was all a question of the point of view. As to
Cameron's and Jonka's visions of distant contemporary events, they
correspond to what is told of Apollonius of Tyana, that, at Ephesus,
he saw and applauded the murder of Domitian at Rome; that one
Cornelius, in Padua, saw Caesar triumph at Pharsalia; that a maniac
in Gascony beheld Coligny murdered in Paris. {233b} In the whole
belief there is nothing peculiarly Scotch or Celtic, and Wodrow
gives examples among the Dutch.

Second Sight, in the days of James VI. had been a burning matter.
After the Restoration, a habit of jesting at everything of the kind
came in, on one hand; on the other, a desire to investigate and
probe the stories of Scotch clairvoyance. Many fellows of the Royal
Society, and learned men, like Robert Boyle, Henry More, Glanvill,
Pepys, Aubrey, and others, wrote eagerly to correspondents in the
Highlands, while Sacheverell and Waldron discussed the topic as
regarded the Isle of Man. Then came special writers on the theme,
as Aubrey, Kirk, Frazer, Martin, De Foe (who compiled a catch-penny
treatise on Duncan Campbell, a Highland fortune-teller in London),
Theophilus Insulanus (who was urged to his task by Sir Richard
Steele), Wodrow, a great ghost-hunter: and so we reach Dr. Johnson,
who was 'willing to be convinced,' but was not under conviction. In
answer to queries circulated for Aubrey, he learned that 'the godly'
have not the faculty, but 'the virtuous' may have it. But Wodrow's
saint who saw Bothwell Brig, and another very savoury Christian who
saw Dundee slain at Killiecrankie, may surely be counted among 'the
godly'. There was difference of opinion as to the hereditary
character of the complaint. A correspondent of Aubrey's vouches for
a second-sighted man who babbled too much 'about the phairie,' and
'was suddenly removed to the farther end of the house, and was there
almost strangled'. {234} This implies that spirits or 'Phairies'
lifted him, as they did to a seer spoken of by Kirk, and do to the
tribal medicine-men of the Australians, and of course, to 'mediums'.

Contemporary with Aubrey was the Rev. Robert Kirk of Aberfoyle, a
Celtic scholar who translated the Bible into Gaelic. In 1691 he
finished his Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Faunes and Fairies,
whereof only a fragment has reached us. It has been maintained that
the book was printed in 1691, but no mortal eye has seen a copy. In
1815 Sir Walter Scott printed a hundred c