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diff --git a/75485-0.txt b/75485-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..00575ba --- /dev/null +++ b/75485-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,3160 @@ + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75485 *** + + + + + + 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). + + + + + Bibliothèque de Carabas. + + _Crown 8vo Volumes, Printed on Hand-made Paper, with + Wide Margins and Uncut Edges, done up + in Japanese Vellum Wrappers._ + + The Prices are net for cash. + + _THESE VOLUMES WILL NEVER BE REPRINTED._ + + + =I. CUPID AND PSYCHE=: The Most Pleasant and Delectable Tale of + the Marriage of Cupid and Psyche. Done into English by WILLIAM + ADLINGTON, of University College in Oxford. With a Discourse on + the Fable by ANDREW LANG, late of Merton College, in Oxford. + Frontispiece by W. B. RICHMOND, and Verses by the EDITOR, MAY + KENDALL, J. W. MACKAIL, F. LOCKER-LAMPSON, and W. H. POLLOCK. + (lxxxvi. 66 pp.) 1887. _Out of print._ + + =II. EUTERPE=: The Second Book of the Famous History of + Herodotus. Englished by B. R. 1584. Edited by ANDREW LANG, + with Introductory Essays on the Religion and the good Faith of + Herodotus. Frontispiece by A. W. TOMSON; and Verses by the EDITOR + and GRAHAM R. TOMSON. (xlviii. 174 pp.) 1888. _Out of print._ + + =III. THE FABLES OF BIDPAI; or, The Morall Philosophie of Doni=: + Drawne out of the auncient writers, a work first compiled in + the Indian tongue. Englished out of Italian by THOMAS NORTH, + Brother to the Right Honourable Sir ROGER NORTH, Knight, Lord + NORTH of Kyrtheling, 1570. Now again edited and induced by + JOSEPH JACOBS, together with a Chronologico-Biographical Chart + of the translations and adaptations of the Sanskrit Original, + and an Analytical Concordance of the Stories. With a full-page + Illustration by EDWARD BURNE JONES, A.R.A., Frontispiece from + a 16th century MS. of the Anvari Suhaili, and facsimiles of + Woodcuts in the Italian Doni of 1532. (lxxxii. 264 pp.) 1888. + _Nearly out of print._ The few remaining copies, 12_s._ + + =IV.-V. THE FABLES OF ÆSOP=, as first printed by W. CAXTON + in 1484. Now again edited and induced by J. JACOBS. With + Introductory Verses by Mr. ANDREW LANG. 2 Vols. (280 pp., 320 + pp.) 1890. £1, 1_s._ + + “Ces deux volumes de la ‘Bibliothèque de Carabas’ (Bidpai et + Æsop) constituent l’examen le plus complet et le plus savant qui + ait été fait depuis Benfey de cette grande question de l’origine + et de la migration des fables, et la critique de l’auteur s’y + 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’”. + + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75485 *** |