“’Tis thine to sing, how, framing hideous spells, In Skye’s lone isle, the gifted wizard seer, Lodged in the wintry cave with fate’s fell spear, Or in the depth of Uist’s dark forest dwells: How they, whose sight such dreary dreams engross, With their own vision oft astonished droop, When, o’er the watery strath, or quaggy moss. They see the gliding ghosts’ unbodied troop. Or, if in sports, or on the festive green, Their destined glance some fated youth descry, Who now, perhaps, in lusty vigour seen, And rosy health, shall soon lamented die. For them the viewless forms of air obey; Their bidding heed, and at their beck repair: They know what spirit brews the stormful day, And heartless, oft like moody madness, stare To see the phantom train their secret work prepare.” We may allow ourselves one more quotation, in which the poet accumulates instances of the “second sight,” or power of divination, to which the Highland seers laid claim:-- “To monarchs dear, some hundred miles astray, Oft have they seen fate give the fatal blow! The sea, in Skye, shrieked as the blood did flow, When headless Charles warm on the scaffold lay! As Boreas threw his young Aurora forth, In the first year of the first George’s reign, And battles raged in welkin of the North, They mourned in air, fell, fell rebellion slain! And as, of late, they joyed in Preston’s fight, Saw, at sad Falkirk, all their hopes near crowned! They raved, divining through their second sight, Pale-red Culloden where these hopes were drowned.” This same power of second sight forms the groundwork of Campbell’s poem of “Lochiel’s Warning,” in which the poet represents the aged seer or soothsayer in the act of warning the ferocious Highland chieftain against the consequences of joining Prince Charles Edward’s expedition of the ’45:-- “Lochiel, Lochiel, beware of the day When the Lowlands shall meet thee in battle array. The sunset of life gives me mystical lore, And coming events cast their shadows before!” A curious superstition respecting “the non-giving of fire” lingers still in some parts of Scotland, more particularly in the North, and seems to be connected with the old sun-worship: a survival of the Pagan past which is strange enough in this matter-of-fact and prosaic Present of ours. “At Craigmillar, near Edinburgh, a woman, not long ago, refused to give a neighbour ‘a bit peat’ to light her fire, because she was supposed to be uncanny. The old woman muttered, as she turned away, that her churlish neighbour might yet repent of her unkindness. This speech the other repeated to her husband on his return from work, whereupon he went straight to the old woman’s house, and gave her a sharp cut on the forehead, for which he was duly called to account, and pleaded his belief that scoring the witch above the breath would destroy her glamour.”