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Title: The secret commonwealth of elves, fauns & fairies
Author: Robert Kirk
Editor: Andrew Lang
Illustrator: W. Lockhart Bogle
Release date: February 27, 2025 [eBook #75485]
Language: English
Original publication: uk: David Nutt, 1893
Credits: Jens Sadowski, John Campbell and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SECRET COMMONWEALTH OF ELVES, FAUNS & FAIRIES ***
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE
This book was published in 1893 and is a careful reproduction of a
book printed in 1815 from a manuscript of 1691 by Rev. Robert Kirk.
An Introduction and Notes have been added by Andrew Lang for the
1893 publication.
In this etext:
Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.
Bold text is denoted by =equal signs=.
Footnote anchors are denoted by [number], and the Lang footnotes
have been placed at the end of the book in front of the two Catalog
pages.
Except for a very few changes noted at the end of the book, all
misspellings in the text, and inconsistent or archaic usage, have
been left unchanged.
THE SECRET COMMONWEALTH OF ELVES FAUNS & FAIRIES
[Illustration: BIBLIOTHEQUE DE CARABAS]
Bibliothèque de Carabas
VOL. VIII
_Five hundred and fifty copies of this Edition have been
printed, five hundred of which are for sale._
[_All rights reserved._]
[Illustration: (Kilted shepherd looking at an apparition)]
The Secret Commonwealth of
Elves, Fauns, & Fairies
A Study in Folk-Lore & Psychical Research. The
Text by Robert Kirk, M.A., Minister of
Aberfoyle, A.D. 1691. The Comment
by Andrew Lang, M.A.
A.D. 1893
[Illustration: (small decorative icon)]
_LONDON. M.D.CCCXCIII. PUBLISHED BY DAVID
NUTT, IN THE STRAND_
Dedication.
TO
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
O Louis! you that like them maist,
Ye’re far frae kelpie, wraith, and ghaist,
And fairy dames, no unco chaste,
And haunted cell.
Among a heathen clan ye’re placed,
That kens na hell!
Ye hae nae heather, peat, nor birks,
Nae troot in a’ your burnies lurks,
There are nae bonny U.P. kirks,
An awfu’ place!
Nane kens the Covenant o’ Works
Frae that of Grace!
But whiles, maybe, to them ye’ll read
Blads o’ the Covenanting creed,
And whiles their pagan wames ye’ll feed
On halesome parritch;
And syne ye’ll gar them learn a screed
O’ the Shorter Carritch.
Yet thae uncovenanted shavers
Hae rowth, ye say, o’ clash and clavers
O’ gods and etins—auld wives’ havers,
But their delight;
The voice o’ him that tells them quavers
Just wi’ fair fright.
And ye might tell, ayont the faem,
Thae Hieland clashes o’ oor hame.
To speak the truth, I tak’ na shame
To half believe them;
And, stamped wi’ TUSITALA’s name,
They’ll a’ receive them.
And folk to come, ayont the sea,
May hear the yowl of the Banshie,
And frae the water-kelpie flee,
Ere a’ things cease,
And island bairns may stolen be
By the Folk o’ Peace.
Faith, they might steal _me_, wi’ ma will,
And, ken’d I ony Fairy hill,
I’d lay me down there, snod and still,
Their land to win,
For, man, I’ve maistly had my fill
O’ this world’s din.
The Fairy Minister.
IN MEMORY OF
THE REV. ROBERT KIRK,
_WHO WENT TO HIS OWN HERD_, AND ENTERED INTO
THE LAND OF THE PEOPLE OF PEACE,
IN THE YEAR OF GRACE SIXTEEN
HUNDRED AND NINETY-TWO,
AND OF HIS AGE
FIFTY-TWO.
People of Peace! A peaceful man,
Well worthy of your love was he,
Who, while the roaring Garry ran
Red with the life-blood of Dundee,
While coats were turning, crowns were falling,
Wandered along his valley still,
And heard your mystic voices calling
From fairy knowe and haunted hill.
He heard, he saw, he knew too well
The secrets of your fairy clan;
You stole him from the haunted dell,
Who never more was seen of man.
Now far from heaven, and safe from hell,
Unknown of earth, he wanders free.
Would that he might return and tell
Of his mysterious company!
For we have tired the Folk of Peace;
No more they tax our corn and oil;
Their dances on the moorland cease,
The Brownie stints his wonted toil.
No more shall any shepherd meet
The ladies of the fairy clan,
Nor are their deathly kisses sweet
On lips of any earthly man.
And half I envy him who now,
Clothed in her Court’s enchanted green,
By moonlit loch or mountain’s brow
Is Chaplain to the Fairy Queen.
A. L.
KIRK’S
SECRET COMMONWEALTH.
INTRODUCTION.
I. THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK AND AUTHOR.
The bibliography of the following little tract is extremely obscure.
The title-page of the edition of 1815, which we reproduce, gives
the date as 1691. Sir Walter Scott says in his _Demonology and
Witchcraft_ (1830, p. 163, note), “It was printed with the author’s
name in 1691, and reprinted, in 1815, for Longman & Co.” But was
there really a printed edition of 1691? Scott says that he never met
with an example. Research in our great libraries has discovered none,
and there is none save that of 1815 at Abbotsford. The reprint, of
one hundred copies, was made, as it states, from no printed text,
but from “a manuscript copy preserved in the Advocates’ Library.” On
page 45 of the edition of 1815, at the end of the comments on Lord
Tarbott’s Letters, there is a “Note by the Transcriber”—that is, the
person who wrote out the manuscript in the Advocates’ Library: “See
the rest in a little manuscript belonging to Coline Kirk.” Now Coline
or Colin Kirk, Writer to the Signet, was the son of the Rev. Mr.
Kirk, author of the tract. If the son had his father’s book only in
manuscript, it seems very probable that it was not printed in 1691;
that the title-page is only the title-page of a manuscript. Till some
printed text of 1691 is discovered, we may doubt, then, whether the
hundred copies published in 1815, and now somewhat rare, be not the
original printed edition. The editor has a copy of 1815, but it is
the only one which he has met with for sale.
The Rev. Robert Kirk, the author of _The Secret Commonwealth_, was
a student of theology at St. Andrews: his Master’s degree, however,
he took at Edinburgh. He was (and this is notable) the youngest and
_seventh_ son of Mr. James Kirk, minister of Aberfoyle, the place
familiar to all readers of _Rob Roy_. As a seventh son, he was, no
doubt, specially gifted, and in _The Secret Commonwealth_ he lays
some stress on the mystic privileges of such birth. There may be
“some secret virtue in the womb of the parent, which increaseth
until the seventh son be borne, and decreaseth by the same degree
afterwards.” It would not surprise us if Mr. Kirk, no less than the
Rev. Robert Blair of St. Andrews (1650-60), could heal scrofula by
the touch, like royal persons—Charles III. in Italy, for example.
As is well known to all, the House of Brunswick has no such powers.
However this may have been, Mr. Kirk was probably drawn, by his
seventh sonship, to a more careful study of psychical phenomena
than most of his brethren bestowed. Little is known of his life.
He was minister originally of Balquidder, whence, in 1685, he was
transferred to Aberfoyle. This was no Covenanting district, and
there is no bigotry in Mr. Kirk’s dissertation. He was employed on
an “Irish” translation of the Bible, and he published a Psalter in
Gaelic (1684). He married, first, Isobel, daughter of Sir Colin
Campbell of Mochester, who died in 1680, and, secondly, the daughter
of Campbell of Fordy: this lady survived him. From his connection
with Campbells, we may misdoubt him for a Whig. By his first wife
he had a son, Colin Kirk, W.S.; by his second wife, a son who was
minister of Dornoch. He died (if he did die, which is disputed) in
1692, aged about fifty-one; his tomb was inscribed—
ROBERTUS KIRK, A.M.
Linguæ Hiberniæ Lumen.
The tomb, in Scott’s time, was to be seen in the east end of the
churchyard of Aberfoyle; but the ashes of Mr. Kirk _are not there_.
His successor, the Rev. Dr. Grahame, in his _Sketches of Picturesque
Scenery_, informs us that, as Mr. Kirk was walking on a _dun-shi_,
or fairy-hill, in his neighbourhood, he sunk down in a swoon, which
was taken for death. “After the ceremony of a seeming funeral,”
writes Scott (_op. cit._, p. 105), “the form of the Rev. Robert
Kirk appeared to a relation, and commanded him to go to Grahame of
Duchray. ‘Say to Duchray, who is my cousin as well as your own,
that I am not dead, but a captive in Fairyland; and only one chance
remains for my liberation. When the posthumous child, of which my
wife has been delivered since my disappearance, shall be brought to
baptism, I will appear in the room, when, if Duchray shall throw
over my head the knife or dirk which he holds in his hand, I may be
restored to society; but if this is neglected, I am lost for ever.’”
True to his tryst, Mr. Kirk did appear at the christening, and “was
visibly seen;” but Duchray was so astonished that he did not throw
his dirk over the head of the appearance, and to society Mr. Kirk has
not yet been restored. This is extremely to be regretted, as he could
now add matter of much importance to his treatise. Neither history
nor tradition has more to tell about Mr. Robert Kirk, who seems to
have been a man of good family, a student, and, as his book shows, an
innocent and learned person.
II. THE SECRET COMMONWEALTH.
The tract, of which the reader now knows the history, is a little
volume of somewhat singular character. Written in 1691 by the Rev.
Robert Kirk, minister of Aberfoyle, it is a kind of metaphysic of
the Fairy world. Having lived through the period of the sufferings
of the Kirk, the author might have been expected either to neglect
Fairyland altogether, or to regard it as a mere appanage of Satan’s
kingdom—a “burning question” indeed, for some of the witches who
suffered at Presbyterian hands were merely narrators of popular tales
about the state of the dead. That she trafficked with the dead,
and from a ghost won a medical recipe for the cure of Archbishop
Adamson of St. Andrews, was the charge against Alison Pearson. “The
Bischope keipit his castle lyk a tod in his holl, seik of a disease
of grait fetiditie, and oftymes under the cure of women suspected of
witchcraft, namlie, wha confessit hir to haiff learnit medecin of ane
callit Mr. Wilyeam Simsone, that apeired divers tymes to hir efter
his dead, and gaiff hir a buik.... She was execut in Edinbruche for a
witch” (James Melville’s _Diary_, p. 137, 1583). The Archbishop, like
other witches, had a familiar in the form of a hare, which once ran
before him down the street. These were the beliefs of men of learning
like James, the nephew and companion of Andrew Melville. Even in our
author’s own time, Archbishop Sharp was accused of entertaining “the
muckle black Deil” in his study at midnight, and of being “levitated”
and dancing in the air. This last feat, creditable to a saint or a
Neo-Platonist like Plotinus, was reckoned for sin to Archbishop
Sharp, as may be read in Wodrow’s _Analecta_. Thus all Fairydom was
commonly looked on as under the same guilt as witchcraft. Yet Mr.
Kirk of Aberfoyle, living among Celtic people, treats the land of
faery as a mere fact in nature, a world with its own laws, which
he investigates without fear of the Accuser of the Brethren. We
may thus regard him, even more than Wodrow, as an early student
in folk-lore and in psychical research—topics which run into each
other—and he shows nothing of the usual persecuting disposition. Nor,
again, is Mr. Kirk like Glanvil and Henry More. He does not, save in
his title-page and in one brief passage, make superstitious creeds
or psychical phenomena into arguments and proofs against modern
Sadducees. Firm in his belief, he treats his matter in a scientific
spirit, as if he were dealing with generally recognised physical
phenomena.
Our study of Mr. Kirk’s little tractate must have a double aspect.
It must be an essay partly on folk-lore, on popular beliefs, their
relation to similar beliefs in other parts of the world, and the
residuum of fact, preserved by tradition, which they may contain.
On the other hand, as mental phenomena are in question—such things
as premonitions, hallucinations, abnormal or unusual experiences
generally—a criticism of Mr. Kirk must verge on “Psychical Research.”
The Society organised for that difficult subject certainly takes a
vast deal of trouble about all manner of odd reports and strange
visions. It “transfers” thoughts of no value, at a great expense of
time and of serious hard work. But, as far as the writer has read
the Society’s Proceedings, it “takes no keep,” as Malory says, of
these affairs in their historical aspect. Whatever hallucination, or
illusion, or imposture, or the “subliminal self” can do to-day, has
always been done among peoples in every degree of civilisation. An
historical study of the topic, as contained in trials for witchcraft,
in the reports of travellers and missionaries, in the works of the
seventeenth-century Platonists, More, Glanvill, Sinclair, and others,
and in the rare tracts such as _The Devil in Glen Luce_ and _The
Just Devil of Woodstock_, not to mention Lavater, Wierus, Thyræus,
Reginald Scott, and so on, is as necessary to the psychologist as
to the folk-lorist.[1] If there be an element of fact in modern
hypnotic experiments (a matter on which I have really no opinion),
it is plain that old magic and witchcraft are not mere illusions,
or not commonplace illusions. The subliminal self has his stroke in
these affairs. Assuredly the Psychologists should have an historical
department. The evidence which they would find is, of course,
vitiated in many obvious ways, but the evidence contains much that
coincides with that of modern times, and the coincidence can hardly
be designed—that is to say, the old Highland seers had no design of
abetting modern inquiry. It may be, however, that their methods and
ideas have been traditionally handed down to modern “sensitives”
and “mediums.” At all events, here is an historical chapter, if it
be but a chapter in “The History of Human Error.” These wide and
multifarious topics can only be touched on lightly in this essay; the
author will be content if he directs the attention of students with
more leisure and a better library of _diablerie_ to the matter. But
first we glance at _The Secret Commonwealth_ as folk-lorists.
III. “THE SUBTERRANEAN INHABITANTS.”
Mr. Kirk’s first chapter, “Of the Subterranean Inhabitants,”
naturally suggests the recent speculations of Mr. MacRitchie. The
gist of Mr. MacRitchie’s _Testimony of Tradition_ is that there once
was a race of earth-dwellers in this island; that their artificial
caves still exist; that this people survive in popular memory as “the
legendary Feens,” and as the Pechts of popular tales, in which they
are regarded as dwarfs. “The Pechs were unco wee bodies, but terrible
strang.” Here, then, it might be thought that we have the origin of
Fairy beliefs. There really was, on this showing, a dwarf race, who
actually did live in the “fairy-hills,” or howes, now commonly looked
on as sepulchral monuments.
There is much in Mr. MacRitchie’s theory which does not commend
itself to me. The modern legends of Pechts as builders of Glasgow
Cathedral, for example, do not appear to prove such a late survival
of a race known as Picts, but are on a level with the old Greek
belief that the Cyclopes built Mycenæ (_Testimony of Tradition_, p.
72). Granting, for the sake of discussion, that there were still
Picts or Pechs in Galloway when Glasgow Cathedral was built (in the
twelfth century), these wild Galloway men, scourges of the English
Border, were the very last people to be employed as masons. The
truth is that the recent Scotch have entirely forgotten the ages
of mediæval art. Accustomed to the ill-built barns of a robbed and
stinted Kirk, they looked on the Cathedral as no work of ordinary
human beings. It was a creation of the Pechts, as Mycenæ and Tiryns
of the mighty walls were creations of the Cyclopes. By another
coincidence, the well-known story of the last Pecht, who refuses
to divulge the secret of the heather ale, is told in the Volsunga
Saga, and in the _Nibelungenlied_, of the Last Niflung. Again, the
breaking of a bar of iron, which he takes for a human arm, by the
last Pecht is a tale current of the Drakos in modern Greece (see
Chambers’s _Popular Traditions of Scotland_ for the last Pecht). I
cannot believe that the historical Picts were a set of half-naked,
dwarfish savages, hairy men living underground. These are the topics
of Sir Arthur Wardour and Monkbarns. Mr. W. F. Skene may be said to
have put the historic Picts in their proper place as the ancestors
of the Highlanders. The Pecht of legend answers to the Drakos and the
Cyclopes: the beliefs about his habits may have been suggested by the
tumuli, still more by the _brochs_: it seems less probable that they
represent an historical memory. As to the Irish “Feens,” the topic
can only be discussed by Celtic scholars. But it does not follow,
because the leader of the Feens seemed a dwarf among giants, that
therefore his people were a dwarfish race.[2] The story proves no
more than Gulliver’s Travels.
Once more, we often read in the Sagas of a hero like Grettir, who
opens a howe, has a conflict with a “barrow-wight,” as Mr. Morris
calls the “howe-dweller,” and wins gold and weapons. But the dweller
in the howe is often merely the able-bodied ghost of the Norseman, a
known and named character, who is buried there; he is not a Pecht.
Thus, as it seems to me, the Scotch and Celts possessed a theory of a
legendary people, as did the Greeks. Whether any actual traditions of
an earlier, perhaps a Finnish race, was at the bottom of the legend,
is an obscure question. But, having such a belief, the Scotch easily
discovered homes for the fancied people in the sepulchral howes:
they “combined their information.” The Fairies, again, are composite
creatures. As they came to births and christenings, and as Norse
wise-wives (as in the Saga of Eric the Red) prophesied at festivals,
Mr. MacRitchie combines his own information. The Wise-wife is a
Finn woman, and Finn and Fairy amalgamate. But the Egyptians, as in
the _Tale of Two Brothers_ (Maspero, _Contes Egyptiens_), had their
Hathors, who came and prophesied at births; the Greeks had their
Mœræ, as in the story of Meleager and the burning brand. The Hathors
and Mœræ play, in ancient Egypt and in ancient Greece, the part of
Fairies at the christening, but surely they were not Finnish women!
In short, though a memory of some old race may have mingled in the
composite Fairy belief, this is at most but an element in the whole,
and the part played by ancestral spirits, naturally earth-dwellers,
is probably more important. Bishop Callaway has pointed out, in
the preface to his _Zulu Tales_, that what the Highlanders say of
the Fairies the Zulus say of “the Ancestors.” In many ways, as
when persons carried off to Fairyland meet relations or friends
lately deceased, who warn them, as Persephone and Steenie Steenson
were warned, to eat no food in this place, Fairyland is clearly a
memory of the pre-Christian Hades. There are other elements in the
complex mass of Fairy tradition, but Chaucer knew “the Fairy Queen
Proserpina,” as Campion calls her, and it is plain that in very fact
“the dread Persephone,” the “Queen over death and the dead,” had
dwindled into the lady who borrows Tamlane in the ballad. Indeed
Kirk mentions but does not approve of this explanation, “that those
subterranean people are departed souls.” Now, as was said, the dead
are dwellers under earth. The worshippers of Chthonian Demeter
(Achaia) beat the earth with wands; so does the Zulu sorcerer when he
appeals to the Ancestors. And a Macdonald in Moidart, being pressed
for his rent, beat the earth, and cried aloud to his dead chief,
“Simon, hear me; you were always good to me.”[3]
IV. FAIRYLAND AND HADES.
Thus, to my mind at least, the _Subterranean Inhabitants_ of Mr.
Kirk’s book are not so much a traditional recollection of a real
dwarfish race living underground (a hypothesis of Sir Walter
Scott’s), as a lingering memory of the Chthonian beings, “the
Ancestors.” A good case in point is that of Bessie Dunlop, of Dalry,
in Ayrshire, tried on 8th November 1576 for witchcraft. She dealt in
medicine and white magic, and obtained her prescriptions from Thomas
Reid, slain at Pinkie fight (1547), who often appeared to her, and
tried to lead her off to Fairyland. She, like Alison Pearson, was
“convict and burnt” (Scott’s _Demonology_, p. 146, and Pitcairn’s
_Criminal Trials_). Both ladies knew the Fairy Queen, and Alison
Pearson beheld Maitland of Lethington, and Buccleugh, in Fairyland,
as is recounted in a rhymed satire on Archbishop Adamson (Dalzell’s
_Scottish Poems_, p. 321). These are excellent proofs that Fairyland
was a kind of Hades, or home of the dead.
Mr. Kirk, who speaks of the _Sleagh Maith_ as confidently as if he
were discussing the habits of some remote race which he has visited,
credits them, as the Greek gods were credited, with the power of
nourishing themselves on some fine essential part of human sacrifice,
of human food, “some fine spirituous Liquors, that peirce like pure
Air and Oil, on the poyson or substance of Corns and Liquors.”
Others, more gross, steal the actual grain, “as do Crowes and Mice.”
They are heard hammering in the howes: as Brownies they enter houses
and cleanse the hearths. They are the Domovoys, as the Russians
call them. John Major, in his exposition of St. Matthew (1518,
fol. xlviii.), gives perhaps the oldest account of Brownies, in a
believing temper. Major styles them Fauni or _brobne_. They thrash
as much grain in one night as twenty men could do. They throw stones
about among people sitting by the fire. Whether they can predict
future events is doubtful (see Mr. Constable in Major’s _Greater
Britain_, p. xxx. Edinburgh, 1892). To us they seem not much remote
from the Roman Lares—spirits of the household, of the hearth. In
all these creatures Mr. Kirk recognises “an abstruse People,” who
were before our more substantial race, whose furrows are still to be
seen on the hill-tops. They never were, to his mind, plain palpable
folk; they are only visible, in their quarterly flittings, to men
of the second sight. That gift of vision includes not only power to
see distant or future events, but the viewless forms of air. To shun
the flittings, men visit church on the first Sunday of the quarter:
then they will be hallowed against elf-shots, “these Arrows that fly
in the dark.” As is well known, superstition explained the Neolithic
arrow-heads as Fairy weapons; it does not follow that a tradition of
a Neolithic people suggested the belief in Fairies. But we cannot
deny absolutely that some such memory of an earlier race, a shy and
fugitive people who used weapons of stone, may conceivably play its
part in the Fairy legend.
Thence Mr. Kirk glides into that singular theory of savage
metaphysics which somewhat resembles the Platonic doctrine of
Ideas. All things, in Red Indian belief, have somewhere their ideal
counterpart or “Father.” Thus a donkey, when first seen, was regarded
as “the Father” or archetype “of Rabbits.” Now the second-sighted
behold the “Double-man,” “Doppel-ganger,” “Astral Body,” “Wraith,” or
what you will, of a living person, and that is merely his counterpart
in the abstruse world. The industry of the Psychical Society has
collected much material—evidence, whatever its value, for the
existence of the Double-man. We may call it a hallucination, which
does not greatly increase our knowledge. From personal experience,
and the experience of friends, I am constrained to believe that we
may think we see a person who is not really present to the view—who
may be in the next room, or downstairs, or a hundred miles off.
This experience has occurred to the sane, the unimaginative, the
healthy, the free from superstition, and in circumstances by no
means mystic—for example, when the person supposed to be seen was
not dying, nor distressed, nor in any but the most normal condition.
Indeed, the cases when there was nothing abnormal in the state of the
person seen are far more numerous, in my personal knowledge, than
those in which the person seen was dying, or dead, or excited. The
reverse appears to be the rule in the experience of the Psychical
Society. “The actual proportion of coincidental to non-coincidental
cases, after all deduction for possible sources of error, was in
fact such that the probability against the supposition of chance
coincidence became enormous, on the assumption of ordinary accuracy
on the part of informants” (Professor Sidgwick, _Proc. S.P.R._, vol.
viii. p. 607). Some 17,000 answers were collected. We must apparently
accept these facts as not very abnormal nor very unusual, and
doubtless as capable of some subjective explanation. But when such
things occurred among imaginative and uneducated Highlanders, they
became foundations and proofs of the doctrine of second sight—proofs,
too, of the primitive metaphysical doctrine of counterparts and
_correspondances_. “They avouch that every Element and different
state of Being have Animals resembling these of another Element.” By
persons not knowing this, “the Roman invention of guardian Angels
particularly assigned” has been promulgated. The guardian Angel of
the Roman superstition is merely the Double or Co-walker—the type
(in the viewless world) of the man in the apparent world. Thus are
wraiths and ghosts explained by our Presbyterian psychologist and
his Highland flock. All things universally have their types, their
reflex: a man’s type, or reflex, or “co-walker” may be seen at a
distance from or near him during his life—nay, may be seen after
his death. The gifted man of second sight can tell the substantial
figure from the airy counterpart. Sometimes the reflex anticipates
the action of the reality: “was often seen of old to enter a House,
by which the people knew that the Person of that Likeness was to
visit them in a few days.” It may have occurred to most of us to
meet a person in the street whom we took for an acquaintance. It
is not he, but we meet the real man a few paces farther on. Thus a
distinguished officer, at home on leave, met a friend, as he tells
me, in Piccadilly. The other passed without notice: the officer
hesitated about following him, did not, and in some fifty yards met
his man. There is probably no more in this than resemblance and
coincidence, but this is the kind of thing which was worked by the
Highlanders into their metaphysics.[4]
The end of the Co-walker is obscure. “This Copy, Echo, or living
Picture goes att last to his own Herd.” Thus Ghosts are short-lived,
and, according to M. d’Assier on the Manners of Posthumous Man
(_L’Homme Posthume_), seldom survive for more than a century. By
an airy being of this kind the Highlanders explained the false or
morbid appetite. A “joint-eater” inhabited the patient; “he feeds
two when he eats.” As a rule, the Fairies get their food as witches
do—take “the Pith and Milk from their Neighbours’ Cows unto their own
chiese-hold, throw a Hair-tedder, at a great distance, by Airt Magic,
only drawing a spigot fastened in a Post, which will bring Milk as
farr as a Bull will be heard to roar.” This is illustrated in the
drinking scene in _Faust_. This kind of charge is familiar in trials
for witchcraft.
In accordance with the whole metaphysics of the system of doubles,
which are parasites on humanity, is the superstition of nurses stolen
by Fairies, and of children kidnapped while changelings are left
in their place. The latter accounts for sudden decline and loss of
health by a child; he is not the original child, but a Fairy brat. To
guard against this, bread (as human food hateful to Fairies—so the
Kanekas carry a boiled yam about at night), or the Bible, or iron
is placed in the bed of childbirth. “Iron scares spirits,” as the
scholiast says of the drawn sword of Odysseus in Hades. The Fairy
bride, in Wales, vanishes on being touched with iron. This belief
probably came in when iron was a new, rare, and mysterious metal. The
mortal nurses in Fairyland are pleasantly illustrated by the ballad
“I heard a cow lowe,
A bonny, bonny cow lowe,”
in C. Kirkpatrick Sharpe’s _Ballad Book_.[5] This part of the
superstition is not easy to elucidate. Kirk repeats the well-known
tales of the blinding of the mortal who saw too clearly “by making
use of their Oyntments.” Well-known examples occur in Gervase
of Tilbury, and are cited in Scott’s note on _Tamlane_ in the
_Border Minstrelsy_. As Homer fables of the dead, their speech is
a kind of whistling like the cry of bats—another indication of the
pre-Christian Hades.[6] They have feasts and burials; and Pashley,
in his _Travels in Crete_, tells the well-known Border story of
a man who fired on a Fairy bridal, and heard a voice cry, “Ye
have slain the bonny bridegroom.” It is, of course, to be noted
that the modern Greek superstition of the Nereids, who carry off
mortal girls to dance with them till they pine away, answers to
some of our Fairy legends, while it will hardly be maintained that
the Nereids are a memory of pre-historic Finns. “Antic corybantic
jollity” is a note of Nereids, as well as of the _Sleagh Maith_. “The
Inconvenience of their _succubi_,” the Fairy girls who make love to
young men, is well known in the Breton ballad, _Le Sieur Nan_. The
same superstition is current among the Kanekas of New Caledonia. My
cousin, Mr. Atkinson, was visited by a young Kaneka, who twice or
thrice returned to take leave of him with much emotion. When Mr.
Atkinson asked what was the matter, the lad said that he had just
met, as he thought, the girl of his heart in the forest. After a
scene of dalliance she vanished, and he knew that she was a forest
Fairy, and that he must die in three days, which he did. This is
the “inconvenience of their succubi,” regretted by Mr. Kirk. Thus
it appears that the mass of these opinions is not local, nor Celtic
merely, but of world-wide diffusion. Thus Sir Walter Scott observes
of the Afghans and Highlanders, “Their superstitions are the same, or
nearly so. The _Gholée Beabacan_ (demons of the desert) resemble the
_Boddach_ of the Highlanders, ‘who walked the heath at midnight and
at noon’” (_Quarterly Review_, xiv. 289). Again, Mr. Kirk says that
“Were-wolves and Witches’ true Bodies are (by the union of the spirit
of Nature that runs thorow all, echoing and doubling the Blow towards
another) wounded at home, when the astrial or assumed Bodies are
stricken elsewhere.” Thus, if a witch-hare is shot, the witch’s real
body is hurt in the same part; and Lafitau, in North America, found
that when a Huron shot a witch-bird, the real magician was stricken
in the same place. The theory that the Fairies appear as “a little
rough Dog” is illustrated by the Welsh Dogs of Hell. _Blackwood’s
Magazine_ for 1818 contains many examples of these Hell-dogs, which
are often invested in a sheet of fire, as Rink says is the case among
the Eskimo. Take a modern instance. “Mr. F. A. Paley and friend,
walking home at night on a lonely road, see a large black dog rise
from it, slowly walk to the side, and disappear. They search in vain.
Mr. Paley hears subsequently that this mysterious dog is the terror
of the neighbourhood, but no such real dog is known.” Date, summer
1837 (_Journ. of S.P.R._, Feb. 1893, p. 31).
The dwellings of these airy shadows of mankind are, naturally,
“Fairie Hills.” There is such a hill, the Fairy Hill at Aberfoyle,
where Mr. Kirk resided: Baillie Nicol Jarvie describes its legends
in an admirable passage in _Rob Roy_. Mr. MacRitchie says, “How much
of this ‘howe’ is artificial, or whether any of it is, remains to be
discovered.” It is much larger than most artificial tumuli. According
to Mr. Kirk, the Highlanders “superstitiously believe the souls of
their Predecessors to dwell” in the fairy-hills. “And for that end,
say they, a Mote or Mount was dedicate beside every Churchyard, to
receive the souls till their adjacent bodies arise, and so become
as a Fairy hill.” Here the Highland philosophers have conspicuously
put the cart before the horse. The tumuli are much older than the
churches, which were no doubt built beside them because the place had
a sacred character. Two very good examples may be seen at Dalry, on
the Ken, in Galloway, and at Parton, on Loch Ken. The grassy howes
are large and symmetrical, and the modern Presbyterian churches
occupy old sites; at Parton there are ruins of the ancient Catholic
church. Round the tumulus at Dalry, according to the local form of
the _Märchen_ of Hesione, a great dragon used to coil in triple
folds, before it was killed by the blacksmith. Nobody, perhaps, can
regard these tumuli, and many like them, as anything but sepulchral.
On the road between Balantrae, in Ayrshire, and Stranraer, there is
a beautiful tumulus above the sea, which at once recalls the barrow
above the main that Elpenor in the _Odyssey_, asked Odysseus to build
for him, “the memorial of a luckless man.” In the _Argonautica_ of
Apollonius Rhodius, the ghost of a hero who fell at Troy appears to
the adventurers on a tumulus like this of the Ayrshire coast. In
speaking of these barrows Mr. Kirk tells how, during a famine about
1676, two women had a vision of a treasure hid in a fairy-hill.
This they excavated, and discovered some coins “of good money.”
The great gold corslet of the British Museum is said to have been
found in Wales, where tradition spoke of a ghost in golden armour
which haunted a hillock. The hillock was excavated, and the golden
corslet, like the Shakespearian bricks, is “alive to testify” to the
truth of the story.
V. FAIRIES AND PSYCHICAL RESEARCH.
The Fairy belief, we have said, is a composite thing. On the
materials given by tradition, such as the memory, perhaps, of a
pre-historic race, and by old religion, as in the thoughts about
the pre-Christian Hades, poetry and fancy have been at work.
Consumption, lingering disease, unexplained disappearances, sudden
deaths, have been accounted for by the agency of the Fairies, or
People of Peace. If the superstition included no more than this, we
might regard it as a natural result of imagination, dealing with
facts quite natural in the ordinary course of things. But there are
elements in the belief which cannot be so easily dismissed. We must
ask whether the abnormal phenomena which have been so frequently
discussed, fought over, forgotten, and revived, do not enter into
the general mass of folk-lore. They appear most notably in the two
branches of Browniedom—of “Pixies,” as they say in Devonshire, who
haunt the house, and in the alleged examples of the second sight.
The former topic is the more obscure, if not the more curious. Let us
examine the occurrences, then, which may have begotten the belief in
Brownies, and in house-haunting Pixies or Fairies. These appearances
may be alleged, on one hand, to be actual facts in Nature, the
workings of some yet unexplained forces; or they may merely be the
consequences of some very old traditional method of imposture,
vulgar in itself, but still historical. That form of imposture,
again, may be wrought either by conscious agents, or unconsciously
and automatically by persons under the influence of somnambulism;
or, finally, the phenomena may in various cases be due to any one of
these three agencies, all of which may possibly be _veræ causæ_, as
conscious imposture and trickery is certainly one _vera causa_.
In Mr. Kirk’s book we meet “the invisible Wights which haunt Houses,
... throw great Stones, Pieces of Earth and Wood at the Inhabitants,”
but “hurt them not at all.” As we have said, Major (1518) calls
these wights “Fauni or Brobne”—that is, Brownies—and says that they
thrash as much grain in one night as twenty men could do, and throw
stones about. The legend of their working was common in Scotland,
and a correspondent says that in Devonshire the belief in Pixies who
set the house in order exists among the grand-parents of the present
generation. But the sportive is more common than the kindly aspect
of Brownies. Through history we constantly find them causing objects
to move without visible contact, and “acting in sport, like Buffoons
and Drolls.” In his _Letters on Demonology_ (p. 377) Scott gives
instances where the buffoon or droll was detected, and confessed
that the rattlings of plates and movements of objects were caused
by an apparatus of threads or horse-hair. He also quotes the famous
doings of “The Just Devil of Woodstock” in 1649, which so perplexed
and discomfited the Cromwellian Commissioners. He accounts for those
annoyances by the confessions of Joe Collins of Oxford, “Funny Joe,”
which he quotes from Hone’s _Every-Day Book_, while Hone quotes
from the _British Magazine_ of 1747. But the writer in the _British
Magazine_ gives no references or authorities for the authenticity
of Funny Joe’s confessions, nor even for the existence of Joseph.
Scott could not find his original in the pamphlets of the British
Museum, and some of the statements attributed to Joe do not tally
with the official account, and other contemporary documents collected
in Sir Walter’s _Woodstock_. Joe pretends, for example, to have been
secretary to the Commission under the name of Giles Sharpe; but in
the other accounts the secretary is named Browne. A Royalist Brownie
or Polter-geist lies under shrewd suspicion, but Joe’s own existence
is unproved, and his alleged evidence is of no value. However, no
sane person can dream of doubting that many a Brownie has been as
much in flesh and blood as the Brownie of Bodsbeck in Hogg’s story.
There remain the less easily explicable tales of strange and humorous
disturbances, accompanied by loud sounds, rappings, the moving of
objects without visible contact, and so forth.[7] Perhaps we may best
examine these by taking modern instances, collected by the Psychical
Society, in the first place, and then comparing them with cases
recorded at distant times and in remote places. Some curious common
features will be observed, and the evidence has at least the value
of undesigned coincidence. Glanvil, Telfair (minister of Rerrick),
the Wesleys, Dr. Adam Clarke, Increase Mather, were not modern
students of psychical research. The modern Psychical Researchers,
we fear, are not students of old legendary lore, which they dismiss
on evidence not first-hand nor scientifically valid. Thus they do
not seem to be aware that they are describing, almost in identical
terms, phenomena identical with those noted by Telfair, Mather,
Lavater, and the rest, and by those ancients attributed to devils.
The modern recorders are not consciously copying from old accounts;
the coincidences therefore have their value, as proving that certain
phenomena have occurred and recurred. Now those phenomena may be due
to conscious or to hysterical imposture, but they have been frequent
and common enough to keep alive, and probably to originate, a part
of the Fairy belief—that part which is concerned with Brownies and
house-haunting Pixies, or Domovoys. These, again, correspond to the
tricky beings described by Mr. Leland in his _Etruscan Remains_ as
survivals of old Roman and Etruscan popular religions, while we find
similar occurrences in the Empire of the Incas not long after the
Spanish conquest of Peru.[8]
Beginning, then, with what is nearest to us in time, we take Mr. F.
W. H. Myers’s essays “On the Alleged Movement of Objects without
Contact, occurring not in the Presence of a Paid Medium.”[9] The
alleged phenomena are, of course, as common as blackberries in the
presence of paid mediums, but are to the last degree untrustworthy.
Even when there is no paid medium present, the mere contagious
excitement which is said to be developed at _séances_ makes all
that is thought to occur there a story to be taken with plenty of
salt.[10] One of Mr. Myers’s examples was the result of _séances_,
but it had features of great importance for the argument. It will
be found in _Proc. S. P. R._, vol. xix. p. 189, July 1891. The
performers are Mr. C., Mrs. C., and Mr. H. Mr. C. and Mrs. C. are
spoken of as good witnesses, known to Mr. Myers and Professor
Barrett. Mr. H.’s health has suffered so much that he cannot be
examined, and Mr. H. is the person who interests us here, for
reasons which will be given later. All three were “unbelievers” in
these matters. On the second evening “lights floated about the room,”
which was lit, apparently, by a full moon. “F.” (who is also “H.”)
felt cold hands touching, and “hands” recur in the old pre-scientific
accounts. The three mages were holding hands tightly at the time. Now
Mr. H. had hitherto been in excellent health, but after his chair
was dragged from under him, and he was “thrown down on the ground,”
he went into “a trance.” His watch and ring (on the finger of a hand
held by Mrs. C.) were carried to a remote part of the room. H. leaves
the circle and sits at the window. Another figure walks through the
room. H. returns, is “thrown down,” his coat is dragged off, and his
boots are discovered on a distant sofa. He asks for “something from
home,” goes into a trance, a photograph locked up by him at home is
found on the table. His wife, in town, “being quite ignorant of our
having had _séances_, told us that, at that very hour, a fearful
crash occurred in his bedroom. The photograph vanished, and returned
last night, when H. was in a trance.” He is “thrown down” again.
He has “alternate fits of unconsciousness and raving delirium.” The
home of Mr. and Mrs. C. (not the house where they sat) is vexed by
“figures,” noises, knockings; “we were sprinkled with water in the
night,” haunted by sounds of drums and horns, and so forth. Before a
“manifestation,” “we all felt a sudden chill, like either a wave of
intensely cold air passing, or a rapid decrease of temperature.”[11]
This is a disgusting story if Mr. H.’s health was ruined by his
presence at the performances. The point, however, is that he did
behave in epileptic fashion while these events were in progress.
It is natural to suppose that, in his “trances,” he may have been
capable, unconsciously, of feats physically and morally impossible to
him in his normal condition. This explanation would not cover all the
alleged occurrences, but would account for many of them.
We now take an ancient instance, similar disturbances at Newberry,
in New England, in 1679, similarly accompanied by the presence of
an epileptic patient.[12] The house of William Morse was “strangely
disquieted by a dæmon.” The inmates were Morse, his wife, and their
grandson, a boy whose age is not given. The trouble began on December
3, with a sound of heavy objects falling on the roof. On December 8,
large stones and bricks “were thrown in at the west end of the house
... the bedstead was lifted up from the floor, and the bed-staff
flung out of the window, and a cat was hurled at the wife. A long
staff danced up and down in the chimney. The man’s wife put the staff
in the fire, but she could not hold it there, inasmuch as it would
forcibly fly out; yet after much ado, with joynt strength, they made
it to burn.... A chair flew about, and at last lighted on the table,
where victuals stood ready to eat, and was likely to spoil all, only
by a nimble catching they saved some of their meat.... A chest was
removed from place to place, no hand touching it. Two keys would
fly about, making a loud noise by knocking against each other.... As
they lay in bed with their little boy between them, a great stone
from the floor of the loft was thrown upon the man’s stomach, and he
turning it down upon the floor, it was once more thrown upon him.”
On January 23, 1680, “his ink-horn was taken away from him while he
was writing” (he was keeping a diary of these events), “and when by
all his seeking he could not find it, at last he saw it drop out of
the air, down by the fire.... February 2, while he and his boy were
eating of cheese, the pieces which he cut were wrested from them....
But as for the boy, he was a great sufferer in these afflictions, for
on the 18th of December he, sitting by his grandfather, was hurried
into great motions. The man made him stand between his legs, but the
chair danced up and down, and was like to have cast both man and boy
into the fire, and the child was tossed about in such a manner as
that they feared his brains would have been beaten out.”
All these contortions of the boy were apparently what M. Charcot
calls _clownisms_.[13] When taken to a doctor’s house the boy “was
free of disturbances,” which returned with his return home. He barked
like a dog, clucked like a hen, talked nonsense about “Powel,” who
pinched and bullied him. While he was in bed with the old people, “a
pot with its contents was thrown upon them.” They were clutched by
hands, like Mr. and Mrs. C. Once a voice was heard singing, “Revenge,
revenge is sweet.” Finally a mate of a ship came, declared that the
grandmother was not rightly suspected as a witch, and offered, if
he were left alone with the boy, to cure him. “The mate came next
day betimes, and the boy was with him till night; since which time
his house, Morse saith, has not been molested with evil spirits.”
Probably the mate used a rope’s end: the boy was more speedily cured
than Mr. H.
The phenomena are those of droll or buffooning wights, as Mr. Kirk
says, and no man can doubt that the boy was at the bottom of the
whole affair. But whether he was capable, when well and conscious, of
such diversions, is another question. Children like him produced the
famous witch-mania in New England.
We have here, undeniably, a well-recorded case, analogous to that of
Mr. H. In a modern case of bell-ringing, heavy thumps, and movement
of objects, the agent was “a young girl who had never been out to
service before,” and who passed the night in a state of wildly
agitated somnambulism, repeating the whole of the Service for the
day.[14] Mather gives several other examples, in which motives for
trickery are manifest, while we hear nothing of an epileptic or
hysterical patient.
In the majority of instances, ancient or modern, children are the
agents. Thus we have “Physical Phenomena obtained in a Family
Circle,” that of Mr. and Mrs. Davis, with their children, at Rio
Janeiro.[15] The time was 1888. Curiosity had been caused by “the
notorious Henry Slade.” There were “touches and grasps of hands.”
A table “ran after me” (Professor Alexander) “and attempted to hem
me in,” when only C., a little girl, was in the room. “As far as
I could see, she did not even touch the table.” The chair of Amy
(aged thirteen months) was moved about, like that of Master Morse
two hundred years earlier. A table jumped into the laps of the
public. There were raps and thumps, which “seemed to shake the whole
building.” Lights floated about. A slate, covered with flour, was
placed on C.’s lap; her hands lay on the table. Marks of fingers came
on the flour, and, in answer to request, the mark of “a naked baby
foot.” The children present were wearing laced boots, and we are
not told that little Amy was under the table. Bluish lights and the
phantasm of a dog were seen.
All this answers to an ancient example—the disturbances in Mr.
Wesley’s house at Epworth, December 1715 to January 1716.[16] The
house was a new one, rebuilt in 1709. We have Mr. Samuel Wesley’s
Journal, with many contemporary letters from members of the family,
and later reminiscences. There were many lively girls in the house,
and two servants—a maid and a man, recently engaged. The disturbances
began with groanings; then came knockings, which flitted about the
house. Mr. Wesley heard nothing till December 21. The knocks replied
to those made by the family, but they never could imitate the sounds.
Mrs. Wesley and Emily saw an object “like a badger” run from under
a bed and vanish. The mastiff was much alarmed by the sounds. Mr.
Wesley was “thrice pushed by invisible power.” The bogie was a
Jacobite, as was Mrs. Wesley: Mr. Wesley was for King George. The
knocks were violent when that usurper was prayed for. They did not
try praying for King James. Robin, the servant, saw a hand-mill work
violently. “Naught vexed me but that it was empty. I thought, had it
but been full of malt, he might have ground his heart out for me.”
But this was a jocose, not an industrious devil. Robin called it
“old Jeffries,” after a gentleman lately dead; the family called it
“Jeffrey,” unless one name is a mere misspelling. It “seemed to sweep
after” Nancy Wesley, when she swept the chambers. “She thought he
might have done it for her, and saved her the trouble.” Mrs. Wesley
concealed the matter from her husband, “lest he should fancy it was
against his own death” (Letter of January 12, 1716-17). This belief
in noises foretelling death is very common; compare Scott’s nocturnal
disturbances at Abbotsford when Bullock, his agent in building it,
was dying in London. The racket occurred on April 28 and 29, 1818,
and Scott examined the scene “with Beardie’s broadsword under my
arm.”[17] Bullock died in Tenterden Street, in London, whether on
April 28 or 29 is not easily to be ascertained. “The noise resembled
half a dozen men putting up boards and furniture, and nothing can
be more certain than that there was nobody on the premises at the
time.”[18] The noises used to follow Hetty Wesley, and thump under
her feet, as under those of C. in Professor Alexander’s narrative.
Mr. Wesley’s plate “danced before him on the table a pretty while,
without anybody’s stirring the table.”[19] The disturbances quieted
down in January, but recurred on March 31. Similar phenomena had
occurred “long before” in the family.[20] “The sound very often
seemed in the air, in the middle of a room, nor could they ever make
any such themselves by any contrivance.”[21] On February 16, 1740,
twenty-three years later, Emily writes to Jack about “that _wonderful
thing_ called by us _Jeffrey_.... That something calls on me against
any extraordinary new affliction.”
Priestley styles this affair “the best-authenticated that is anywhere
extant.” He supposes it to have been “a trick of the servants, for
mere amusement.” The _modus operandi_ is difficult to explain. We
hear nothing of bad health or hysterics in the household.[22] For
our purpose it is enough that a few incidents of this kind, however
produced, might originate and keep alive the belief in Brownies, and
“That shrewd and knavish sprite
Called Robin Goodfellow,”
who
“Frights the maidens of the villagery,
Skims milk, and sometimes labours in the quern.”
By a curious coincidence, we can show a case in which phenomena of
the kind usually reported as occurring at _séances_, and in examples
like that of William Morse, were actually accepted as manifestations
of the _Sleagh Maith_, or Fairies. In his account of the disturbances
in the Wesley family, Dr. Clarke, the author, averred that he had
himself witnessed similar events. It thus became necessary to consult
his _Life_ (London, 1833). “In the history of my own life,” says
Dr. Clarke, “I have related this matter in sufficient detail.”[23]
Unluckily, in his _Life_ (pp. 76, 77) he gives scarce any details.
Previous to sudden deaths in a family called Church, the phenomena of
falling plates, heavy tread, and other noises occurred. Mr. Clarke
“sat up one whole night in the kitchen, and most distinctly heard
the above noises.” He was a born mystic, and even in childhood a
reader of Cornelius Agrippa, and, later, of the alchemists. But he
records the instance of a woman, who solemnly declared to Mrs. Clarke
that a number of the _gentle people_ (_Sleagh Maith_) “occasionally
frequented her house; that they often conversed with her, one of
them putting its hands on her eyes during the time, which hands she
represented, from the sensation she had, to be about the size of
those of a child of four or five years of age.” The family were “worn
down” with these visits, and from the mention of touches of hands it
is pretty plain that we have to do with the kind of sprite who paws
people at _séances_. But these sprites are recognised (the scene is
the North of Ireland) as “gentle people,” Folk of Peace. The amusing
thing is, that Mr. Clarke, while he believes in Mr. Wesley’s Jeffrey,
and in the supernatural origin of a noise in a kitchen, laughs at
similar phenomena when assigned to Fairies. It is a mere difference
of terminology.
Another old example may be given. It is Alexander Telfair’s “True
Relation” of disturbances at Ringcroft, in the parish of Rerrick.[24]
The story is attested by the signatures of Ewart, minister of Kells,
in Galloway; Monteith, minister of Borg; Murdoch, minister of
Crosmichael, on Loch Ken; Spalding, minister at Parton, also by Loch
Ken; Falconer, minister at Keltown; Mr. M‘Lellan of Colline, Lennox
of Milhouse, and a number of farmers. These were all neighbours,
and all attested what they saw and heard. Robert Chambers says,
“There never, perhaps, was any mystic history better attested. Few
narrations of the kind have included occurrences and appearances
which it was more difficult to reconcile with the theory of trick or
imposture.” Mr. Telfair himself had been chaplain, in 1687, to Sir
Thomas Kirkpatrick of Closeburn. He was then an Episcopalian.
Andrew Mackie was a stone-mason at Rerrick. On March 7 (1695?), and
for long after, stones began to fly about in his house by night and
day. “The stones which hit any person had not half their natural
weight.” Mackie complained to Telfair, his minister, who entered
the house and prayed: nothing odd occurred. As he stood outside, he
“saw two little stones drop down on the croft;” then he was asked
to return, and was pelted inside the cottage. This was March 11.
For a week there was no more trouble, then the disturbances began
again. Mr. Telfair was sent for, and was pelted, beaten with a staff,
and heard loud knockings. “That night, as I was at prayer, leaning
on a bedside, I felt something lifting up my arm. I, casting my
eyes thither, perceived a little white hand and arm from the elbow
down, but presently it evanished.” “There was never anything seen
except that hand I saw,” and an apparition of a boy in grey clothes.
Sometimes the stoning went on in the open air.[25] There were plenty
of touchings, grippings, and scratchings. “The door-bar” (a long,
heavy piece of squared wood) “would go thorow the house as if a
person were carrying it in their hand, yet nothing seen doing it.”
Here we compare, in _Proc. S. P. R._, February 1892, the story of a
carpenter’s shop at Swanland, in Yorkshire, where pieces of wood were
“levitated” into abnormal flight. No imposture was discovered, nor
was the presence of any one person necessary.
The ministers of Kells and Crosmichael were pelted with stones of
eight pounds weight. On April 6, fire-balls floated through the
cottage. When five ministers were present, “it made all the house
shake, brake a hole through the thatch, and poured in great stones.”
“It handled the legs of some as with a man’s hand;” it hoisted Mr.
Telfair, Lennox of Millhouse, and others off the ground! A sieve
flew through the house; Mackie caught it; a force gripped it, and
pulled the interior part out of the rim. A day of humiliation was
solemnly kept in the parish, which only excited the emulation
of the disturbing agent; “it continued in a most fearful manner
without intermission.” Voices were heard, which talked nonsense of a
semi-scriptural kind; finally the thing died out early in May. By
the way, on April 28, “it pulled down the end of the house, all the
stone-work thereof.”
This is a very odd case, as no suspicion is thrown on the children.
The attestations of several witnesses are given, not only at the
close, but for almost every separate incident. The vision of the
white hand is agreeable.
_The Devil of Glen Luce_, in Galloway, was published by Sinclair in
his _Hydrostaticks_, of all places, in 1672, and again in _Satan’s
Invisible World_, and by Glanvil in _Sadducismus Triumphatus_. In
this affair a boy called Thomas, a son of the unlucky householder,
was clearly the agent. The phenomena were stone-throwing, beating
with sticks, levitation of a plate, and a great deal of voices,
probably uttered by the aforesaid Thomas. The Synod ordered a day of
humiliation (1655-56).
The affair of the Drummer of Tedworth (1661) is, or ought to be, too
well known for quotation. The troubles began after Mr. Mompesson
seized the drum of a vagrant musician. In the presence of a
clergyman, chairs walked about the room of themselves, “a bed-staff
was thrown at the minister, but so favourably that a lock of wool
could not have fallen more softly.” The children, as usual, were
especially haunted. A jingling of money was common, as it also was
at Epworth. Lights wandered about the house, “blue and glimmering.”
The noise was persistent in the woodwork of the children’s beds,
while their hands were outside. The knocks answered knocks made by
visitors. There were divers other marvels. The Drummer was suspected,
but, consciously or not, the children were probably the agents. They
seem to have been in their usual health.[26] In Galashiels (date not
given), loud knocks on the floor accompanied a hystero-epileptic
girl wherever she sat. In bed, “her body was so lifted up that many
strong men were not able to keep it down.” The minister, who could
make nothing of her, was Mr. Wilkie; the girl was Margaret Wilson
(Sinclair, p. 200).
This little parcel of strange stories may suffice to show that part
of the Fairy belief is based on such incidents as still occur, or are
reported to occur, just in the old fashion. It is for psychologists
and physicians to ascertain how far, if at all, the incidents are
produced by hysterical, or epileptic, or somnambulistic patients.
Common forthright trickery is usually detected in paid mediums. But
the trickery simulates real events, or continues an old traditional
form of imposture. The moral that parents should not allow their
children to be present at _séances_ hardly needs enforcing. Some of
them may escape unharmed, but frightful injuries may be inflicted on
health and on character.[27]
VI. SECOND SIGHT AND “TELEPATHY.”
We have already hinted that events of an ordinary kind—illusions,
cases of mistaken identity, or hallucination—are probably the
ground-work in part of the Highland belief in second sight. Of
course, if a certain proportion of hallucinations were or could be
taken for “veridical,” attention would be given to these alone: the
others would be neglected. The Psychical Society has collected and
examined hundreds of these cases in modern life.
The Society may find out, experimentally, whether second sight can
be acquired in the manner described by Mr. Kirk—whether by the
hair tether, or by merely putting the foot under that of a seer.
Thus contact is used in thought reading, as, in second sight, the
seer by contact communicates his hallucination. Second sight itself
is now called telepathy, which, however, does not essentially
advance our knowledge of the subject. It is either very common, or
people who choose to claim the possession of it are very common.
In our society it is mere matter for idle tales; in the Highlands
the second sight was a belief and a system. Mr. Pepys and Dr.
Johnson investigated the matter, and Dr. Johnson came away open to
conviction, but unconvinced. The Psychical Society is now examining
second sight in the Highlands. It is interesting to learn that the
Presbyterian seers justified their visions out of the Bible, which
also justified the burning of these gifted men on occasion. Mr.
Kirk is tolerant enough to ascribe their visions to a “bounty of
Providence.” This may have passed, north of the Highland line, but in
Fife and the south the seers would speedily have been accommodated
with a stake and tar-barrel. The writings of Wodrow and Mr. Robert
Blair of St. Andrews (1650-60) prove that if a savoury preacher
wrought marvels, he was inspired, but if an amateur did the very same
things,—prophesied, healed diseases, and so forth,—he, or she, was
likely to be haled before the Presbytery, and possibly dragged to
the stake. In the Highlands these invidious distinctions were less
forcibly drawn. Mr. Kirk treats the whole question in his curiously
cold scientific way. If these things occur, they are in the realm of
Nature, and are results of causes which may be variously conjectured.
They may be providential, or a sport of evolution, derived from “a
complexionall Quality of the first acquirer,” which often becomes
hereditary in his lineage.
Lord Tarbott’s letter to an inquirer, Robert Boyle, is added by Mr.
Kirk to his little treatise, with his own annotations. His belief
that the Fairy sights could only be seen while the eyes are kept
steady without twinkling, is attested by a well-known anecdote. On
the afternoon of Culloden, a little girl, staying with Lord Lovat at
Gortuleg, was reading in a window-seat. Chancing to look out, she
saw a company of headlong riders hastening to the castle. Believing
them to be the _Sleagh Maith_, she tried hard to keep her eyes from
twinkling, that she might not lose the vision. But these, alas! were
no Fairies, they were Prince Charles and his men flying from the
victorious English. The tale proves that the belief long survived the
day of the minister of Aberfoyle. Lord Tarbott mentions, also, the
vision of the shroud on the breast of a man about to die, which seems
to be alluded to in the prophecy of Theoclymenus in the _Odyssey_.
Lord Tarbott’s tales are of the familiar kind, there are dozens
of such in _Theophilus Insulanus_. Mr. Kirk’s notes are chiefly
remarkable for his citation of Walter Grahame’s “evil eye,” which
killed what he praised,—a world-wide superstition, too common to need
supporting by foreign and classical examples.
Unluckily, at this point Mr. Kirk abandons what we may call his
scientific attitude. He has accounted for his “supernatural” affairs
as not supernatural at all, but phenomena in Nature, and subject,
like other phenomena, to laws. But now it occurs to him to explain
the conduct of his _Sleagh Maith_ as the result of missionary zeal on
their part: “they endeavour to convince us of a Deity;” though, on
the face of his argument, a Co-walker no more proves a Deity than
does an ordinary “walker.” He may have been reading “the learned
Dr. Mor” (More the Platonist), and may have altered his ideas. His
account of a girl who learned, or rather composed, a long poem by
aid of “our nimble and courteous spirits,” affords an early example
of what is called “an inspirational medium.” It is unlucky that Mr.
Kirk did not publish this work, of which he had a copy. The ordinary
“spiritual” poetry may be written, as Dr. Johnson said of _Ossian_,
“by any one who would abandon his mind to it.” When Mr. Kirk
maintains that Neolithic arrow-heads could not have been executed “by
all the Airt of man,” he relapses from his usual odd common-sense. He
also believes in men who are magically shot-proof, like Claverhouse,
who had to be shot by a silver bullet; like Archbishop Sharp, on
whom his pious assassins erroneously held that their bullets took
no effect; and like certain soldiers mentioned by Dugald Dalgetty
of Drumthwacket. This absurd belief was very generally held by
the Covenanters. Where his local superstitions and those of his
generation are not concerned, Mr. Kirk recovers his clearness of
intellect. In Purgatory he finds only the pre-Christian Hades, “our
Secret Republick,” with an ecclesiastical colouring—“additional
Fictions of Monks’ doting and crazied Heads.” Mr. Kirk did not
perceive the danger involved in his own argument. If a Highland
second-sighted man answers to a Hebrew prophet in his visions and
trances, a Hebrew prophet is in danger of being no more considered
than a Highland second-sighted man. However, it is to Mr. Kirk’s
praise that he shows no persecuting disposition as far as witches are
concerned (though he has seen them pricked), and that he argues very
fairly from his premisses, and within his limits.[28] He recognises
the unity of spiritual phenomena and of popular beliefs, whether it
springs from a common well-head of delusion in our nature, or whether
it really has a source in the observation of peculiar and rather rare
phenomena.
To the Edinburgh edition of 1815 (probably the only one) the editor
added the work of Theophilus Insulanus on Second Sight. This is
not rare nor expensive, and we do not reproduce it. One case of
“telepathy” may be quoted from Theophilus.
“Donald Beaton, residenter in Hammir, related that, in his passage
from Glasgow to the Isle of Sky, he stopped at Tippermory, a known
harbour in the Isle of Mull.” Here some one gave him a loin of
venison. Donald, whose wife’s mother was a seer, to try her powers,
wished that piece of venison in her hands. “The same night the seer,
who lived with her daughter, his wife, apprehended she saw him enter
the house with a shapeless lump in his hands—she knew not what, but
it resembled flesh, which gave herself and her daughter great joy, as
they had despaired of him by his long absence.” This is “telepathy,”
if telepathy there be.
Another picturesque tale shows how, on the night before the Rout
of Moy, Patrick M‘Caskill met the famed M‘Rimmon (_sic_), M‘Leod’s
piper, in the town of Inverness, and saw him contract into the
size of a boy of five or six, and expand again into his athletic
proportions. M‘Rimmon was killed in the Rout of Moy—an attempt
to surprise and seize Prince Charles. Before leaving Skye he had
prophesied—
“M‘Leod shall come back,
But M‘Rimmon shall never.”
The editor is acquainted with a splendid case of second sight in
Kensington. The seer was an accomplished English gentleman, and
mentioned his vision at the moment to a witness who remembers and
corroborates the statement. Thus the Hebrides and Highlands have no
monopoly of second sight.
The researches of M. Charcot, M. Richet, and other psychologists do
not at present help us much in the matter of veridical second sight.
It is not a hallucination “suggested” to a hypnotised subject, but
an impression produced by a remote person or event on a subject who
has not been hypnotised at all. For example, Dr. Adam Clarke, in his
_Life_ (vol. ii. p. 16) tells us of Mr. Tracy Clarke, who, being in
the Isle of Man with his son, dreamed that he had visited his wife in
Liverpool. He told his son that Mrs. Clarke was looking very well,
but, contrary to her habit, was sleeping in the best bedroom. On the
day when Mr. Clarke said this, Mrs. Clarke, who had been sleeping in
her best bedroom, told the little son who lay in her room that she
had heard his father ride up to the house, stable his horse, open
the door, come upstairs, and walk round her bed, but that she could
not see him. This is a case at least of second hearing, and has no
hypnotic explanation.
We end in the candid spirit of Dr. Johnson, as far as the
Polter-Geist and second sight are concerned—willing to be convinced,
but far indeed from conviction. As to the Fairy belief, we conceive
it to be a complex matter, from which tradition, with its memory of
earth-dwellers, is not wholly absent, while more is due to a survival
of the pre-Christian Hades, and to the belief in local spirits—the
Vuis of Melanesia, the Nereids of ancient and modern Greece, the
Lares of Rome, the fateful Mœræ and Hathors—old imaginings of a world
not yet “dispeopled of its dreams.”[29]
[Illustration: Puss-in-Boots smells a rat.]
AN ESSAY
OF
The Nature and Actions of the Subterranean (and, for the most
Part,) Invisible People, heretofoir going under the name of
ELVES, FAUNES, and FAIRIES, or the lyke, among the Low-Country
Scots, as they are described by those who have the SECOND SIGHT;
and now, to occasion further Inquiry, collected and compared,
by a Circumspect Inquirer residing among the Scottish-Irish in
Scotland.
Secret Commonwealth,
OR,
A Treatise displayeing the Chiefe Curiosities
as they are in Use among diverse of the
People of Scotland to this Day;
SINGULARITIES for the
most Part peculiar to
that Nation.
A Subject not heretofore discoursed of by any of our
Writters; and yet ventured on in an Essay
to suppress the impudent and growing
Atheisme of this Age, and to
satisfie the desire of some
choice Freinds.
_Then a Spirit passed before my Face, the Hair of my Flesh stood
up; it stood still, but I could not discerne the Forme thereof;
ane Image was before mine Eyes._—Job, 4. 15, 16.
_This is a_ REBELLIOUS PEOPLE, _which say to the Siers, sie not;
and to the Prophets, prophesie not unto us right Things, bot
speak unto us smoothe Things._—Isaiah, 30. 9, 10.
_And the Man whose Eyes were open hath said._—Numbers, 24. 15.
_For now we sie thorough a Glass darkly, but then Face to
Face._—1 Corinth. 13. 12.
_It doth not yet appear what we shall be; but we shall be lyke
God, and sie him as he is._—1 John, 3. 2.
Μη γιγαντες μαιωδησονται ὑποκατωδεν ὑδατος και των γειτονων
αυτον;—Job, 26. 5 (Septuag.).
By MR ROBERT KIRK, Minister at Aberfoill.
1691.
CHAPTER I.
OF THE SUBTERRANEAN INHABITANTS.
These _Siths_, or FAIRIES, they call _Sleagh Maith_, or the Good
People, it would seem, to prevent the Dint of their ill Attempts,
(for the Irish use to bless all they fear Harme of;) and are said to
be of a midle Nature betuixt Man and Angel, as were Dæmons thought
to be of old; of intelligent studious Spirits, and light changable
Bodies, (lyke those called Astral,) somewhat of the Nature of a
condensed Cloud, and best seen in Twilight. Thes Bodies be so plyable
thorough the Subtilty of the Spirits that agitate them, that they
can make them appear or disappear att Pleasure. Some have Bodies or
Vehicles so spungious, thin, and defecat, that they are fed by only
sucking into some fine spirituous Liquors, that peirce lyke pure
Air and Oyl: others feid more gross on the Foyson or substance of
Corns and Liquors, or Corne it selfe that grows on the Surface of
the Earth, which these Fairies steall away, partly invisible, partly
preying on the Grain, as do Crowes and Mice; wherefore in this same
Age, they are some times heard to bake Bread, strike Hammers, and
do such lyke Services within the little Hillocks they most haunt:
some whereof of old, before the Gospell dispelled Paganism, and in
some barbarous Places as yet, enter Houses after all are at rest,
and set the Kitchens in order, cleansing all the Vessels. Such Drags
goe under the name of Brownies. When we have plenty, they have
Scarcity at their Homes; and on the contrarie (for they are empowred
to catch as much Prey everywhere as they please,) there Robberies
notwithstanding oft tymes occassion great Rickes of Corne not to
bleed so weill, (as they call it,) or prove so copious by verie farr
as wes expected by the Owner.
THERE Bodies of congealled Air are some tymes caried aloft, other
whiles grovell in different Schapes, and enter into any Cranie or
Clift of the Earth where Air enters, to their ordinary Dwellings;
the Earth being full of Cavities and Cells, and there being no Place
nor Creature but is supposed to have other Animals (greater or
lesser) living in or upon it as Inhabitants; and no such thing as a
pure Wilderness in the whole Universe.
2. WE then (the more terrestriall kind have now so numerously planted
all Countreys,) do labour for that abstruse People, as weill as for
ourselves. Albeit, when severall Countreys were unhabitated by us,
these had their easy Tillage above Ground, as we now. The Print of
those Furrous do yet remaine to be seen on the Shoulders of very high
Hills, which was done when the champayn Ground was Wood and Forrest.
THEY remove to other Lodgings at the Beginning of each Quarter of
the Year, so traversing till Doomsday, being imputent and [impotent
of?] staying in one Place, and finding some Ease by so purning
[Journeying] and changing Habitations. Their chamælion-lyke Bodies
swim in the Air near the Earth with Bag and Bagadge; and at such
revolution of Time, SEERS, or Men of the SECOND SIGHT, (Fæmales
being seldome so qualified) have very terrifying Encounters with
them, even on High Ways; who therefoir uswally shune to travell
abroad at these four Seasons of the Year, and thereby have made it
a Custome to this Day among the Scottish-Irish to keep Church duely
evry first Sunday of the Quarter to sene or hallow themselves, their
Corns and Cattell, from the Shots and Stealth of these wandring
Tribes; and many of these superstitious People will not be seen in
Church againe till the nixt Quarter begin, as if no Duty were to be
learned or done by them, but all the Use of Worship and Sermons were
to save them from these Arrows that fly in the Dark.[30]
THEY are distributed in Tribes and Orders, and have Children, Nurses,
Mariages, Deaths, and Burialls, in appearance, even as we, (unless
they so do for a Mock-show, or to prognosticate some such Things
among us.)
3. THEY are clearly seen by these Men of the SECOND SIGHT to eat
at Funeralls [and] Banquets; hence many of the Scottish-Irish will
not teast Meat at these Meittings, lest they have Communion with,
or be poysoned by, them. So are they seen to carrie the Beer or
Coffin with the Corps among the midle-earth Men to the Grave. Some
Men of that exalted Sight (whither by Art or Nature) have told me
they have seen at these Meittings a Doubleman, or the Shape of some
Man in two places; that is, a superterranean and a subterranean
Inhabitant, perfectly resembling one another in all Points, whom
he notwithstanding could easily distinguish one from another, by
some secret Tockens and Operations, and so go speak to the Man his
Neighbour and Familiar, passing by the Apparition or Resemblance of
him. They avouch that every Element and different State of Being
have Animals resembling these of another Element; as there be Fishes
sometimes at Sea resembling Monks of late Order in all their Hoods
and Dresses; so as the Roman invention of good and bad Dæmons, and
guardian Angells particularly assigned, is called by them an ignorant
Mistake, sprung only from this Originall. They call this Reflex-man a
Co-walker, every way like the Man, as a Twin-brother and Companion,
haunting him as his shadow, as is oft seen and known among Men
(resembling the Originall,) both before and after the Originall is
dead; and wes also often seen of old to enter a Hous, by which the
People knew that the Person of that Liknes wes to Visite them within
a few days. This Copy, Echo, or living Picture, goes att last to his
own Herd. It accompanied that Person so long and frequently for Ends
best known to it selfe, whither to guard him from the secret Assaults
of some of its own Folks, or only as ane sportfull Ape to counterfeit
all his Actions. However, the Stories of old WITCHES prove beyond
contradiction, that all Sorts of People, Spirits which assume light
aery Bodies, or crazed Bodies co-acted by forrein Spirits, seem to
have some Pleasure, (at least to asswage from Pain or Melancholy,)
by frisking and capering like Satyrs, or whistling and screeching
(like unlukie Birds) in their unhallowed Synagogues and Sabboths.
If invited and earnestly required, these Companions make themselves
knowne and familiar to Men; other wise, being in a different State
and Element, they nather can nor will easily converse with them. They
avouch that a Heluo, or Great-eater, hath a voracious Elve to be his
attender, called a Joint-eater or Just-halver, feeding on the Pith or
Quintessence of what the Man eats; and that therefoir he continues
Lean like a Hawke or Heron, notwith standing his devouring Appetite:
yet it would seem that they convey that substance elsewhere, for
these Subterraneans eat but little in their Dwellings; there Food
being exactly clean, and served up by Pleasant Children, lyke
inchanted Puppets. What Food they extract from us is conveyed to
their Homes by secret Paths, as sume skilfull Women do the Pith and
Milk from their Neighbours Cows into their own Chiese-hold thorow
a Hair-tedder, at a great Distance, by Airt Magic, or by drawing a
spickot fastened to a Post, which will bring milk as farr of as a
Bull will be heard to roar.[31] The Chiese made of the remaineing
Milk of a Cow thus strain’d will swim in Water like a Cork. The
Method they take to recover their Milk is a bitter chyding of the
suspected Inchanters, charging them by a counter Charme to give them
back their own, in God, or their Master’s Name. But a little of the
Mother’s Dung stroakit on the Calves Mouth before it suck any, does
prevent this theft.
4. THEIR Houses are called large and fair, and (unless att some
odd occasions) unperceaveable by vulgar eyes, like Rachland, and
other inchanted Islands, having fir Lights, continual Lamps, and
Fires, often seen without Fuel to sustain them. Women are yet alive
who tell they were taken away when in Child-bed to nurse Fairie
Children, a lingering voracious Image of their (them?) being left
in their place, (like their Reflexion in a Mirrour,) which (as if
it were some insatiable Spirit in ane assumed Bodie) made first
semblance to devour the Meats that it cunningly carried by, and
then left the Carcase as if it expired and departed thence by a
naturall and common Death. The Child, and Fire, with Food and other
Necessaries, are set before the Nurse how soon she enters; but she
nather perceaves any Passage out, nor sees what those People doe
in other Rooms of the Lodging. When the Child is wained, the Nurse
dies, or is conveyed back, or gets it to her choice to stay there.
But if any Superterraneans be so subtile, as to practice Slights for
procuring a Privacy to any of their Misteries, (such as making use
of their Oyntments, which as Gyges’s Ring makes them invisible, or
nimble, or casts them in a Trance, or alters their Shape, or makes
Things appear at a vast Distance, &c.) they smite them without Paine,
as with a Puff of Wind, and bereave them of both the naturall and
acquired Sights in the twinkling of ane Eye, (both these Sights,
where once they come, being in the same Organ and inseparable,) or
they strick them Dumb. The Tramontains to this Day put Bread, the
Bible, or a piece of Iron, in Womens Beds when travelling, to save
them from being thus stollen; and they commonly report, that all
uncouth, unknown Wights are terrifyed by nothing earthly so much as
by cold Iron. They delyver the Reason to be that Hell lying betwixt
the chill Tempests, and the Fire Brands of scalding Metals, and Iron
of the North, (hence the Loadstone causes a tendency to that Point,)
by ane Antipathy thereto, these odious far-scenting Creatures shrug
and fright at all that comes thence relating to so abhorred a Place,
whence their Torment is eather begun, or feared to come hereafter.
5. THEIR Apparell and Speech is like that of the People and Countrey
under which they live: so are they seen to wear Plaids and variegated
Garments in the Highlands of Scotland, and Suanochs therefore in
Ireland. They speak but litle, and that by way of whistling, clear,
not rough. The verie Divels conjured in any Countrey, do answer in
the Language of the Place; yet sometimes the Subterraneans speak
more distinctly than at other times. Ther Women are said to Spine
very fine, to Dy, to Tossue, and Embroyder: but whither it is as
manuall Operation of substantiall refined Stuffs, with apt and solid
Instruments, or only curious Cob-webs, impalpable Rainbows, and a
fantastic Imitation of the Actions of more terrestricall Mortalls,
since it transcended all the Senses of the Seere to discerne
whither, I leave to conjecture as I found it.
6. THERE Men travell much abroad, either presaging or aping the
dismall and tragicall Actions of some amongst us; and have also many
disastorous Doings of their own, as Convocations, Fighting, Gashes,
Wounds, and Burialls, both in the Earth and Air. They live much
longer than wee; yet die at last, or [at] least vanish from that
State. ’Tis ane of their Tenets, that nothing perisheth, but (as the
Sun and Year) every Thing goes in a Circle, lesser or greater, and
is renewed and refreshed in its Revolutions; as ’tis another, that
every Bodie in the Creation moves, (which is a sort of Life;) and
that nothing moves, but [h]as another Animal moving on it; and so on,
to the utmost minutest Corpuscle that’s capable to be a Receptacle of
Life.
7. THEY are said to have aristocraticall Rulers and Laws, but no
discernible Religion, Love, or Devotion towards God, the blessed
Maker of all: they disappear whenever they hear his Name invocked,
or the Name of JESUS, (at which all do bow willinglie, or by
constraint, that dwell above or beneath within the Earth, Philip.
2. 10;) nor can they act ought at that Time after hearing of that
sacred Name. The TABHAISVER, or Seer, that corresponds with this
kind of Familiars, can bring them with a Spel to appear to himselfe
or others when he pleases, as readily as Endor Witch to those of her
Kind. He tells, they are ever readiest to go on hurtfull Errands,
but seldome will be the Messengers of great Good to Men. He is not
terrified with their Sight when he calls them, but seeing them in a
surpryze (as often he does) frights him extreamly. And glaid would
he be quite of such, for the hideous Spectacles seen among them;
as the torturing of some Wight, earnest ghostly stairing Looks,
Skirmishes, and the like. They do not all the Harme which appearingly
they have Power to do; nor are they perceaved to be in great Pain,
save that they are usewally silent and sullen. They are said to have
many pleasant toyish Books; but the operation of these Peices only
appears in some Paroxisms of antic corybantic Jolity, as if ravisht
and prompted by a new Spirit entering into them at that Instant,
lighter and mirrier than their own. Other Books they have of involved
abstruse Sense, much like the Rosurcian [Rosycrucian] Style. They
have nothing of the Bible, save collected Parcells for Charms and
counter Charms; not to defend themselves withall, but to operate on
other Animals, for they are a People invulnerable by our Weapons;
and albeit Were-wolves and Witches true Bodies are (by the union
of the Spirit of Nature that runs thorow all, echoing and doubling
the Blow towards another) wounded at Home, when the astrial assumed
Bodies are stricken elsewhere; as the Strings of a Second Harp, tune
to ane unison, Sounds, though only ane be struck; yet these People
have not a second, or so gross a Bodie at all, to be so pierced; but
as Air, which when divyded units againe; or if they feel Pain by
a Blow, they are better Physicians than wee, and quickly cure it.
They are not subject to sore Sicknesses, but dwindle and decay at a
certain Period, all about ane Age. Some say their continual Sadness
is because of their pendulous State, (like those Men, Luc. 13. 2.
6.) as uncertain what at the last Revolution will become of them,
when they are lock’t up into ane unchangeable Condition; and if they
have any frolic Fitts of Mirth, ’tis as the constrained grinning of a
Mort-head, or rather as acted on a Stage, and moved by another, ther
[than?] cordially comeing of themselves. But other Men of the Second
Sight, being illiterate, and unwary in their Observations, learn
from those; one averring those subterranean People to be departed
Souls, attending awhile in this inferior State, and clothed with
Bodies procured throwgh their Almsdeeds in this Lyfe; fluid, active,
ætheriall Vehicles to hold them, that they may not scatter, or
wander, and be lost in the Totum, or their first Nothing; but if any
were so impious as to have given no Alms, they say when the Souls of
such do depairt, they sleep in an unactive State till they resume the
terrestriall Bodies again: others, that what the Low-countrey Scotts
calls a Wreath, and the Irish TAIBHSHE[32] or Death’s Messenger,
(appearing sometimes as a little rough Dog, and if crossed and
conjured in Time, will be pacified by the Death of any other
Creature instead of the sick Man,) is only exuvious Fumes of the Man
approaching Death, exhal’d and congeal’d into a various Likness,[33]
(as Ships and Armies are sometimes shapt in the Air,) and called
astral Bodies, agitated as Wild-fire with Wind, and are neather Souls
or counterfeiting Spirits; yet not a few avouch (as is said,) that
surelie these are a numerous People by them selves, having their
own Polities. Which Diversities of Judgments may occasion severall
Inconsonancies in this Rehearsall, after the narrowest Scrutiny made
about it.
8. THEIR Weapons are most what solid earthly Bodies, nothing of
Iron, but much of Stone, like to yellow soft Flint Spa, shaped like
a barbed Arrow-head, but flung like a Dairt, with great Force. These
Armes (cut by Airt and Tools it seems beyond humane) have something
of the Nature of Thunderbolt subtilty, and mortally wounding the
vital Parts without breaking the Skin; of which Wounds I have
observed in Beasts, and felt them with my Hands. They are not as
infallible Benjamites, hitting at a Hair’s-breadth; nor are they
wholly unvanquishable, at least in Appearance.
THE MEN of that SECOND SIGHT do not discover strange Things when
asked, but at Fits and Raptures, as if inspyred with some Genius at
that Instant, which before did lurk in or about them. Thus I have
frequently spoke to one of them, who in his Transport told he cut
the Bodie of one of those People in two with his Iron Weapon, and so
escaped this Onset, yet he saw nothing left behind of that appearing
divyded; at other Times he out wrested [wrestled?] some of them. His
Neibours often perceaved this Man to disappear at a certane Place,
and about one Hour after to become visible, and discover him selfe
near a Bow-shot from the first Place. It was in that Place where he
became invisible, said he, that the Subterraneans did encounter and
combate with him. Those who are unseened or unsanctified (called Fey)
are said to be pierced or wounded with those People’s Weapons, which
makes them do somewhat verie unlike their former Practice, causing
a sudden Alteration, yet the Cause thereof unperceavable at present;
nor have they Power (either they cannot make use of their natural
Powers, or ask’t not the heavenly Aid,) to escape the Blow impendent.
A Man of the Second Sight perceaved a Person standing by him (sound
to others view) wholly gored in Blood, and he (amazed-like) bid him
instantly flee. The whole Man laught at his Airt and Warning, since
there was no appearance of Danger. He had scarce contracted his Lips
from Laughter, when unexpectedly his Enemy leapt in at his Side,
and stab’d him with their Weapons. They also pierce Cows or other
Animals, usewally said to be Elf-shot, whose purest Substance (if
they die) these Subterraneans take to live on, viz. the aereal and
ætherial Parts, the most spirituous Matter for prolonging of Life,
such as Aquavitæ (moderately taken) is among Liquors, leaving the
terrestrial behind. The Cure of such Hurts is, only for a Man to find
out the Hole with his Finger; as if the Spirits flowing from a Man’s
warme Hand were Antidote sufficient against their poyson’d Dairts.
9. AS Birds and Beasts, whose Bodies are much used to the Change of
the frie and open Air, forsee Storms; so those invisible People are
more sagacious to understand by the Books of Nature Things to come,
than wee, who are pestered with the grosser Dregs of all elementary
Mixtures, and have our purer Spirits choaked by them. The Deer scents
out a Man and Powder (tho a late Invention) at a great Distance; a
hungry Hunter, Bread; and the Raven, a Carrion: Ther Brains, being
long clarified by the high and subtil Air, will observe a very
small Change in a Trice. Thus a Man of the Second Sight, perceaving
the Operations of these forecasting invisible People among us,
(indulged thorow a stupendious Providence to give Warnings of some
remarkable Events, either in the Air, Earth, or Waters,) told he saw
a Winding-shroud creeping on a walking healthful Persons Legs till it
come to the Knee; and afterwards it came up to the Midle, then to the
Shoulders, and at last over the Head, which was visible to no other
Persone. And by observing the Spaces of Time betwixt the severall
Stages, he easily guessed how long the Man was to live who wore the
Shroud; for when it approached his Head, he told that such a Person
was ripe for the Grave.
10. THERE be many Places called Fairie-hills, which the Mountain
People think impious and dangerous to peel or discover, by taking
Earth or Wood from them; superstitiously beleiving the Souls of their
Predicessors to dwell there.[34] And for that End (say they) a Mote
or Mount was dedicate beside every Church-yard, to receive the Souls
till their adjacent Bodies arise, and so become as a Fairie-hill;
they useing Bodies of Air when called Abroad. They also affirme those
Creatures that move invisibly in a House, and cast hug great Stones,
but do no much Hurt, because counter-wrought by some more courteous
and charitable Spirits that are everywhere ready to defend Men, (Dan.
10. 13.) to be Souls that have not attained their Rest, thorough a
vehement Desire of revealling a Murther or notable Injurie done or
receaved, or a Treasure that was forgot in their Liftyme on Earth,
which when disclos’d to a Conjurer alone, the Ghost quite removes.
IN the nixt Country to that of my former Residence, about the Year
1676, when there was some Scarcity of Graine, a marvelous Illapse and
Vision strongly struck the Imagination of two Women in one Night,
living at a good Distance from one another, about a Treasure hid
in a Hill, called SITHBHRUAICH, or Fayrie-hill. The Appearance of
a Treasure was first represented to the Fancy, and then an audible
Voyce named the Place where it was to their awaking Senses. Whereupon
both arose, and meitting accidentallie at the Place, discovered their
Designe; and joyntly digging, found a Vessell as large as a Scottish
Peck, full of small Pieces of good Money, of ancient Coyn; which
halving betuixt them, they sold in Dish-fulls for Dish-fulls of Meall
to the Countrey People. Very many of undoubted Credit saw, and had
of the Coyn to this Day. But whither it was a good or bad Angell,
one of the subterranean People, or the restless Soul of him who hid
it, that discovered it, and to what End it was done, I leave to the
Examination of others.
11. THESE Subterraneans have Controversies, Doubts, Disputs, Feuds,
and Siding of Parties; there being some Ignorance in all Creatures,
and the vastest created Intelligences not compassing all Things.
As to Vice and Sin, whatever their own Laws be, sure, according to
ours, and Equity, natural, civil, and reveal’d, they transgress and
commit Acts of Injustice, and Sin, by what is above said, as to
their stealling of Nurses to their Children, and that other sort
of Plaginism in catching our Children away, (may seem to heir some
Estate in those invisible Dominions,) which never returne. For the
Inconvenience of their Succubi, who tryst with Men, it is abominable;
but for Swearing and Intemperance, they are not observed so subject
to those Irregularities, as to Envy, Spite, Hypocracie, Lieing, and
Dissimulation.
12. AS our Religion oblidges us not to make a peremptory and curious
Search into these Obstrusenesses, so that the Histories of all Ages
give as many plain Examples of extraordinary Occurrances as make
a modest Inquiry not contemptable. How much is written of Pigme’s,
Fairies, Nymphs, Syrens, Apparitions, which tho not the tenth Part
true, yet could not spring of nothing! Even English Authors relate
(of) Barry Island, in Glamorganshire, that laying your Ear into
a Clift of the Rocks, blowing of Bellows, stricking of Hammers,
clashing of Armour, fyling of Iron, will be heard distinctly ever
since Merlin inchaunted those subterranean Wights to a solid manuall
forging of Arm’s to Aurelius Ambrosius and his Brittans, till he
returned; which Merlin being killed in a Battell, and not coming to
loose the Knot, these active Vulcans are there ty’d to a perpetuall
Labour. But to dip no deeper into this Well, I will nixt give some
Account how the Seer my Informer comes to have this secret Way of
Correspondence beyond other Mortalls.
THERE be odd Solemnities at investing a Man with the Priviledges
of the whole Mistery of this Second Sight. He must run a Tedder
of Hair (which bound a Corps to the Bier) in a Helix [?] about
his Midle, from End to End; then bow his Head downwards, as did
Elijah, 1 Kings, 18, 42. and look back thorough his Legs untill he
sie a Funerall advance till the People cross two Marches; or look
thus back thorough a Hole where was a Knot of Fir. But if the Wind
change Points while the Hair Tedder is ty’d about him, he is in
Peril of his Lyfe. The usewall Method for a curious Person to get a
transient Sight of this otherwise invisible Crew of Subterraneans,
(if impotently and over rashly sought,) is to put his [left Foot
under the Wizard’s right] Foot, and the Seer’s Hand is put on the
Inquirer’s Head, who is to look over the Wizard’s right Shoulder,
(which hes ane ill Appearance, as if by this Ceremony ane implicit
Surrender were made of all betwixt the Wizard’s Foot and his Hand,
ere the Person can be admitted a privado to the Airt;) then will he
see a Multitude of Wight’s, like furious hardie Men, flocking to him
haistily from all Quarters, as thick as Atoms in the Air; which are
no Nonentities or Phantasms, Creatures proceiding from ane affrighted
Apprehensione, confused or crazed Sense, but Realities, appearing to
a stable Man in his awaking Sense, and enduring a rationall Tryall of
their Being. Thes thorow Fear strick him breathless and speechless.
The Wizard, defending the Lawfullness of his Skill, forbids such
Horror, and comforts his Novice by telling of Zacharias, as being
struck speechless at seeing Apparitions, Luke, 1. 20. Then he further
maintains his Airt, by vouching Elisha to have had the same, and
disclos’d it thus unto his Servant in 2 Kings, 6. 17. when he blinded
the Syrians; and Peter in Act, 5. 9. forseing the Death of Saphira,
by perceaving as it were her Winding-sheet about her before hand;
and Paul, in 2nd Corinth. 12. 4. who got such a Vision and Sight as
should not, nor could be told. Elisha also in his Chamber saw Gehazi
his Servant, at a great Distance, taking a reward from Naaman, 2d
Kings, 5. 26. Hence were the Prophets frequently called SEERS, or
Men of a 2d or more exhalted Sight than others. He acts for his
Purpose also Math. 4. 8. where the Devil undertakes to give even
Jesus a Sight of all Nations, and the finest Things in the World,
at one Glance, tho in their naturall Situations and Stations at a
vast Distance from other. And ’tis said expresly he did let sie them;
not in a Map it seems, nor by a phantastick magicall jugling of the
Sight, which he could not impose upon so discovering a Person. It
would appear then to have been a Sight of real solid Substances, and
Things of worth, which he intended as a Bait for his Purpose. Whence
it might seem, (compairing this Relation of Math. 4. 8. with the
former,) that the extraordinary or Second Sight can be given by the
Ministery of bad as weill as good Spirits to those that will embrace
it. And the Instance of Balaam and the Pytheniss make it nothing the
less probable. Thus also the Seer trains his Scholler, by telling of
the Gradations of Nature, ordered by a wise Provydence; that as the
Sight of Bats and Owls transcend that of Shrews and Moles, so the
visive Faculties of Men are clearer than those of Owls; as Eagles,
Lynxs, and Cats are brighter than Mens. And again, that Men of the
Second Sight (being designed to give warnings against secret Engyns)
surpass the ordinary Vision of other Men, which is a native Habit in
some, descended from their Ancestors, and acquired as ane artificiall
Improvement of their natural Sight in others; resembling in their own
Kynd the usuall artificiall Helps of optic Glasses, (as Prospectives,
Telescopes, and Microscopes,) without which ascititious Aids those
Men here treated of do perceive Things that, for their Smallness, or
Subtility, and Secrecy, are invisible to others, tho dayly conversant
with them; they having such a Beam continuallie about them as that
of the Sun, which when it shines clear only, lets common Eyes see
the Atomes, in the Air, that without those Rayes they could not
discern; for some have this Second Sight transmitted from Father to
Sone thorow the whole Family, without their own Consent or others
teaching, proceeding only from a Bounty of Providence it seems, or
by Compact, or by a complexionall Quality of the first Acquirer. As
it may seem alike strange (yet nothing vicious) in such as Master
Great-rake,[35] the Irish Stroaker, Seventh-sons, and others that
cure the King’s Evill, and chase away Deseases and Pains, with only
stroaking of the affected Pairt; which (if it be not the Reliques
of miraculous Operations, or some secret Virtue in the Womb, of the
Parent, which increaseth until Seventh-sons be borne, and decreaseth
by the same Degrees afterwards,) proceids only from the sanitive
Balsome of their healthfull Constitutions; Virtue going out from them
by spirituous Effluxes unto the Patient, and their vigorous healthy
Spirits affecting the sick as usewally the unhealthy Fumes of the
sick infect the sound and whole.
13. THE Minor Sort of Seers prognosticat many future Events, only
for a Month’s Space, from the Shoulder-bone of a Sheep on which a
Knife never came, (for as before is said, and the Nazarits of old
had something of it) Iron hinders all the Opperations of those that
travell in the Intrigues of these hidden Dominions. By looking into
the Bone, they will tell if Whoredom be committed in the Owner’s
House; what Money the Master of the Sheep had; if any will die out
of that House for that Moneth; and if any Cattell there will take a
Trake, as if Planet-struck. Then will they prescribe a Preservative
and Prevention.
14. A WOMAN (it seems ane Exception from the generall Rule,)
singularlie wise in these Matters of Foirsight, living in Colasnach,
ane Isle of the Hebrides, (in the Time of the Marquess of Montrose
his Wars with the States in Scotland,) being notorious among many;
and so examined by some that violently seazed that Isle, if she saw
them coming or not? She said, she saw them coming many Hours before
they came in View of the Isle. But earnestly looking, she some times
took them for Enemyes, sometime for Friends; and morover they look’t
as if they went from the Isle, not as Men approaching it, which made
her not put the Inhabitants on their Guard. The Matter was, that the
Barge wherein the Enemie sailed, was a little befoir taken from the
Inhabitants of that same Isle, and the Men had their Backs towards
the Isle, when they were plying the oares towards it. Thus this old
Scout and Delphian Oracle was at least deceived, and did deceave.
Being asked who gave her such Sights and Warnings, she said, that
as soon as she set three Crosses of Straw upon the Palm of her Hand,
a great ugly Beast sprang out of the Earth neer her, and flew in the
Air. If what she enquired had Success according to her Wish, the
Beast would descend calmly, and lick up the Crosses. If it would not
succeid, the Beast would furiously thrust her and the Crosses over on
the Ground, and so vanish to his Place.
15. AMONG other Instances of undoubted Verity, proving in these the
Being of such aerial People, or Species of Creatures not vulgarly
known, I add the subsequent Relations, some whereof I have from my
Acquaintance with the Actors and Patients, and the Rest from the
Eye-witnesses to the Matter of Fact. The first whereof shall be of
the Woman taken out of her Child-bed, and having a lingring Image
of her substituted Bodie in her Roome, which Resemblance decay’d,
dy’d, and was bur’d. But the Person stollen returning to her Husband
after two Years Space, he being convinced by many undenyable Tokens
that she was his former Wyfe, admitted her Home, and had diverse
Children by her. Among other Reports she gave her Husband, this was
one: That she perceived litle what they did in the spacious House
she lodg’d in, untill she anointed one of her Eyes with a certain
Unction that was by her; which they perceaving to have acqainted
her with their Actions, they fain’d her blind of that Eye with a
Puff of their Breath. She found the Place full of Light, without any
Fountain or Lamp from whence it did spring. This Person lived in the
Countrey nixt to that of my last Residence, and might furnish Matter
of Dispute amongst Casuists, whither if her Husband had been mary’d
in the Interim of her two Years Absence, he was oblidged to divorse
from the second Spouse at the Return of the first. There is ane Airt,
appearingly without Superstition, for recovering of such as are
stolen, but think it superfluous to insert it.
I SAW a Woman of fourtie Years of Age, and examined her (having
another Clergie Man in my Companie) about a Report that past of her
long fasting [_her Name is not intyre_.][36] It was told by them of
the House, as well as her selfe, that she tooke verie little or no
Food for severall Years past; that she tarried in the Fields over
Night, saw and conversed with a People she knew not, having wandered
in seeking of her Sheep, and sleep’t upon a Hillock, and finding her
self transported to another Place before Day. The Woman had a Child
since that Time, and is still prettie melanchollyous and silent,
hardly ever seen to laugh. Her natural Heat and radical Moisture seem
to be equally balanced, lyke ane unextinguished Lamp, and going in a
Circle, not unlike to the faint Lyfe of Bees, and some Sort of Birds,
that sleep all the Winter over, and revive in the Spring.
IT is usuall in all magicall Airts to have the Candidates
prepossessit with a Believe of their Tutor’s Skill, and Ability to
perform their Feats, and act their jugling Pranks and Legerdemain;
but a Person called Stewart, possessed with a prejudice at that was
spoken of the 2d Sight, and living near to my House, was soe put
to it by a Seer, before many Witnesses, that he lost his Speech and
Power of his Legs, and breathing excessively, as if expyring, because
of the many fearfull Wights that appeared to him. The Companie were
forced to carrie him into the House.
IT is notoriously known what in Killin, within Perthshire, fell
tragically out with a Yeoman that liv’d hard by, who coming into a
Companie within ane Ale-house, where a Seer sat at Table, that at
the Sight of the Intrant Neighbour, the Seer starting, rose to go
out of the Hous; and being asked the Reason of his hast, told that
the intrant Man should die within two Days; at which News the named
Intrant stabb’d the Seer, and was himself executed two Days after for
the Fact.
A MINISTER, verie intelligent, but misbelieving all such Sights as
were not ordinar, chanceing to be in a narrow Lane with a Seer, who
perceaving a Wight of a known Visage furioslie to encounter them,
the Seer desired the Minister to turn out of the Way; who scorning
his Reason, and holding him selfe in the Path with them, when the
Seer was going hastily out of the Way, they were both violently cast
a side to a good Distance, and the Fall made them lame for all their
Lyfe. A little after the Minister was carried Home, one came to tol
the Bell for the Death of the Man whose Representation met them in
the narrow Path some Halfe ane Hour before.
ANOTHER Example is: A Seer in Kintyre, in Scotland, sitting at Table
with diverse others, suddenly did cast his Head aside. The Companie
asking him why he did it, he answered, that such a Friend of his, by
Name, then in Ireland, threatened immediately to cast a Dish-full of
Butter in his Face. The Men wrote down the Day and Hour, and sent to
the Gentleman to know the Truth; which Deed the Gentleman declared he
did at that verie Time, for he knew that his Friend was a Seer, and
would make sport with it. The Men that were present, and examined the
Matter exactly, told me this Story; and with all, that a Seer would
with all his Opticks perceive no other Object so readily as this, at
such a Distance.
A SUCCINT ACCOMPT
OF
MY LORD TARBOTT’S RELATIONS,
IN A LETTER TO THE
HONOURABLE ROBERT BOYLE, ESQUIRE,
OF THE
PREDICTIONS MADE BY SEERS,
Whereof himself was Ear and Eye-witness.
[I thought fit to adjoyne [it] hereunto, that I might not
be thought singular in this Disquisition; that the Mater of
Fact might be undenyably made out; and that I might, with all
Submission, give Annotations, with Animadversions, on his
supposed Causes of that Phenomenon, with my Reasons of Dissent
from his Judgement.]
SIR,
I HEARD very much, but beleived very little, of the Second Sight;
yet its being assumed by severall of great Veracity, I was induced
to make Inquirie after it in the Year 1652, being then confin’d to
abide in the North of Scotland by the English Usurpers. The more
generall Accounts of it were, that many Highlanders, yet far more
Islanders, were qualified with this Second Sight; that Men, Women,
and Children, indistinctly, were subject to it, and Children, where
Parents were not. Some times People came to age, who had it not when
young, nor could any tell by what Means produced. It is a Trouble to
most of them who are subject to it, and they would be rid of it any
Rate if they could. The Sight is of no long Duration, only continuing
so long as they can keep their Eyes steady without twinkling. The
hardy therefore fix their look, that they may see the longer; but
the timorous see only Glances, their Eyes always twinkles at the
first Sight of the Object. That which generally is seen by them, are
the Species of living Creatures, and of inanimate Things, which was
in Motion, such as Ships, and Habits upon Persons. They, never sie
the Species of any Person who is already dead. What they foirsie
fails not to exist in the Mode, and in that Place where it appears
to them. They cannot well know what Space of Time shall interveen
between the Apparition and the real Existance: But some of the
hardiest and longest Experience have some Rules for Conjectures; as,
if they sie a Man with a shrowding Sheet in the Apparition, they will
conjecture at the Nearness or Remoteness of his Death by the more
or less of his Bodie that is covered by it. They will ordinarily
sie their absent Friends, tho at a great Distance, some tymes no
less than from America to Scotland, sitting, standing, or walking
in some certain Place; and then they conclude with a Assurance that
they will sie them so and there. If a Man be in love with a Woman,
they will ordinarily sie the Species of that Man standing by her,
and so likewise if a Woman be in love; and they conjecture at their
Enjoyments (of each other) by the Species touching (of) the Person,
or appearing at a Distance from her (if they enjoy not one another.)
If they sie the Species of any Person who is sick to die, they sie
them covered over with the shrowding Sheet.
THESE Generalls I had verified to me by such of them as did sie,
and were esteemed honest and sober by all the Neighbourhood; for I
inquired after such for my Information. And because there were more
of these Seers in the Isles of Lewis, Harris, and Uist, than in any
other Place, I did entreat Sir James M‘Donald (who is now dead) Sir
Normand M‘Loud, and Mr. Daniel Morison, a verie honest Person, (who
are still alive,) to make Inquirie in this uncouth Sight, and to
acquaint me therewith; which they did, and all found ane Agriement in
these Generalls, and informed me of many Instances confirming what
they said. But though Men of Discretion and Honour, being but at
2d Hand, I will choose rather to put myself than my Friends on the
Hazard of being laughed at for incredible Relations.
I WAS once travelling in the Highlands, and a good Number of Servants
with me, as is usuall there; and one of them going a little before
me, entering into a House where I was to stay all Night, and going
haistily to the Door, he suddenly stept back with a Screech, and did
fall by a Stone, which hit his Foot. I asked what the Matter was, for
he seemed to be very much frighted. He told me very seriously that I
should not lodge in that House, because shortly a dead Coffin would
be carried out of it, for many were carrying of it when he was heard
cry. I neglecting his Words, and staying there, he said to other of
his Servants, he was sorry for it, and that surely what he saw would
shortly come to pass. Tho no sick Person was then there, yet the
Landlord, a healthy Highlander, died of ane appoplectick Fit before I
left the House.
In the year 1653, Alexander Monro (afterward Lieut. Coll. to the
Earl of Dunbarton’s Regiment,) and I were walking in a Place called
Ullabill, in Lochbroom, on a little Plain, at the Foot of a rugged
Hill. There was a Servant working with a Spade in the Walk before
us; his Back was to us, and his Face to the Hill. Before we came
to him, he let the Spade fall, and looked toward the Hill. He took
Notice of us as wee passed neer by him, which made me look at him;
and perceiving him to stair a little strangely, I conjectured him to
be a Seer. I called at him, at which he started and smiled. What are
you doing? said I. He answered, I have seen a very strange Thing; ane
Army of Englishmen, leeding of Horses, coming doun that Hill; and a
Number of them are come down to the Plain, and eating the Barley,
which is growing in the Field neer to the Hill. This was on the 4th
May, (for I notted the Day,) and it was four or fyve Days before the
Barley was sown in the Field he spoke of. Alexander Monro asked him
how he knew they were Englishmen? He said, because they were leeding
of Horses, and had on Hats and Bootts, which he knew no Scot Man
would have there. We took little Notice of the whole Storie, as other
than a foolish Vision; but wished that ane English Partie were there,
we being then at Warr with them, and the Place almost unaccessable
for Horsemen. But in the Beginning of August therafter, the Earle of
Midleton (then Lieut. for the King in the Highlands) having occasion
to march a Party of his toward the South Highlands, he sent his Foot
thorow a Place called Inverlawell; and the Fore-partie which was
first down the Hill, did fall off eating the Barley which was on the
litle Plain under it. And Monro calling to mynd what the Seer told
us, in May preceiding, he wrote of it, and sent ane Express to me to
Lochslin, in Ross, (where I then was) with it.
I HAD Occasion once to be in Companie where a Young Lady was, (excuse
my not naming of Persons,) and I was told there was a notable Seer
in the Companie. I called him to speak with me, as I did ordinarly
when I found any of them; and after he had answered me to several
Questions, I asked if he knew any Person to be in love with that
Lady. He said he did, but he knew not the Person; for during the two
Dayes he had been in her Company, he perceaved one standing neer her,
and his Head leaning on her Shoulder; which he said did fore-tell
that the Man should marrie her, and die before her, according to his
Observation. This was in the Year 1655. I desired him to describe the
Person, which he did; so that I could conjecture, by the Description,
of such a one, who was of that Ladyes Acquaintance, tho there were
no thought of their Marriage till two Years thereafter. And having
Occasion, in the Year 1657, to find this Seer, who was ane Islander,
in Company with the other Person whom I conjectured to have been
described by him, I called him aside, and asked if that was the
Person he saw beside the Lady near two Years then past. He said it
was he indeed, for he had seen that Lady just then standing by him
Hand in Hand. This was some few Months before their Marriage, and
that Man is since dead, and the Lady still alive.
I SHALL trouble you but with one more, which I thought most
remarkable of any that occurred to me. In January 1652, the above
mentioned Lieut. Coll. Alex. Monro and I happened to be in the House
of one Wm. M‘Cleud of Ferrinlea, in the County of Ross. He, the
Landlord, and I were sitting in three Chairs neir the Fire, and in
the Corner of the great Chimney there were two Islanders, who were
that verie Night come to the Hous, and were related to the Landlord.
While the one of them was talking with Monro, I perceaved the other
to look oddly toward me. From this Look, and his being ane Islander,
I conjectured him a Seer, and asked him, at what he stair’d? He
answered, by desiring me to rise from that Chair, for it was ane
unluckie one. I asked him why. He answered, because there was a dead
Man in the Chair nixt to me. Well, said I, if it be in the nixt
Chair, I may keep mine own. But what is the Likness of the Man? He
said he was a tall Man, with a long Grey Coat, booted, and one of
his Legs hanging over the Arme of the Chair, and his head hanging
dead to the other Side, and his Arme backward, as if it were brocken.
There were some English Troops then quartered near that Place, and
there being at that Time a great Frost after a Thaw, the Country was
covered all over with Yce. Four or Fyve of the English ryding by
this House some two Hours after the Vision, while we were sitting by
the Fire, we heard a great Noise, which prov’d to be those Troopers,
with the Help of other Servants, carrying in one of their Number, who
had got a very mischeivous Fall, and had his Arme broke; and falling
frequently in swooning Fits, they brought him into the Hall, and set
him in the verie Chair, and in the verie Posture that the Seer had
prophesied. But the Man did not die, though he recovered with great
Difficulty.
AMONG the Accounts given me by Sir Normand M‘clud, there was one
worth of special Notice, which was thus. There [was] a Gentleman in
the Isle of Harris, who was always seen by the Seers with ane Arrow
in his Thigh. Such in the Isle who thought those prognostications
infalliable, did not doubt but he would be shot in the Thigh before
he died. Sir Normand told me that he heard it the Subject of their
Discourse for many Years. At last he died without any such Accident.
Sir Normand was at his Buriall, at St Clement’s Church in the Harris.
At the same Time, the Corps of another Gentleman was brought to be
buried in the same verie Church. The Friends on either Side came to
debate who should first enter the Church, and in a Trice from Words
they came to Blows. One of the Number (who was arm’d with Bow and
Arrows) let one fly among them. (Now everie Familie in that Isle have
their Buriall-place in the Church in Stone Chests, and the Bodies
are carried in open Biers to the Buriall-place.) Sir Normand having
appeased the Tumult, one of the Arrows was found shot in the dead
Man’s Thigh. To this Sir Normand was a Witness.
IN the Account which Mr Daniel Morison, Parson in the Lewis, gave
me, there was one, tho it be hetergeneous from the subject, yet it
may [be] worth your Notice. It was of a young Woman in his Parish,
who was mightily frightned by seeing her own Image still before her,
alwayes when she came to the open Air; the Back of the Image being
alwayes to her, so that it was not a reflection as in a Mirrour, but
the Species of such a Body as her own, and in a very like Habit,
which appeared to herself continually before her. The Parson keept
her a long whyle with him, but had no Remedy of her Evill, which
troubled her exceidingly. I was told afterwards, that when she was
four or fyve Years elder she saw it not.
THESE are Matters of Fact, which I assure yow they are truely
related. But these, and all others that occurred to me, by
Information or otherwise, could never lead me into a remote
Conjecture of the Cause of so extraordinary a Phænomenon. Whither it
be a Quality in the Eyes of some People into these Pairts, concurring
with a Quality in the Air also; whither such Species be every where,
tho not seen by the Want of Eyes so qualified, or from whatever other
Cause, I must leave to the Inquiry of clearer Judgements than mine.
But a Hint may be taken from this image which appeared still to this
Woman abovementioned, and from another mentioned by Aristotle, in
the 4th of his Metaphysicks (if I remember right, for it is long
since I read it;) as also from the common Opinion that young Infants
(unsullied with many Objects) do sie Appearitions, which were not
seen by those of elder Years; as like wise from this, that severalls
did sie the Second Sight when in the Highlands or Isles, yet when
transported to live in other Countreys, especially in America, they
quite lose this Qualitie, as was told me by a Gentleman who knew some
of them in Barbadoes, who did see no Vision there, altho he knew them
to be Seers when they lived in the Isles of Scotland.
Thus far my Lord Tarbett.
* * * * *
MY LORD, after narrow Inquisition, hath delivered many true and
remarkable observes on this Subject; yet to encourage a further
Scrutiny, I crave leave to say,
THAT 1. But a few Women are endued with this Sight in respect of Men,
and their Predictions not so certane.
2. This Sight is not criminal, since a Man can come by it unawares,
and without his Consent; but it is certaine he sie more fatall and
fearfull Things than he do gladsome.
3. THE Seers avouch, that severalls who go to the _Siths_, (or
People at Rest, and, in respect of us, in Peace,) before the natural
Period of their Lyfe expyre, do frequently appear to them.
4. A VEHEMENT Desyre to attain this Airt is very helpfull to the
Inquyrer; and the Species of ane Absent Friend, which appears to the
Seers, as clearly as if he had sent his lively Picture to present it
selfe before him, is no phantastick Shaddow of a sick Apprehension,
but a reality, and a Messinger, coming for unknown Reasons, not from
the originall Similitude of it selfe, but from a more swift and
pragmantick People, which recreat them selves in offering secret
Intelligence to Men, tho generally they are unacquainted with that
Kind of Correspondence, as if they had lived in a different element
from them.
5. THO my Collections were written long before I saw My Lord of
Tarbett’s, yet I am glad that his descriptions and mine correspond
so nearly. The Maid my Lord mentions, who saw her Image still before
her, suteth with the CO-WALKER named in my Account; which tho some,
at first Thought, might conjecture to be by the Refraction of a Cloud
or Mist, as in the Parelij, (the whole Air and every Drop of Water
being a Mirrour to returne the Species of Things, were our visive
Faculty sharpe enough to apprehend them,) or a naturall Reflexion,
from the same Reasons that an Echo can be redoubled by Airt; yet it
were more fasable to impute this Second Sight to a Quality infused
into the Eye by ane Unction: for Witchies have a sleepie Oyntment,
that, when applyed, troubles their Fantasies, advancing it to have
unusuall Figures and Shapes represented to it, as if it were a Fit
of Fanaticism, Hypocondriack Melancholly, or Possession of some
insinuating Spirit, raising the Soul beyond its common Strain, if the
palpable Instances and Realities seen, and innocently objected to the
Senses did not disprove it, make the Matter a palpable Verity, and no
Deception; yet since this Sight can be bestowed without Oyntment, or
dangerous Compact, the Qualification is not of so bad an Originall.
Therefore,
6. BY my Lord’s good Leave, I presume to say, that this Sight can
be no Quality of the Air nor of the Eyes; becaus, 1. such as live in
the same Air, and sie all other Things as farr off and as clearly,
yet have not the SECOND SIGHT. 2. A SEER can give another Person
this Sight transiently, by putting his Hand and Foot in the Posture
he requires of him. 3. The unsullied Eyes of Infants can naturally
perceave no new unaccustomed Objects, but what appear to other Men,
unless exalted and clarified some Way, as Ballaam’s Ass for a Time;
tho in a Witches Eye the Beholder cannot sie his own Image reflected,
as in the Eyes of other People; so that Defect of Objects, as well
as Diversities of the Subject, may appear differently on severall
Tempers and Ages. 4. Tho also some are of so venemous a Constitution,
by being radicated in Envy and Malice, that they pierce and kill
(like a Cockatrice) whatever Creature they first set their Eye on
in the Morning; so was it with Walter Grahame, some Time living in
the Paroch wherein now I am, who killed his own Cow after commending
its Fatness, and shot a Hair with his Eyes, having praised its
swiftness, (such was the Infection of ane evill Eye;) albeit this was
unusuall, yet he saw no Object but what was obvious to other Men as
well as to himselfe. 5. If the being transported to live in another
Countrey did obscure the Second Sight, nather the Parson nor the Maid
needed be much troubled for her Reflex-selfe; a little Peregrination,
and going from her wonted Home, would have salved her Fear. Wherefore,
7. SINCE the Things seen by the Seers are real Entities, the Presages
and Predictions found true, but a few endued with this Sight, and
those not of bad Lyves, or addicted to Malifices, the true Solution
of the Phænomenon seems rather to be, the courteous Endeavours of
our fellow Creatures in the Invisible World to convince us, (in
Opposition to Sadduce’s, Socinians, and Atheists,) of a Deity; of
Spirits; of a possible and harmless Method of Correspondence betwixt
Men and them, even in this Lyfe; of their Operation for our Caution
and Warning; of the Orders and Degrees of Angells, whereof one
Order, with Bodies of Air condensed and curiously shap’t, may be
nixt to Man, superior to him in Understanding, yet unconfirmed; and
of their Region, Habitation, and Influences on Man, greater than
that of Starrs on inanimat Bodies; a Knowledge (be-like) reserved
for these last atheistick Ages, wherein the Profanity of Mens Lives
hath debauched and blinded their Understanding, as to MOSES, JESUS,
and the Prophets, (unless they get Convictions from Things formerly
known,) as from the Regions of the Dead: nor doth the ceasing of
the Visions, upon the Seers Transmigration into forrein Kingdoms,
make his Lordship’s Conjecture of the Quality of the Air and Eye a
white the more probable; but, on the Contrary, it confirms greatly
my Account of ane Invisible People, guardian over and care-full of
Men, who have their different Offices and Abilities in distinct
Counterey’s, as appears in Dan. 10. 13. viz. about Israels, Grecia’s,
and Persia’s assistant Princes, whereof who so prevaileth giveth
Dominion and Ascendant to his Pupills and Vassalls over the opposite
Armies and Countreys; so that every Countrey and Kingdom having
their topical Spirits, or Powers assisting and governing them,
the SCOTTISH SEER banished to America, being a Stranger there, as
well to the invisible as to the visible Inhabitants, and wanting
a Fimiliarity of his former Correspondents, he could not have the
Favour and Warnings, by the severall Visions and Predictions which
were wont to be granted him by these Acquantances and Fayourites in
his own Countrey. For if what he wont to sie were Realities, (as I
have made appear,) ’twere too great ane Honour for Scotland to have
such seldom-seen Watchers and predominant Powers over it alone,
acting in it so expressly, and all other Nations wholly destitute of
the lyke; tho, without all peradventure, all other People wanted the
right Key of their Cabinet, and the exact Method of Correspondence
with them, except the sagacious active Scots, as many of them have
retained it of a long Time, and by Surpryses and Raptures do often
foirtell what in Kyndness is really represented to them at severall
Occasions. To which Purpose the learned lynx-ey’d Mr. Baxter, on Rev.
12. 7. writting of the Fight betwixt Michaell and the Dragon, gives a
verie pertinent Note, viz. That he knows not but ere any great Action
(especiall tragicall) is don on Earth, that first the Battell and
Victory is acted and atchieved in the Air betwixt the good and evill
Spirits: Thus he. It seems these were the mens Guardians; and the
lyke Battells are oft tymes perceav’d in a Loaft in the Nycht-time;
the Event of which myght easily be represented by some one of the
Number to a Correspondent on Earth, as frequently the Report of
great Actions have been more swiftly caried to other Countreys than
all the Airt of us Mortals could possibly dispatch it. St. Austine,
on Mark, 9. 4. giveth no small Intimation of this Truth, averring
that Elias appeared with Jesus on the Mount in his proper Bodie, but
Moses in ane aereall Bodie, assumed like the Angels who appeared, and
had Ability to eat with Abraham, tho no Necessity on the Account of
their Bodies. As lyke wise the late Doctrine of the Pre-existence
of Souls, living into aereall Vehicles, gives a singular Hint of
the Possibility of the Thing, if not a direct Prooff of the whole
Assertion; which yet moreover may be illuminated by diverse other
Instances of the lyke Nature, and as wonderfull, besides what is
above said. As,
8. THE invisible Wights which haunt Houses seem rather to be some
of our subterranean Inhabitants, (which appear often to Men of the
Second Sight,) than evill Spirits or Devills; because, tho they
throw great Stones, Pieces of Earth and Wood, at the Inhabitants,
they hurt them not at all, as if they acted not malitiously, like
Devills at all, but in Sport, lyke Buffoons and Drolls. All Ages have
affoorded some obscure Testimonies of it, as Pythagoras his Doctrine
of Transmigration; Socrates’s Dæmon that gave him [Warning] of future
Dangers; Platoe’s classing them into various vehiculated Specieses
of Spirits; Dionisius Areopagita’s marshalling nyne Orders of
Spirits, superiour and subordinate; the Poets their borrowing of the
Philosophers, and adding their own Fancies of Fountain, River, and
Sea Nymphs, Wood, Hill, and Montain Inhabitants, and that every Place
and Thing, in Cities and Countreys, had speciall invisible regular
Gods and Governours. Cardan speaks of his Father his seeing the
Species of his Friend, in a moon-shyn Night, riding fiercely by his
Window on a white Horse, the verie Night his Friend dy’d at a Vast
Distance from him; by which he understood that some Alteration would
suddenly ensue. Cornelius Aggrippa, and the learned Dr. Mor, have
severall Passages tending that Way. The Noctambulo’s themselves would
appear to have some forrein joquing Spirit possessing and supporting
them, when they walk on deep Waters and Topes of Houses without
Danger, when asleep and in the dark; for it was no way probable that
their Apprehension, and strong Imagination setting the Animal Spirits
a work to move the Body, could preserve it from sinking in the
Deepth, or falling down head-long, when asleep, any more than when
awake, the Body being then as ponderous as before; and it is hard
to attribute it to a Spirit flatelie evill and Enemy to Man, because
the Noctambulo returns to his own Place safe. And the most furious
Tribe of the Dæmons are not permitted by Providence to attacke Men so
frequently either by Night or by Day: For in our Highlands, as there
may be many fair Ladies of this aereal Order, which do often tryst
with lascivious young Men, in the quality of Succubi, or lightsome
Paramours and Strumpets, called _Leannain Sith_, or familiar
Spirits (in Dewter. 18. 11.); so do many of our Hyghlanders, as if
a strangling by the Night MARE, pressed with a fearfull Dream, or
rather possessed by one of our aereall Neighbours, rise up fierce in
the Night, and apprehending the neerest Weapons, do push and thrust
at all Persons in the same Room with them, sometymes wounding their
own Comerades to dead. The lyke whereof fell sadly out within a few
Miles of me at the writting hereof. I add but one Instance more, of
a very young Maid, who lived neir to my last Residence, that in one
Night learned a large Peice of Poesy, by the frequent Repetition
of it, from one of our nimble and courteous Spirits, whereof a Part
was pious, the rest superstitious, (for I have a Copy of it,) and no
other Person was ever heard to repeat it before, nor was the Maid
capable to compose it of herself.
9. He demonstrated and made evident to Sense this extraordinary
Vision of our Tramontain Seers, and what is seen by them, by what is
said above, many haveing seen this same Spectres and Apparitions at
once, haveing their visive Faculties entire; for _non est disputandum
de gustu_. Itt now remaines to shew that it is not unsutable to
Reason nor the Holy Scriptures.
FIRST, That it is not repugnant to Reason, doeth appear from this,
that it is no less strange for Immortal Sparks and Souls to come
and be immersed into gross terrestrial elementary Bodies, and be
so propagated, so nourished, so fed, soe cloathed as they are,
and breathe in such ane Air and World prepared for them, then for
Hollanders or Hollow-cavern Inhabitants to live and traffick among
us, in another State of Being, without our Knowledge. For Raymond de
Subinde, in his 3d Booke, Chap. 12. argues quaintly, that all Sorts
of Living Creatures have a happie rational Politie of there own, with
great Contentment; which Government and mutual Converse of theirs
they all pride and pluim themselves, because it is as unknown to Man,
as Man is to them. Much more, that the Sone of the HIGHEST SPIRIT
should assume a Bodie like ours, convinces all the World that no
other Thing that is possible needs be much wondered at.
2. The Manucodiata, or Bird of Paradise, living in the highest
Region of the Air; common Birds in the second Region; Flies and
Insects in the lowest; Men and Beasts on the Earth’s Surface;
Worms, Otters, Badgers, in Waters; lyke wise Hell is inhabited at
the Centre, and Heaven in the Circumference: can we then think
the middle Cavities of the Earth emptie? I have seen in Weems, (a
Place in the Countie of Fyfe, in Scotland,) divers Caves cut out
as vast Temples under Ground; the lyke is a Countie of England;
in Malta is a Cave, wherein Stons of a curious Cut are thrown in
great Numbers every Day; so I have had barbed Arrow-heads of yellow
Flint, that could not be cut so small and neat, of so brittle a
Substance, by all the Airt of Man. It would seem therefoir that
these mention’d Works were done by certaine Spirits of pure Organs,
and not by Devills, whose continual Torments could not allow them
so much Leasure. Besides these, I have found fyve Curiosities in
Scotland, not much observ’d to be elsewhere. 1. The Brounies, who
in some Families are Drudges, clean the Houses and Dishes after all
go to Bed, taking with him his Portion of Food and removing befor
Day-break. 2. The Mason Word, which tho some make a Misterie of it,
I will not conceal a little of what I know. It is lyke a Rabbinical
Tradition, in way of Comment on Jachin and Boaz, the two Pillars
erected in Solomon’s Temple, (1 Kings, 7. 21.) with ane Addition
of some secret Signe delyvered from Hand to Hand, by which they
know and become familiar one with another. 3. This Second Sight,
so largely treated of before. 4. Charmes, and curing by them very
many Diseases, sometimes by transferring the Sicknes to another.
5. A being Proof of Lead, Iron, and Silver, or a Brieve making Men
invulnerable. Divers of our Scottish Commanders and Souldiers have
been seen with blue Markes only, after they were shot with leaden
Balls; which seems to be an Italian Trick, for they seem to be a
People too currious and magically inclyned, Finally Iris-men, our
Northern-Scotish, and our Athole Men are so much addicted to and
delighted with Harps and Musick, as if, like King Saul, they were
possessed with a forrein Spirit, only with this Difference, that
Musick did put Saul’s Pley-fellow a sleep, but roused and awaked
our Men, vanquishing their own Spirits at Pleasure, as if they were
impotent of its Powers, and unable to command it; for wee have seen
some poor Beggers of them, chattering their Teeth for Cold, that how
soon they saw the Fire, and heard the Harp, leapt thorow the House
like Goats and Satyrs. As there paralell Stories in all Countries and
Ages reported of these our obscure People, (which are no Dotages,)
so is it no more of Necessitie to us fully to know their Beings and
Manner of Life, then to understand distinctly the Politie of the nyne
Orders of Angels; or with what Oyl the Lamp of the Sun is maintained
so long and regularlie; or why the Moon is called a great Luminary
in Scripture, while it only appears to be so; or if the Moon be
truly inhabited, because Telescopes discover Seas and Mountains in
it, as well as flaming Furnishes in the Sun; or why the Discovery of
America was look’t on as a Fairie Tale, and the Reporters hooted at
as Inventors of ridiculous Utopias, or the first probable Asserters
punished as Inventures of new Gods and Worlds; or why in England the
King cures the Struma by stroaking, and the Seventh Son in Scotland;
whither his temperat Complexion conveys a Balsome, and sucks out
the corrupting Principles by a frequent warme sanative Contact, or
whither the Parents of the Seventh Child put furth a more eminent
Virtue to his Production than to all the Rest, as being the certain
Meridian and hight to which their Vigour ascends, and from that furth
have a graduall declyning into a feebleness of the Bodie and its
Production. And then, 1. Why is not the 7th Son infected himselfe
by that Contagion he extracts from another? 2. How can continual
stroaking with a cold Hand have foe strong a natural Operation, as
to exhale all the Infections warming corroding Vapours. 3. Why may
not a 7th Daughter have the same Vertue? So that it appears, albeit,
a happie natural Constitution concurre, yet something in it above
Nature. Therefore every Age hath left some secret for its Discoverie;
who knows but this Entercourse betwixt the two Kinds of rationall
Inhabitants of the same Earth may be not only beleived shortly,
but as friely entertain’d, and as well known, as now the Airt of
Navigation, Printing, Limning, riding on Saddles with Stirrups,
and the Discoveries of Microscopes, which were sometimes a great a
Wonder, and as hard to be beleived.
10. THO I will not be so curious nor so peremptorie as he who will
prove the Posibility of the Philosopher’s Stone from Scripture,
Job, 28. 1. 2. Job, 22. 24. 25.; or the Pluralitie of Worlds, from
John, 14. 2. and Hebrews ij. 3.; nor the Circulation of Blood from
Eccles. 12. and 6.; nor the Tanismanical Airt, from the Blind and
Lame mentioned in 2d of Samuel, 5. 6. yet I humblie propose these
Passages which may give some Light to our Subject at least, and show
that this Polity and Rank of People is not a Thing impossible, nor
the modest and innocent Scrutiny of them impertinent or unsafe. The
Legion or Brigad of Spirits (mentioned Mark, 5. 10.) besought our
Saviour not to send them away out of the Countrey; which shows they
were DÆMONES LOCI, Topical Spirits, and peculiar Superintendents and
Supervisors assign’d to that Province. And the Power over the Nations
granted (Rev. 2. 26.) to the Conquerors of Vice and Infidelitie,
Sound somewhat to that Purpose. Tobit had a Dæmon attending Marriage,
Chap. 6. Verse, 15; and in Matth. 4. and 5. ane evill Spirit came in
a Visible Shape to tempt our Saviour, who himselfe denyed not the
sensible appearing of Ghosts to our Sight, but said, their Bodies
were not composed of Flesh and Bones, as ours, Luke, 24. 39. And in
Philip. 2. 10. our verie Subterraneans are expressly said to bow to
the Name of JESUS. Elisha, not intellectually only, but sensibly, saw
Gehazi when out of the Reach of ane ordinary View. It wants not good
Evidents that there are more managed by God’s Spirits, good, evill,
and intermediate Spirits, among Men in this World, then we are aware
of; the good Spirits ingesting fair and heroick Apprehensions and
Images of Vertue and the divyne Life, thereby animating us to act for
a higher Happines, according to our Improvement; and relinquishing
us as strangely upon our Neglect, or our embraceing the deceatfull
syrene-like Pictures and Representations of Pleasures and Gain,
presented to our Imaginations by evill and sportfull Angells, to
allure to ane unthinking, ungenerous, and sensual Lyfe; non of them
having power to compell us to any Misdemeanour without our flat
Consent. Moreover, this Life of ours being called a Warfair, and
God’s saying that at last there will be no Peace to the Wicked, our
bussie and silent Companions also being called _Siths_, or _People
at Rest and Quiet_, in respect of us; and withall many Ghosts
appearing to Men that want this _Second Sight_, in the very Shapes,
and speaking the same Language, they did when incorporate and alive
with us; a Matter that is of ane old imprescriptible Tradition, (_our
Highlanders_ making still a Distinction betwixt _Sluagh Saoghalta_
and _Sluagh Sith_, averring that the Souls goe to the _Sith_ when
dislodged;) many real Treasures and Murders being discovered by Souls
that pass from among our selves, or by the Kindness of these our
airie Neighbours, non of which Spirits can be altogither inorganical.
No less than the Conseits about Purgatory, or a State of Rescue; the
_Limbus Patrum et Infantum_, Inventions, [which] tho misapplyed, yet
are not Chimæras, and altogither groundless. For _ab origine_, it is
nothing but blansh and faint Discoveries of this SECRET REPUBLICK
of ours here treated on, and additional Fictions of Monks doting
and crazied Heads, our Creed saying that our Saviour descended εἰς
ᾅδου, to the invisible Place and People. And many Divines supposing
that the Deity appear’d in a visible Shape seen by Adam in the Cooll
of the Day, and speaking to him with ane audible voice. And Jesus,
probably by the Ministery of invisible Attendants, conveying more
meat of the same Kind to the fyve Thowsand that wes fed by him with
a very few Loaves and Fishes, (for a new Creation it was not.) The
Zijmjiim and Ochim, in Isa. 13. 21. 22. Thes Satyres, and doolfull
unknown Creatures of Islands and Deserts, seem to have a plain
Prospect that Way. Finally, the eternal Happiness enjoyed in the 3d
Heavens, being more mysterious than most of Men take it to be. It is
not a sense whollie adduced to Scripture to say, that this SIGHT, and
the due Objects of it, hath some Vestige in holy Write, but rather
’tis modestly deduced from it.
11. It only now remains to ansear the obvious Objections against the
Reality and Lawfullness of this Speculation.
QUESTION 1. How do you salve the Second Sight from Compact and
Witchcraft?
ANSWER. Tho this Correspondence with the Intermediate Unconfirm’d
People (betwixt Man and Angell) be not ordinary to all of us who are
Superterraneans, yet this SIGHT falling some Persons by Accident, and
its being connatural to others from their Birth, the Derivation of it
cannot always be wicked. A too great Curiositie, indeed, to acquyre
any unnecessary Airt, may be blameworthy; but diverse of the SECRET
COMMONWEALTH may, by Permission, discover themselves as innocently to
us, who are in another State, as some of us Men do to Fishes, which
are in another Element, when we plunge and dive into the Bottom of
the Seas, their native Region; and in Process of Time we may come to
converse as familiarly with these nimble and agile Clans (but with
greater Pleasure and Profit,) as we do now with the Chino’s Antipodes.
QUESTION 2. Are they subject to Vice, Lusts? Passion, and Injustice,
as we who live on the Surface of the Earth?
ANSWER. The Seers tell us that these wandering Aereal People have
not such an Impetus and fatall Tendency to any Vice as Men, as not
being drenched into so gross and dregy Bodies as we, but yet are
in ane imperfect State, and some of them making better Essays for
heroick Actions than others; having the same Measures of Vertue
and Vice as wee, and still expecting advancement to a higher and
more splendid State of Lyfe. One of them is stronger than many
Men, yet do not incline to hurt Mankind, except by Commission for
a gross Misdemeanour, as the destroying Angell of Ægypt, and the
Assyrians, Exod. 12. 29. 2 Kings, 10. 35. They haunt most where is
most Barbaritie; and therefoir our ignorant Ancestors, to prevent the
Insults of that strange People, used as rude and course a Remedie;
such as Exorcisms, Donations, and Vows: But how soon ever the true
Piety prevailed in any Place, it did not put the Inhabitants beyond
the Reach and Awthoritie of these subtile inferiour Co-inhabitants
and Colleagues of ours: The FATHER OF ALL SPIRITS, and the Person
himselfe, having the only Command of his Soul and Actions, a
concurrance they may have to what is virtuously done; for upon
committing of a foul Deed, one will find a Demure upon his Soul, as
if his cheerfull Collegue had deserted him.
QUESTION 3. Do these airie Tribes procreate? If so, how are they
nourished, and at what period of Time do they die?
ANSWER. Supposing all Spirits to be created at once in the Beginning,
Souls to pre-exist and to circle about into several States of
Probationship; to make them either totally unexcusable, or perfectly
happie against the last Day, solves all the Difficulties. But in
very Deed, and speaking suteable to the Nature of Things, there is
no more Absurditie for a Spirit to inform ane Infant in Bodie of
Airs, than a Bodie composed of dull and drusie Earth; the best of
Spirits have alwayes delyghted more to appear into aereal, than
into terrestrial Bodyes. They feed most what on Quintessences, and
aetheriall Essences. The Pith and Spirits only of Women’s Milk feed
their Children, being artificially conveyed, (as Air and Oyl sink
into our Bodies,) to make them vigorous and fresh. And this shorter
Way of conveying a pure Aliment, (without the usuall Digestions,)
by transfusing it, and transpyring thorow the Pores into the Veins,
Arteries, and Vessells that supplie the Bodie, is nothing more
absurd, than ane Infant’s being fed by the Navel before it is borne,
or than a Plant, which groweth by attracting a livelie Juice from the
Earth thorow many small Roots and Tendons, whose courser Pairts be
adapted and made connatural to the Whole, doth quickly coalesce by
the ambient Cold; and so are condens’d and bak’d up into a confirm’d
Wood in the one, and solid Bodie of the Flesh and Bone in the other.
A Notion which, if intertained and approv’d, may shew that the late
Invention of soaking and transfusing (not Blood, but) athereal
virtuall Spirits, may be usefull both for Nourishment and Health,
whereof is a Vestige in the damnable Practise of evill Angells, their
sucking of Blood and Spirits out of Witches Bodys (till they drew
them into a deform’d and dry Leanness,) to feid their own Vehicles
withall, leaving what we call the Witches Mark behind; a Spot that I
have seen, as a small Mole, horny, and brown-coloured; throw which
Mark, when a large Brass Pin was thrust (both in Buttock, Nose, and
Rooff of the Mouth,) till it bowed and become crooked, the Witches,
both Men and Women, nather felt a Pain, nor did bleed, nor knew the
precise Time when this was adoing to them, (there Eyes only being
covered.) Now the Air being a Body as well as Earth, no Reason can be
given why there may not be Particles of more vivific Spirit form’d
of it for Procreation, then is possible to be of Earth, which takes
more Time and Pains to rarify and ripen it, ere it can come to have
a prolific Virtue. And if our Aping Darlings did not thus procreate,
there whole Number would be exhausted after a considerable Space of
Time. For tho they are of more refyned Bodies and Intellectualls than
wee, and of far less heavy and corruptive Humours, (which cause a
Dissolution,) yet many of their Lives being dissonant to right Reason
and their own Laws, and their Vehicles not being wholly frie of Lust
and Passion, especially of the more spirituall and hautie Sins they
pass (after a long healthy Lyfe) into one Orb and Receptacle fitted
for their Degree, till they come under the general Cognizance of the
last Day.
QUESTION 4. Doth the acquiring of this Second Sight make any Change
on the Acquirers Body, Mind, or Actions?
ANSWER. All uncouth SIGHTS enfeebles the SEER. Daniel, tho familiar
with divyne Visions, yet fell frequently doun without Strength,
when dazzled with a Power which had the Ascendant of, and passed
on him beyond his Comprehension, Chap. 10. 8. 17. So our SEER is
put in a Rapture, Transport, and sort of Death, as divested of his
Body and all its Senses, when he is first made participant of this
curious Peice of Knowledge: But it maketh no Wramp or Strain in the
Understanding of any; only to the Fancy’s of clownish or illiterate
Men, it creates some Affrightments and Disturbances, because of the
Strongness of the Showes, and their Unacquaintedness with them. And
as for their Lyfe, the Persons endued with this Rarity are, for
the most Part, candid, honest, and sociable People. If any of them
be subject to Immoralities, this obstruse Skill is not to be blamed
for it; for unless themselves be the Tempters, the Colonies of the
Invisible Plantations, with which they intercommune, do provoke them
by no Villainy or Malifice, nather at their first Acquaintance nor
after a long Familiarity.
QUESTION 5. Doth not Sathan interpose in such Cases by many subtile
unthought Insinuations, as to him who let the Fly, or Familiar, go
out of the Box, and yet found the Fly of his own putting in, as
serviceable as the other would have been?
ANSWER. The Goodness of the Lyfe, and Designs of the ancient Prophets
and Seers, was one of the best Prooffs of their Mission.[37]
NOTE.
In trying to collect evidence as to the Rerrick “evil spirit” from
Kirk-Session Records, I have been most kindly assisted by the Rev.
Mr. M‘Conachie, Minister of Rerrick. Mr. M‘Conachie finds that only
two parishes in the Stewartry, Kells and Girthon, have records
containing the years 1695, 1696. The records of Rerrick do not go so
far back. We are therefore left to the pamphlet of 1696, by Telfair,
which is an unusually business-like statement, the names of attesting
witnesses being added in the marginal notes. For phenomena singularly
similar to those of Rerrick, _Obeah_, by Mr. H. J. Bell, may be
consulted. (_Obeah_, Sampson Low & Co., London, 1889, p. 93.)
NOTES.
INTRODUCTION.
_Note_ (_a_), p. xvi.—“The Psychical Society.”
The Psychical Society, as far as the writer is aware has not
examined officially the old accounts of the phenomena which it
investigates at present. The Catalogue of the Society’s Library,
however, proves that it does not lack the materials.
_Note_ (_b_), p. xxx.—“Their speech is a kind of whistling.”
That the voice of spirits is a kind of whistling, twittering,
or chirping, is a very widely diffused and ancient belief. The
ghosts in Homer twitter like bats; in New Caledonia an English
settler found that he could scare the natives from a piece of
ground by whistling there at night. Mr. Samuel Wesley says, “I
followed the noise into almost every room in the house, both by
day and by night, with lights and without, and have sat alone for
some time, and, when I heard the noise, spoke to it to tell me
what it was, but never heard any articulate voice, and only once
or twice two or three feeble squeaks, a little louder than the
chirping of a bird, and not like the noise of rats, which I have
often heard” (_Memoirs of the Wesley Family_, p. 164). Professor
Alexander mentions the “pecular whistling sound” at some
manifestations in Rio Janeiro as “rather frequent” (_Proc. S. P.
R._, xix. 180). Here children were the mediums; how did they get
the idea of the traditional whistle? See also the following note.
_Note_ (_c_), p. xl.—“Not long after the Spanish conquest of Peru.”
The phenomena alluded to here are said to have occurred in
1549. The evidence is a mere report by Cieza de Leon, who does
not pretend to have been an eye-witness. But, as Mr. Clements
Markham, Cieza’s editor, remarks, the phenomena are analogous to
those of spiritualism. At the very least, we find a belief in
this kind of manifestation at a remote date, and in an outlandish
place. Cieza says:[38]
“When the Adelantado Belalcazar was governor of the province of
Popyan, and when Gomez Hernandez was his lieutenant in the town
of Auzerma, there was a chief in a village called Pirsa, almost
four leagues from the town, whose brother, a good-looking youth
named Tamaraqunga, inspired by God, wished to go to the town of
the Christians to receive baptism. But the devils did not wish
that he should attain his desire, fearing to lose what seemed
secure, so they frightened this Tamaraqunga in such sort that
he was unable to do anything. God permitting it, the devils
stationed themselves in a place where the chief alone could see
them, in the shape of birds called _auras_. Finding himself so
persecuted by the devils, he sent in great haste to a Christian
living near, who came at once, and hearing what he wanted, signed
him with the sign of the cross. But the devils then frightened
him more than ever, appearing in hideous forms, which only were
visible to him. _The Christian only saw stones falling from the
air and heard whistling._ A brother of one Juan Pacheco, citizen
of the same town, then holding office in the place of Gomez
Hernandez, who had gone to Caramanta, came from Auzerma with
another man to visit the Indian chief. They say that Tamaraqunga
was much frightened and ill-treated by the devils, who carried
him through the air from one place to another in presence of the
Christians, he complaining and the devils whistling and shouting.
Sometimes when the chief was sitting with a glass of liquor
before him, the Christians saw the glass raised up in the air and
put down empty, and a short time afterwards the wine was again
poured into the cup from the air.” Compare what Ibn Batuta, the
old Arab traveller, saw at the court of the King of Delhi. The
matter is discussed in Colonel Yule’s _Marco Polo_.
This may suffice as a specimen of the manifestations. They
continued while the chief was on his way to church; he was lifted
into the air, and the Christians had to hold him down. In church
the ghostly whistling was heard, and stones fell around, while
the chief said that he saw devils standing upside down, and
himself was thrown into that unusual posture. The combination of
convulsive movements with the other phenomena is that which we
have already remarked in the cases of “Mr. H.” and the grandson
of William Morse. Cieza de Leon says that the chief was not
troubled after his baptism. The illusions of the newly-converted,
so like those of the early Christian hermits, are described by
Callaway in his _Zulu Tales_.
_Note_ (_d_), p. l.
Priestley’s explanation of the Epworth disturbances is imposture
by the servants, by way of a practical joke. Coleridge, on the
other hand, says that “all these stories, and I could produce
fifty cases at least equally well authenticated, and, as far
as the veracity of the narrators, and the single fact of their
having seen and heard such and such sights or sounds, above all
rational scepticism, are as much like one another as the symptoms
of the same disease in different patients.”
It is a pity that Coleridge did not produce his fifty
well-authenticated examples. The similarity of the narratives
everywhere, all the world over, is exactly what makes them
interesting. Coleridge goes on: “This indeed I take to be the
true and only solution—a contagious nervous disease, the acme,
or intensest form of which is catalepsy” (Southey’s _Wesley_,
vol. i. p. 14, Coleridge’s note). If there be such a contagious
nervous disease, it is a very remarkable malady, and well worth
examining. The Wesleys were not alarmed; they bantered the
spirit; they wished they could set him to work; and beyond the
trembling of the children when Jeffrey was knocking during their
sleep, there is no sign of morbid conditions. A neighbouring
clergyman, who was asked to pass a night in the house, saw and
heard just what the others heard and saw.[39] The hypothesis of a
contagious nervous disease, in which every witness exhibits the
same symptoms of illusion in all parts of the world, is a theory
which needs a good deal of verification. Where material traces
of the disturbances remain, it is absurd to speak of contagious
hallucinations. We must fall back on the hypothesis of trickery,
or must say with Southey, “Such things may be preternatural,
yet not miraculous; they may not be in the ordinary course of
nature, yet imply no alteration of its laws.” Any theory is more
plausible than the idea that Mr. Wesley and Mr. Hoole were in a
state bordering on catalepsy. Believers in hypnotism may think
it possible that this, that, and the other persons, if they
submitted themselves to hypnotic influences, might have the same
hallucinations suggested to them. But there is no evidence, in
the Epworth case nor in the Rerrick case, of any such matter.
“So far as we yet know, sensory hallucination of several
persons together, _who are not in a hypnotic state_, is a rare
phenomenon, and therefore not a probable explanation” (_Proc. S.
P. R._, iv. 62). There is some evidence that epileptic patients
suffer from the same illusions—for example, the presence of a
woman in a red cloak; and in _delirium tremens_ the “horrors” are
usually similar. But that all the persons who enter a given house
should be impressed by the same material illusions, as of chairs
and tables, and even beds (like Nancy Wesley’s) flying about, is
a theory more incredible than the hypothesis either of trickery
or of abnormal occurrences. When the disturbances always cease on
the arrival of a competent witness, then it is not hard to say
which theory we ought to choose. For imposture see next note.
_Note_ (_e_), p. lvii.—“Children at _séances_.”
The phenomena discussed are most frequently connected with
children, who may be regarded either as mediums or impostors,
conscious or unconscious. In _Proc. S. P. R._, iv. 25-42,
Professor Barrett gives the case of a little girl whom he
knew. She had raps wherever she went, even when alone with the
Professor, who made her stand with her hands against the wall,
at the greatest stretch of her arms, “with the muscles of the
legs and arms all in tension.” “A brisk pattering of raps”
followed Professor Barrett’s request. But he also mentions
a boy “of juvenile piety,” who “for twelve months deceived
his father, a distinguished surgeon, and all his family, by
pretended spiritualistic manifestations, which appeared at first
sight inexplicable, until the cunning trickery of the lad was
discovered.” The only difference between these cases is that an
“outsider” discovered trickery in one instance and not in the
other. This is a very ticklish kind of certainty, and it is plain
that children can do a great deal in the way of mere imposture.
The state of any young Wesley who might have been caught out
is unenviable. Verily Mr. Wesley would not have spared for his
crying.
_Note_ (_f_), p. lxii.—“The pricking of witches.”
It is pretty certain that some of there unlucky old women were
pricked “in anæsthetic areas.”
* * * * *
_Note_ (_a_), p. 8.—“These Arrows that fly in the Dark.”
The arrows are the ancient flint arrow-heads, which Mr. Kirk
later asserts to be too delicate for human artificers. On this
matter Isabel Gowdie, the witch, confessed, “As for Elf arrows,
the Divell sharpes them with his ain hand, and deliveris them to
Elf boys, wha whyttlis and dightis them with a sharp thing lyk a
paking needle; bot whan I was in Elfland, I saw them whyttling
and dighting them.” Isabel described the manner in which witches
use this artillery: “We spang them from the naillis of our
thoombs,” and with these she and her friends shot and slew many
men and women. The confessions of Isabel Gowdie are in the third
volume of Pitcairn’s _Scottish Criminal Trials_. They contain
little or nothing of the “psychical;” all is mere folk-lore,
fairy tales, and charms derived from the old Catholic liturgy.
The poor woman, having begun to fable, fabled with manifest
enjoyment and considerable power. It seems from her account that
each “Covin,” or assembly of witches, had a maiden in it, and
“without our maiden we could do no great thing.” On the other
hand, an extraordinary case of an epileptic boy, who was hurled
about, and beheld distant occurrences in trance, may be read in
Chambers’s _Domestic Annals of Scotland_, iii. 449. Candles used
to go out when this boy, a third son of Lord Torpichen, was in
the room. The date (1720) and the place (Mid-Lothian) prevented
any one from being burned for bewitching him. A fast was
proclaimed. The boy recovered, and did good service in the navy.
He is said to have been “levitated” frequently.
_Note_ (_b_), p. 11.—“Milk thorow a hair-tedder.”
Isabel Gowdie confessed to stealing milk from the cow by magic.
“We plait the rope the wrong way, in the Devil’s name, and we
draw the tether between the cow’s hind feet, and out betwixt her
forward feet, in the Devil’s name, and thereby take with us the
cow’s milk.”
Mr. Kirk, it will be observed, does not connect the Fairy kingdom
with that of Satan, as some of his contemporaries were inclined
to do.
_Note_ (_c_), p. 19.—“The Wreath (wraith) ... is only exuvious
fumes of the Man, ... exhaled and congealed into a various
likeness.”
What is this theory of “Men illiterate and unwary in their
Observations,” but Von Hartmann’s doctrine of “the nerve force
which issues from the body of the medium, and then proceeds
to set up fresh centres of force in all neighbouring objects
... while it still remains under the control of the medium’s
unconscious will”? See Mr. Walter Leaf on Hartmann’s _Der
Geisterhypothese des Spiritismus_, _Proc. S. P. R._, xix. 293.
It is amusing to find a learned German coinciding in scientific
theory with “ignorant and unwary” Highland seers. Both regard the
phantasms as manifestations of “nerve-force,” “exuvious fumes,”
and as “neither souls nor counterfeiting spirits.”
_Note_ (_d_), p. 23.—“Fairy hills.”
The hypothesis that the Fairy belief may be a tradition of an
ancient race dwelling in subterranean homes, is older than Mr.
McRitchie or Sir Walter Scott. In his _Scottish Scenery_ (1803),
Dr. Cririe suggests that the germ of the Fairy myth is the
existence of dispossessed aboriginals dwelling in subterranean
houses, in some places called Picts’ houses, covered with
artificial mounds. The lights seen near the mounds are lights
actually carried by the mound-dwellers. Dr. Cririe works out
in some detail “this marvellously absurd supposition,” as the
_Quarterly Review_ calls it (vol. lix., p. 280).
_Note_ (_e_), p. 30.—“Master Great-rake, the Irish Stroaker.”
Glanvill, in _Essays on Several Important Subjects_ (1675),
prints a letter from an Irish Bishop on Greatrex, the “stroker.”
He cured diseases “by a sanative contagion.” According to
the Bishop, Greatrex had an impression that he could do
“faith-healing,” and found that he could, but whether by virtue
of some special power or by “the people’s fancy,” he knew not.
He frequently failed, and his patients had relapses. See his own
_Account of Strange Cures: in a Letter to Robert Boyle_. London,
1666.
POSTSCRIPT.
It has been said that no trace can be found of a printed _Secret
Commonwealth_ before 1815. The present editor is inclined to believe
that in 1699 the work was still in manuscript. In a letter of Lord
Reay’s to Mr. Samuel Pepys (Oct. 24, 1699), he says, “I have got a
manuscript since I last came to Scotland, whose author, though a
parson, after giving a very full account of the Second Sight, defends
there being no sin in it.... With the first opportunity I shall send
you a copy of his books.” This description answers very well to Mr.
Kirk’s treatise, and to no other contemporary work with which I
am acquainted, unless it be _A Discourse of the Second Sight_, by
the Rev. Mr. John Frazer, minister of Tiree and Coll. There were,
doubtless, other parsons busy with these topics; and the minister of
Rerrick informs me that several MSS. by Mr. Telfair, author of the
tract already quoted, were only dispersed about 1877. Examples of
these clerical psychical researchers may be found in C. K. Sharpe’s
prefatory notice to Law’s _Memorials_ (Edinburgh, 1818). Such an
one is the Rev. Robert Knox, who writes from Cavers to the Rev. Mr.
Wyllie on the case of Sir George Maxwell of Pollock. He dare not
attribute the mediumship of Janet Douglas “positively to an evil
cause.... _It is our ignorance of any natural agent_ that makes us
impute the effects to evil spirits” (_Memorials_, p. lxxv). Moreover,
Lord Reay writes as if his “parson” were still alive in 1699,
whereas Mr. Kirk “went to his own herd” in 1692. “I am promised the
acquaintance of this man, of which I am very covetous.” Lord Reay was
at Durness, and may not have heard of the mishap which carried the
minister of Aberfoyle into Fairyland. It may be added that Dr. Hickes
writes to Mr. Pepys about neolithic arrow heads as “a subject of near
alliance to that of the Second Sight, and of witchcraft, which is
akin to them both.” He also speaks of “a very tragical, but authentic
story told me by the Duke of Lauderdale, which happened in the family
of Sir John Dalrymple, Laird of Stair, and then Lord President. His
Grace had no sooner told it me, but my Lord President coming into
the room, he desired my Lord to tell it himself, which, altering his
countenance, he did with a very melancholick air; but it is so long
since that I dare not trust my memory with relating the particulars
of it” (June 19, 1700).
Dr. Hickes calls the first Lord Stair “John,” Scott calls him
“James.” There can be no doubt that Dr. Hickes refers to the woful
tale of the bride of Lammermoor, who died on September 12, 1669.
Law, in his _Memorials_, says she “was harled through the house”—by
spirits, he means. This “harling” or tossing about of a patient,
probably epileptic, we have noticed in many of the old stories,
as in the modern instance of “Mr. H.” Now, in his Introduction to
the _Bride of Lammermoor_, Scott gives all the authorities at his
command: Law, Symson’s _Elegie_, and Hamilton of Whitelaw’s _Satire_,
which avers that Satan seized the bride and “threw the bridegroom
from the nuptial bed.” Sir Walter was unacquainted with Dr. Hickes’
hint, which actually produces the bride’s own father as evidence
for a story which was plainly regarded as supernatural. It is most
unlucky that Dr. Hickes distrusted his memory. However, it is
something to feel assured that “a memorable story” was accepted at
the time by the family of the bride, and was known to Lauderdale.[40]
Lauderdale himself, by the way, was a psychical researcher, and
accommodated Richard Baxter with some accounts of haunted houses,
published in his _World of Spirits_. One story of a haunted house,
where a spectral hand appeared, he gives on the authority of “the
Rev. James Sharp,” afterwards the famous Archbishop. Lauderdale
inspected the famed Loudun nuns, and saw only “wanton wenches singing
baudy songs in French.” His letter to Mr. Baxter is dated March 12,
1659. His best haunted house is of the Epworth type.
_Printed by_ BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO.
_Edinburgh and London_
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Note (_a_), p. 81.
[2] _The Testimony of Tradition_, p. 75.
[3] In Father Macdonald’s book on Moidart.
[4] A much odder case is reported. Two young men photographed a
reach of a river. In the photograph, when printed, was visible the
dead body of a woman floating on the stream. The water was dragged.
Nothing was found; but two or three days later a girl drowned herself
in the pool! As the Reports of the Psychical Society sometimes say,
“no confirmation has been obtained;” but this is a pleasing instance
of the Reflex, and of second sight in a photographic camera.
[5] It is also published in Mrs. Graham Tomson’s _Border Ballads_
(Walter Scott).
[6] Note (_b_), p. 81.
[7] Many instances may be read of in a little anonymous work,
_Obeah_. The scene is Hayti.
[8] Note (_c_), p. 82.
[9] _Proc. S. P. R._, July 1891, February 1892.
[10] As far as the author has watched _séances_ personally, they have
ended in nothing but “giggling and making giggle.”
[11] Some _séances_ were held at —— College, Oxford, about 1875. The
performers were all athletic undergraduates. The breath of chill air
was always felt “before anything happened,” and, when the out-college
men had gone, the owner of the rooms, in his bed-chamber, was
disturbed by the racket which continued in the sitting-room. But I
know not if he had sported his oak!
[12] _An Essay for the Recording of Illustrious Providences_, by
Increase Mather. Boston, 1684; London, Reeves & Turner, 1890, pp.
101-111.
[13] _Diseases of the Nervous System_, iii. 249. London, 1890.
[14] _Proc. S. P. R._, xix. 160-173.
[15] _Op. cit._, pp. 173-189.
[16] _Memoirs of the Wesley Family_, by Adam Clarke, LL.D., F.A.S.
London, 1823, pp. 161-200.
[17] Letter to Terry, April 30. Lockhart, v. 309.
[18] Scott to Terry, May 16.
[19] Susannah Wesley to Samuel Wesley, March 27, 1717.
[20] _Op. cit._, p. 193.
[21] _Op. cit._, p. 194.
[22] Note (_d_), p. 83.
[23] _Memoirs of the Wesley Family_, p. 198.
[24] Edinburgh: Mossman, 1696. There is a London reprint, of which I
have a copy. The pamphlet is republished in Mr. Stevenson’s edition
of Sinclair’s _Satan’s Invisible World Discovered_, 1685-1871,
Appendix, p. xix.
[25] Compare similar phenomena in _Obeah_, and in Peruvian example,
note (_c_), p. 82.
[26] Glanvil’s version is given in Sinclair’s _Satan’s Invisible
World_.
[27] Note (_e_), p. 85.
[28] Note (_f_), p. 86.
[29] The “earth-houses” in Scotland and the isles, which seem to
have been inhabited at an early period, can seldom be called hills
or mounds; being built for purposes of concealment, they are usually
almost on a level with the surrounding land. The _Fairy hills_, on
the other hand, are higher and much more notable, and were probably
sepulchral. This, at least, is the impression left on me by Mr.
MacRitchie’s book, _The Underground Life_. (Privately printed.
Edinburgh, 1892.)
[30] Note (_a_), p. 86.
[31] Note (_b_), p. 87.
[32] The _Death-candle_ is called DRUIG.
[33] Note (_c_), p. 87.
[34] Note (_d_), p. 88.
[35] Note (_e_), p. 88.
[36] Thus in the Manuscript, which is only a Transcript of Mr. Kirk’s
Original. Perhaps M‘Intyre?
[37] The original Transcriber has added: “See the Rest in a little
Manuscript belonging to Coline Kirk,” probably the author’s son of
that name.—A.L.
[38] _The Travels of Pedro de Cieza de Leon_, ch. cxviii.
[39] Mr. Hoole’s account, _Memoirs of the Wesleys_, p. 91.
[40] The letters to Pepys are quoted from his Correspondence,
published as Vol. X. of his _Diary_ (New York, 1885).
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montre partout aussi sage que bien informée.”—M. A. BARTH, in
_Mélusine_.
“The degree and quality of the editor’s learning are not to
be doubted; it is varied, profound, and without a spice of
pedantry.”—_Scots Observer._
=VI. THE ATTIS OF CAIUS VALERIUS CATULLUS.= Translated into
English Verse, with Dissertations on the Myth of Attis, on the
Origin of Tree-Worship, and on the Galliambic Metre. By GRANT
ALLEN, B.A., formerly Postmaster of Merton College, Oxford. (xvi.
154 pp.) 1892. 7_s._ 6_d._
“The paramount interest of this book lies in its two
disquisitions upon the meaning of the Attis myth and upon the
meaning of tree-worship.”—_Speaker._
“As a contribution to folk-lore it is of real value and interest,
and to a considerable extent new in the line it takes.”—_Literary
World._
“This theory, in which ‘the ghost plays ... the same part that
guano and phosphates play to-day,’ when stated thus baldly sounds
strange, but when read in the author’s own vivacious narrative,
along with the excellent illustrations which he brings forward,
it is singularly attractive.”—_Bookman._
“Highly interesting, and at this time will probably fall in with
prevailing opinions.”—ROBINSON ELLIS in _The Academy_.
“Whether readers adopt Mr. Allen’s conclusions or net, all
must agree that he has propounded a most interesting theory,
and stated it in a manner forcible and stimulating to
thought.”—_Nation._
=VII. PLUTARCH’S ROMANE QUESTIONS.= Translated, A.D. 1603, by
PHILEMON HOLLAND. Now again Edited by FRANK BYRON JEVONS, M. A.,
Classical Tutor to the University of Durham. With Dissertations
on Italian Cults, Myths, Taboos, Man Worship, Aryan Marriage,
Sympathetic Magic, and the Eating of Beans. (cxxviii. 170 pp.)
1892. 10_s._
“Mr. Jevons’s essay is learned and interesting, and in some cases
he has probably found out the reason of behaviour which the
Romans could not account for themselves.”—_Daily News_, Jan. 10,
1893.
“All antiquaries and folk-lorists will thank him for enabling
them to peruse in a convenient form that part of Plutarch’s
‘Moralia’ which bears upon their science.”—_Daily Chronicle_,
Jan. 6, 1893.
“An admirable essay on Roman religion and on the characteristics
of Aryan religion.”—_Glasgow Herald_, Jan. 5, 1893.
“Holland’s quaintness and homely vigour make his translations
delightful reading. A most valuable and interesting introduction
is supplied by a sound scholar and shrewd thinker, Mr. F. B.
Jevons.”—_Athenæum_, Jan. 7, 1893.
“Holland’s translation, a delightful piece of Elizabethan
English, as Mr. Jevons says, provides a seemly garb for
Plutarch’s ancient reasonings. Mr. Jevons’s own contribution
to the volume is, as a help towards a true interpretation, of
scarcely less value than the translation itself.”—_Scotsman_,
Dec. 26, 1892.
“Mr. Jevons’s introduction is at once learned and
readable.”—_Times_, Dec. 22, 1892.
“The editor has supplied an excellent commentary upon some of
the most striking parts in a series of dissertations on Italian
cults, myths, taboos, man-worship, Aryan marriage, sympathetic
magic, and the eating of beans. The mere titles of these essays
show the curiosity and interest of the problems dealt with in the
text.”—_Manchester Guardian_, Jan. 10, 1893.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE
Except for the changes below, all spelling in the text has been
left unchanged.
Main text (probable printer’s errors):
Pg 1: ‘heretofioir going’ replaced by ‘heretofoir going’.
(befoir, therefoir and foirtell all appear in the text)
Pg 7: ‘by ws’ replaced by ‘by us’.
Pg 18: ‘unaictve State’ replaced by ‘unactive State’.
Pg 67: ‘bewixt the two’ replaced by ‘betwixt the two’.
Lang’s Notes and Footnotes:
Pg 86: ‘distingnished surgeon’ replaced by ‘distinguished surgeon’.
Publisher’s Catalog:
“de l’ateur” replaced by “de l’auteur”.
“Plutarch’s ‘Moralio’” replaced by “Plutarch’s ‘Moralia’”.
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