the honours, and the ornaments of the divinity, should be sacrificed after a certain time; and another, clothed with his skin, then exacted contributions for the service of the gods, which no one, says Acosta, dared to refuse.

We have no space to dwell on the various forms of divination that were wont to prevail. Almost everything in nature, from the stars of heaven to the clods of earth, was made to give indications of coming events. The historian of the darker Superstitions of Scotland brings together a few striking illustrations.

If a certain worm in a medicinal spring on the top of a hill in Strathdon, were found alive, it was a sign that the patient would live; and in a well of Ardwacloich, in Appin, if the patient were to die, a dead worm was found in it, and a live one, if he were to recover. In the district of Lorn, the figures assumed by an egg dropped into water were supposed to indicate the appearance of a future spouse. “Also, one of four vessels being filled with pure, and another with muddy water, the third with milk, and the fourth with meal and water; if the diviner blindfold dips his hand in the first, it augurs that his spouse shall be led to the nuptial couch in all her pristine purity; but otherwise if dipping in the second: if finding his way to the milk, a widow shall fall to his lot; and an old woman awaits him from the meal and water. Three vessels are used in the south of Scotland; one of them empty; and should fate direct the diviner hither, it augurs perpetual celibacy.”

A belief in Fairies was widespread, and has survived, in remote districts, down even to our own time:

“Oft fairy elves
Whose midnight revels by a forest side
Or fountain, some belated peasant sees,
Or dreams he sees, while overhead the moon
Sits arbitress, and nearer to the earth
Wheels her pale course, they on their mirth and dance
Intent, with jocund music charm his ear:
At once with joy and fear his heart rebounds.”[73]

It is not easy to reconcile the conflicting details of the disposition, manners, habits, and influence of these liliputian spirits which we meet with in the early writers. But on a general survey it appears that they were very diminutive; in their intercourse with mortals sometimes good-tempered, sometimes malignant; that they loved and married, and had offspring; that they were very merry, and loved to dance upon the green, and fill the air with choral music; that they possessed stores of gold and silver, which they distributed freely; that they were invisible, but could at will present themselves to mortals; that they were very timid, and would inflict a summary punishment upon intruders. Their influence was at its highest on Friday, at noon, and at midnight.

Kirk, the Scotch minister of Aberfoyle, who died in 1688, relates some other particulars of the “good people.” Their substance, he says, is denser than air; too subtle to be pierced, and, like that of Milton’s angels, reuniting when divided, or when any attempt is made to cleave it asunder. Their voice is like unto whistling. They change their places of abode every quarter of the year, floating near the surface of the earth; and persons gifted with the second sight have often had fierce encounters with them. The Highlanders, to preserve themselves and their cattle against them, went regularly to church on the first Sunday of every quarter, though they might not return during the interval. At the name of God or Jesus they vanished into thin air. They were of both sexes, and like mankind, they were mortal.

“Some meagre allusions appear to the Queen of the Fairies, and especially by King James, whose immediate knowledge may have been derived from the vignettes in Olaus Magnus, and the words of his own unhappy subjects, who perished on account of their credulity. Alexoun Perisoma was convicted, on her confession, of repairing to the ‘queen of Elfame,’ with whom she was familiar. Jean Wire (1670) declared that, while she taught a school at Dalkeith, a woman desired to be employed ‘to speik to the Queen of Fairie, and strike ane battell in hir behalf with the said Queen.’” The name of Titania is familiar enough to all lovers of English literature. There was a necromancer or wizard, in the reign of Charles I., who affirmed he had an incantation—“O Micol, Micol, regina Pigmiorum, veni,”—that Titania could not resist. Lilly tells us that when it was tested at Hurst wood, first a gentle murmurous sound was heard; then rose a violent whirlwind, which swelled into a hurricane; and lastly the Fairy Queen appeared in all her radiance.

Fairies generally dwelt in subterraneous abodes; in the interiors of grassy hillocks, whence issued dulcet sounds and flashes of weird light; sometimes the side of a hill opened, and exposed them to the gaze of the belated wayfarer. No doubt they were seen everywhere by the potent gaze of imagination; on the meads and in the groves, or curled up among the bending flowers; for

“Visions as poetic eyes avow,
Hang from each leaf, and cling to every bough.”

They were reputed to be well skilled in the medical art, and to favoured mortals they sometimes imparted their knowledge. It is difficult to understand why they were credited with the abstraction of children, and with the substitution of other beings in their place. For this curious kind of theft was commonly attributed to them. A “wise woman”—a dealer in simples and herbal potions—having failed to cure a child, declared that “the bairn had been taken away, and an elf substituted.”

Besides the fairies, Scotland could boast of its spirits of the waters, just as Germany had its Loreleys and Ondines.

We can gather, however, no definite information respecting the water-kelpie, the water-horses, or the water-bull, or of another anomalous animal called shelly-coat. Describing Lochlomond, Graham says:—“It is reported by the countrymen living thereabouts, that they sometimes see the hippopotam or water-horse, where the river Cudrie falls into it, a mile west of the church of Buchanan.” A river known as the Ugly Burn, in the county of Ross, springing from Loch Glaish, was regarded with awe by all the countryside, as the retreat of the water-horse and other spiritual beings. Shetland is represented as having possessed a handsome water-horse which, when mounted, carried the rider into the sea. Mr. Dalyell, writing in 1835, says, that the water-bull is still believed to reside in Loch Awe and Loch Rannoch, nor, he adds, are witnesses wanting to bear testimony to the fact. It was reputed to be invulnerable against all except silver shot; though no one had put it to the proof. In the Isle of Man certain persons who saw the water-bull in a field were unable to distinguish him from one of the ordinary terrestrial species, nor did the cows show any disposition to avoid him. But his progeny always turned out to be a rude lump of flesh and skin, without bones.

The spirit of the sea was believed to be malicious, and capable of inflicting injury. Allusions are frequent to “sea-trowis, meermen, meermaids, and a number of little creatures coming from the sea” in response to spell and charm. Nor must we forget the practice of pouring out libations to the aquatic divinities. A century ago, in Crawford Muir, when a tenant was evicted and another took his place, he cut the throat of a black lamb and threw it into a stream, with a malediction both upon stream and lamb.

To this futile department of human error we can, however, devote no more space. To treat it adequately we should need at least a couple of volumes as closely printed as the present.