salt-water loch, at night, saw a
vision of a man drowning in a certain pool of a certain river. A
shepherd's plaid lay on the bank. The beadle told his companion
what he saw, and set his foot on his friend's, who then shared his
experience. This proves the continuity of the belief that the
hallucination can be communicated by contact. {246} As a matter of
evidence, it would have been better if the beadle had not first told
his friend what he saw. Both men told our informant next day, and
the vision was fulfilled 'scarcely a week afterwards'. This vision,
granting the honesty of the seers, was a case of 'clairvoyance,' but
'symbolical hallucinations' frequently occur. In our informant's
experience the gift is not hereditary.

On the whole subject Dr. Stewart, of Nether Lochaber, wrote several
articles in the Inverness Courier, during the autumn of 1893. The
Highland clergy have, doubtless, some difficulty in dealing with the
belief among their parishioners. But, as the possession of the
accomplishment is no longer regarded as criminal, and as the old
theories of diabolical possession, or fairy inspiration, are not
entertained, at least by the educated, the seers are probably to be
regarded as merely harmless visionaries. At most we may say, with
the poet:--

Lo, the sublime telepathist is here.

The belief in witchcraft is also as lively in the Highlands, as in
Devonshire, but, while the law takes no cognisance of it, no great
harm is done. The witchcraft mainly relies on 'sympathetic magic,'
on perforating a clay image of an enemy with needles and so forth.
There is a very recent specimen in the Pitt Rivers collection, at
the museum in Oxford. It was presented, in a scientific spirit, by
the victim, who was 'not a penny the worse,' unlike Sir George
Maxwell of Pollok, two centuries ago.

Though second sight is so firmly rooted in Celtic opinion, the
tourist or angler who 'has no Gaelic' is not likely to hear much of
it. But, when trout refuse to rise, and time hangs heavy in a boat
on a loch, it is a good plan to tell the boatman some ghostly
Sassenach tales. Then, perhaps, he will cap them from his own
store, but point-blank questions from an inquiring southron are of
very little use. Nobody likes to be cross-examined on such matters.
Unluckily the evidence, for facts not for folklore, is worthless
till it has stood the severest cross-examination.

GHOSTS BEFORE THE LAW

Sir Walter Scot