SECOND SIGHT, a superstition or belief once common in the Scottish highlands and isles, where it is known by the Gaelic appellation taibhsearaehd, signifying a spectral. or shadowy appearance. Certain persons, called seers or wizards, were supposed to pos.. eess a supernatural gift, by which they involuntarily foresaw future events, and perceived distant objects as if they were present: As the sun, Ere it is risen. sometimes paints its Image In the atmosphere, so often do the spirits Of great events stride on before the events, And in to-day already walks to-morrow.
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This is to depict the lofty and poetical view of the subject, as illustrated in classic fable land early history. The highland seer, however, was chiefly conversant with the scenes and occurrences of ordinary life. "A man on a journey far from home falls from a horse; another who pernaps is at work about the house, sees him bleeding on the ground, commonly with a landscape of the place where the accident befalls him. Another seer, driving home his cattle, or wandering in idleness, or musing in the sunshine, is suddenly surprised by the appearance of a bridal ceremony or funeral procession, and counts the mourners or attendants, of whom, if lie knows them, he relates the names, if he knows them not he can describe the dresses. Things distant are seen at the instant when they happen" (Johnson's Journey to the Hebrides). With respect to things future, Johnson thought there was no rule for determining the time between the sight and the event; but Martin, whose account of the western islands was first published in 1703, furnishes data of this kind in his classification of the visions. If an object was seen early in the morning, the event would be accomplished a few hours afterward; if at noon, the same day; and if at night the accomplishment would take place weeks, months, and some times years afterward; according to the time of night the vision was beheld. The appearance of a shroud was an infallible prognostic of death, and the nearness or remote ness of the event was judged by the amount of the body that was covered by the ghastly sheet; if it was not seen above the middle, adelay of a twelvemonth might be hoped for, but if it ascended high toward the head, the mortal hour was close at hand. "The vis ion makes such a lively impression upon the seers," says Martin, " that they neither see nor think of anything else except the vision, as long as it continues; the eyelids of the seer are erected, and the eyes continue staring until the object vanish." The power of the seer was involuntary and painful—it was no source of gain. The gradation of sym bolical appearances we have mentioned, strikes the imagination and gives something like a system to the supernatural phenomena. Bid if we turn to the eases described by the historians of the second sight, we do not find such regular order and exactness. The evidence is vague and confused, and the incidents are often of the most trivial charac ter. The revelations, indeed, were commonly made to poor illiterate men, predisposed from the very nature of the country—wild, dreary, and remote—and from their half-idle, solitary life, to melancholy and superstition. These causes must have led very early to belief in the second sight. We find it coloring portions of the story-of Wallace and Bruce, and associated with the tragic fate of the accomplished James 1. of Scotland. A Scottish seer is said to have foretold the unhappy career of Charles I., and another the violent death of Villiers, duke of Buckingham. In 16.52 a Scottish lawyer, sir George Mackenzie, afterward lord Tarbat, when driven to the highlands by fear of the govern ment of Cromwell, engaged himself in making inquiries concerning this supposed super natural faculty, and wrote a minute account of its manifestations addressed to the cele brated Robert Boyle, which, with other relations on the same subject, is published in the correspondence of Samuel Pepys. Next came Martin's copious description; then a
highland minister, the rev. John Fraser of Tyree, collected Authentic Instances, which were printed in 1707; and in 1763, appeared the ambitious treatise of Theophilus anus, or Macleod of Hamir, which contained the narratives of Fraser, of Aubrey, the English antiquary, and other authorities, with the addition of a great number of cases —nearly a hundred—gathered by himself from various sources, and also numerous let ters from highland ministers. This work exhausted the subject, but time wretched van ity, credulity and weakness of Theophilus covered it with ridicule. A fresh revival took place after the memorable Journey to the Hebrides by Dr. Johnson, whose work was published in 1775. The second sight was sure to interest a melancholy, meditative "rambler" like Johnson. He had read of it in his youth in Martin's history. He was naturally superstitious. He had a stout courageous heart and nerves in all tuna dane flatters and positions, but he had a morbid fear of death, and an almost childish eagerness to pierce the darkness of futurity, and to believe in the possibility of messages from the other world. Johnson anxiously questioned the clergy and others respecting the supernatural communications made to the seers, and would gladly have believed them real. The evidence, however, was not complete or invincible; and with that love of truth, which was one of the strongest virtues of the sage of Bolt court, he confessed that he never could "advance his curiosity to conviction, came away at last only willing to believe." On one occasion we find Johnson enunciating the true doctrine in such cases. He observed, as Boswell reports, that "we could have no certainty of the truth of supernatural appearances unless something was told us which we could not know by ordinary means, or something done which could not be done but by supernatural power; that Pharaoh, in reason and justice, required such evidence front Moses; nay, that our Saviour said: If I had not done among them the works which none other man did, they had not had sin.' " Undoubtedly works or facts, not merely appearances, are required for conviction. Spectral sights may be caused by dreams or disease (see ArfwarrioNs), by accidental optical illusions, or by the workings of a vivid imagination. It seenis degrading to the idea of divine power to suppose that special miracles were wrought to announce the marriage or death of a highland peasant, the wreck of a boat, or the arrival of a stranger in a remote island of the Hebrides. Ignorance is a great ally of super stition, as solitude is of gloomy egotism and melancholy; and since education has pene trated into the highlands and isles, and intercourse with other parts of the kingdom has been facilitated by increasing trade and improved means of communication—to say nothing of the effects of that passion for highland scenery and sport which every year bikes crowds of visitors to the country—the belief in second sight, as in astrology and witchcraft, has almost wholly disappeared from the land. It never had the cruel, hard, and revolting features of witchcraft—formerly prevalent in the lowlands when scarcely known in the Hebrides—and it still seems picturesque enough to serve for the purposes of poetry and romance.