A sketch of Home's life must now be given.[16] He was born in 1833, at Currie, a village near Edinburgh. In his later years he sent to his second wife a photograph of the street of cottages beside the burn, in one of which he first saw the light. His father had a right to bear the arms of the Earls of Home, with a _brisure_, being the natural son of Alexander, tenth Earl of Home.[17] The Medium's ancestor had fought, or, according to other accounts, had shirked fighting, at Flodden Field, as is popularly known from the ballad _The Sutors of Selkirk_. The maiden name of Home's mother was Macneil. He was adopted by an aunt, who, about 1842, carried the wondrous child to America. He had, since he was four years old, given examples of second sight; it was in the family. Home's mother, who died in 1850, was second-sighted, as were her great-uncle, an Urquhart, and her uncle, a Mackenzie. So far there was nothing unusual or alarming in Home's case, at least to any intelligent Highlander. Not till 1850, after his mother's death, did Home begin to hear 'loud blows on the head of my bed, as if struck by a hammer.' The Wesley family, in 1716-17, had been quite familiar with this phenomenon, and with other rappings, and movements of objects untouched. In fact all these things are of world-wide diffusion, and I know no part of the world, savage or civilised, where such events do not happen, according to the evidence. [Footnote 16: I follow _Incidents in My Life_, Series i. ii., 1864, 1872. _The Gift of Daniel Home_, by Madame Douglas Home and other authorities.] [Footnote 17: Home mentions this fact in a note, correcting an error of Sir David Brewster's, _Incidents_, ii. 48, Note 1. The Earl of Home about 1856 asked questions on the subject, and Home 'stated what my connection with the family was.' Dunglas is the second title in the family.] In no instance, as far as I am informed, did anything extraordinary occur in connection with Home which cannot be paralleled in the accounts of Egyptian mediums in Iamblichus.[18] [Footnote 18: The curious reader may consult my _Cock Lane and Common Sense_, and _The Making of Religion_, for examples of savage, mediaeval, ancient Egyptian, and European cases.]