About 1652, Captain Alexander Fraser, commonly called the _Tutor of Lovat_, being guardian of his nephew, Lord Lovat, married Sybilla Mackenzie, sister of the Earl of Seaforth, and widow of John Macleod of Macleod. The Tutor, who had fought gallantly in the preceding year for King Charles II. at Worcester, was thought a very lucky man in this match, as the lady had a jointure of three hundred merks _per annum_![342] The marriage, however, is more remarkable on account of its having [Sidenote: 1703.] been _seen_ many years before, during the lifetime of the lady’s first husband. We have the story told with all seriousness, though in very obscure typography, in a letter which Aubrey prints[343] as having been sent to him by a ‘learned friend’ of his in the Highlands, about 1694. Macleod and his wife, while residing, we are to understand, at their house of Dunvegan in Skye, on returning one day from an excursion or brief visit, went into their nursery to see their infant child. To pursue the narration: ‘On their coming in, the nurse falls a-weeping. They asked the cause, dreading the child was sick, or that the nurse was scarce of milk. The nurse replied the child was well, and she had abundance of milk. Yet she still wept. Being pressed to tell what ailed her, she at last said that Macleod would die, and the lady would shortly be married to another man. Being asked how she knew that event, she told them plainly, that, as they came into the room, she saw a man with a scarlet cloak and white hat betwixt them, giving the lady a kiss over the shoulder; and this was the cause of her weeping; all which,’ pursues the narrator, ‘came to pass. After Macleod’s death [which happened in 1649], the Tutor of Lovat married the lady in the same dress in which the woman saw him.’ The Bishop of Caithness, a short while before the Revolution, had five daughters, one of whom spoke grudgingly of the burden of the family housekeeping lying wholly upon her. A man-servant in the house, who had the second-sight, told her that ere long she would be relieved from her task, as he saw a tall gentleman in black walking on the bishop’s right hand, and whom she was to marry. Before a quarter of a year had elapsed, the prediction was realised; and all the man’s vaticinations regarding the marriage-feast and company also proved true. A curious class of cases, of importance for any theory on the subject, was that in which a visionary figure or spectre intervened for the production of the phenomena. A spirit in great vogue in the Highlands in old times—as, indeed, in the Lowlands also—was known by the name of _Browny_. From the accounts we have of him, it seems as if he were in a great measure identical with the drudging goblin of Milton, whose shadowy flail by night would thrash the corn ‘That ten day-labourers could not end.’