cond-sighted person is
entranced, and more or less unconscious of the outer world, at the
moment of the vision. Something like le petit mal, in epilepsy,
seems to be intended, the patient 'stude as bereft of hir senssis'.
{232b} Again, we have the official explanation of the second sight,
and that is the spiritualistic explanation. The seer has a fairy
'control'. This mode of accounting for what 'gentle King Jamie'
calls 'a sooth dreame, since they see it walking,' inspires the
whole theory of Kirk (1691), but he sees no harm either in 'the
phairie,' or in the persons whom the fairies control. In Kirk's own
time we shall find another minister, Frazer of Tiree, explaining the
visions as 'revived impressions of sense' (1705), and rejecting
various superstitious hypotheses.

The detestable cruelty of the ministers who urged magistrates to
burn second-sighted people, and the discomfort and horror of the
hallucinations themselves, combined to make patients try to free
themselves from the involuntary experience. As a correspondent of
Aubrey's says, towards the end of the sixteenth century: 'It is a
thing very troublesome to them that have it, and would gladly be rid
of it . . . they are seen to sweat and tremble, and shreek at the
apparition'. {232c} 'They are troubled for having it judging it a
sin,' and they used to apply to the presbytery for public prayers
and sermons. Others protested that it was a harmless accident,
tried to teach it, and endeavoured to communicate the visions by
touch.

As usual among the Presbyterians a minister might have abnormal
accomplishments, work miracles of healing, see and converse with the
devil, shine in a refulgence of 'odic' light, or be second-sighted.
But, if a layman encroached on these privileges, he was in danger of
the tar-barrel, and was prosecuted. On the day of the battle of
Bothwell Brig, Mr. Cameron, minister of Lochend, in remote Kintyre,
had a clairvoyant view of the fight. 'I see them (the Whigs) flying
as clearly as I see the wall,' and, as near as could be calculated,
the Covenanters ran at that very moment. {233a} How Mr. Cameron
came to be thought a saint, while Jonka Dyneis was burned as a
sinner, for precisely similar experiences, is a question hard to
answer. But Joan of Arc, the saviour of France, was burned for
hearing voices, while St. Joseph of Cupertino, in spite of his
flights in the air, was canonised. Minister or medium, saint or
sorcerer, it