'Second sight' and folklore in the Scottish Highlands and islands

As Martin Martin travelled across the west coast islands, noting everything from the food islanders ate to their plant cures for illnesses, a common theme emerged.

Throughout, Martin, a Gael from Duntulm on the Isle of Skye, heard tales from wide-eyed natives of superstitions, eerie events and of those blessed – or cursed - with an da shealladh or ‘the two sights’.

The seers, Martin wrote, predicted everything from sudden, unexplained deaths to burning buildings, and, occasionally, more joyful visions too.

Such as those of Skye islander Archibald Macdonald, who had often told the unmarried minister of St Mary’s parish, Rev Daniel Nicholson, that he could see the “good gentlewoman in a fine dress” who would become his wife.

Rev Nicholson was less convinced: “Said he, it is 20 to one if I ever marry again”, wrote Martin, only to, within a few years, meet a woman who matched the seer’s vision, and do just that.

Set to be republished later this month with the challenging 17th script replaced by an easier to read version, Martin’s A Description of the Western Islands of Scotland circa 1695 (Birlinn), has an entire chapter devoted to the mysteries of second sight, or 'taibhsearachd'.

While many superstitions and folktales he encountered were quickly discounted – such as the custom at one valley in Benbecula, said to be haunted by sprites and which meant anyone entering had to pay homage or risk going mad - he found the eerie abilities of the seers trickier to unpick.

When one foretold the sudden death of an acquaintance which soon came true, even he had to admit something odd was going on.

“The vision makes such a lively impression upon the seers, that they neither see nor think of anything else, except the vision, as long as it continues,” he wrote.

“At the sight of a vision, the eyelids of the person are erected, and the eyes continue staring until the object vanishes.

“There is one in Skye, that when he sees a vision, the inner part of his eyelids turn so far upwards that after the object disappears, he must draw them down with his fingers and sometimes employs others to draw them down.”

READ MORE: The real story behind Scotland's myths and legends

He recalled another encounter: “John Morison who lives in Bernera of Harris wears the plant called fuga daemonum (St. John’s Wort) sewed in the neck of his coat to prevent his seeing of visions, and says he never saw any since he first carried that plant about him.”

Crime novelist Fulton Ross, whose chief character in his tartan noir debut, The Unforgiven Dead (Inkshares), centres on a police officer’s gift of an da shealladh, says that even now the myths, mysteries and stories of second sight swirl around the Highland and Islands.

He recalls hearing tales of superstitions and seers as a child growing up in Caol, near Fort William. Years later as he browsed the bookshelves in his grandparents’ Highland home, he stumbled across them again and became absorbed by the vivid and mysterious stories.

“Some stories are fairly sinister, some are ridiculous, but there are also very macabre and eerie stories,” he says.

“They are also a cultural archive and give a tantalising glimpse into the culture and history of the islands.”

Ross, who studied Scottish literature at Glasgow University, was struck that so many of the tales which once played a crucial part in natives’ lives only survived thanks to the handful of Victorian folklorists who recorded them.

Pricked by a sense of loss and conscious that what remains of Highland and Island folklore and records of second sight is just a fraction of what there once was, he incorporate elements into a contemporary crime setting and give his key character, Constable Angus MacNeil, the gift of an da shealladh.

He hopes his book, the first of three and which has already attracted interest in television and movie circles, might leave readers – like the 17th century Martin - querying what is real and what isn’t.

“I’ve always looked at these things with a sceptical eye, but there are so many accounts of these strange things, sometimes I wonder if, maybe, there is something in this,” he says.

“I like that wee glimpses of pre-Christian island life often shine through in some of the stories. And it’s funny how a lot were collected by a handful of folklorists, many of them ministers or holy men.”

Among them was John Gregerson Campbell, a folklorist and Free Church minister at Tiree and Coll in the mid-19th century.

His “Superstitions of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland” and “Witchcraft and the Second Sight in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland”, explore an otherworldly landscape of mischievous faeries, witches, supernatural creatures and natives’ superstitions and rituals.

READ MORE: 'CalMac are not interested in helping the islands': Fury as Scots ferry cuts remain

Among the stories are accounts of ‘sluagh’, Ross adds.

“Sluagh are the hosts of the unforgiven dead, a fairy host, bird-like in appearance. They’re often compared to a flock of starlings or crows, and are said to appear in the night sky, flying in from the west and stealing the souls of people on their death bed.

“Even until fairly recently in the Western Isles, the west-facing doors and windows where someone was nearing end of their life would be closed in case their souls were snatched by the sluagh.”

And while the Highlands and west coast islands may today often be viewed through a romantic lens, he warns the traditional superstitions and tales of second sight can be macabre and dark, even with some hints of human sacrifice.

“There are various stories of faeries,” he adds, “but they were not like Tinkerbell.”

The Unforgiven Dead by Fulton Ross is published on July 27 by Inkshares (£20.99)

A Description of the Western Islands of Scotland, circa 1695 and A Late Voyage to St Kilda, Martin Martin, introduction by Charles W. J. Withers is published by Birlinn (£14.99) on July 20

Looking back at The Brahan Seer

Gift or curse, the notion that some had the ability to see into the future – second sight – was common across the Highlands and Islands for centuries.

Best known was The Brahan Seer, Coinneach Odhar or ‘Dark Kenneth’, from Uig on Lewis, who lived in the 17th century.

He used a stone with a hole in its centre, called an Adder stone, to conjure up visions, including one of mass fatalities at the Battle of Culloden, at least a century before it happened.

As he stood at what would become the battle site, he is said to have exclaimed: “Oh! Drummossie, thy bleak moor shall ere many generations have passed away, be stained with the best blood of the Highlands.

“It will be a fearful period; heads will be lopped off by the score, and no mercy will be shown or quarter given on either side.”

He also predicted “great black, bridleless horses, belching fire and steam, drawing lines of carriages through the glens”, said to be a reference to the arrival of railways 200 years later.

He is also credited with predicting the Highland Clearances. “The day will come when sheep shall become so numerous that the bleating of the one shall be heard by the other,” he said.

“The whole country will be so utterly desolate and depopulated that the crow of a cock shall not be heard north of Drumochter, the people will emigrate to islands now unknown, but which shall yet be discovered in the boundless oceans.”

But it’s not known if he foresaw his own fate: having told his Lady Isabella Seaforth that her husband, the 3rd Earl, was in Paris entertaining a woman more beautiful than she, he was burned alive in a barrel of tar.