nd fearfull things, than he
do gladsome.' For the physical condition of the seer, Kirk
describes it as 'a rapture, transport, and sort of death'. Our
contemporary informants deny that, in their experience, any kind of
convulsion or fit accompanies the visions, as in Scott's account of
Allan Macaulay, in the Legend of Montrose.

Strangely unlike Mr. Kirk, in style and mode of thought, is his
contemporary, the Rev. Mr. Frazer of Tiree and Coll; Dean of the
Isles. We cannot call a clergyman superstitious because, 200 years
ago, he believed in good and bad angels. Save for this element in
his creed, Mr. Frazer may be called strictly and unexpectedly
scientific. He was born in Mull in 1647, being the son of the Rev.
Farquhard Frazer, a cadet of the house of Lovat. The father was one
of the first Masters of Arts who ever held the living of Coll and
Tiree: in his time only three landed gentlemen of the McLeans could
read and write. The son, John, was educated at Glasgow University,
and succeeded to his father's charge, converting the lairds and
others 'to the true Protestant faith' (1680). At the Revolution, or
later, being an Episcopalian and Jacobite, he was deprived of his
stipend, but was not superseded and continued the exercise of his
ministry till his death in 1702. Being in Edinburgh in 1700, he met
Andrew Symson, a relation of his wife: they fell into discourse on
the second sight, and he sent his little manuscript to Symson who
published it in 1707. There is an Edinburgh reprint, by Webster, in
1820. The work is dedicated to Lord Cromartie, the Lord Tarbatt of
Kirk's book, and the correspondent of Pepys. Symson adds a preface,
apologising for Mr. Frazer's lack of books and learned society, and
giving an example of transference of second sight: the seer placed
his foot on that of the person interested, who then saw a ship
labouring in a storm. The tale was not at first hand.

Mr. Frazer, in his tractate, first deals with the question of fact,
of the hallucinations called second sight: 'That such
representations are made to the eyes of men and women, is to me out
of all doubt, and that affects follow answerable thereto, as little
questionable'. But many doubt as to the question of fact,
'wherefore so little has been written about it'. Four or five
instances, he thinks, will suffice, 1. A servant of his left a barn
where he slept, 'because nightly he had seen a dead corps in his
winding sheet, str