Here is a prediction of the downfall of another distinguished Highland family—Clan Ranald of the Isles. “The day will come when the old wife with the footless stocking (cailleach nam mogan) will drive the Lady of Clan Ranald from Nunton House, in Benbecula.” We are informed that this was fulfilled when the Macdonalds took the farm of Nunton, locally known as “Baile na Caillich”. Old Mrs. Macdonald was in the habit of wearing these primitive articles of dress, and was generally known in the district as “Cailleach nam Mogan”. Clan Ranald and his lady, like many more of our Highland chiefs, ultimately went to the wall, and the descendants of the “old wife with the footless stocking” occupied, and, for anything we know, still occupy the ancient residence of the long-distinguished race of Clan Ranald of the Isles. In the beginning of the seventeenth century, and during the Seer’s lifetime, there lived in Kintail an old man—Duncan Macrae—who was curious to know by what means he should end his days. He applied to a local female Seer, who informed him that he “would die by the sword” (le bàs a chlaidheamh). This appeared so improbable in the case of such an old man, who had taken part in so many bloody frays and invariably escaped unhurt, that the matter was referred to the greater authority, Coinneach Odhar. He corroborated the woman, but still the matter was almost universally discredited in the district, and by none more so than by old Duncan himself. However, years after, conviction was forced upon them; for, according to the “Genealogy of the Macraes,” written by the Rev. John Macrae, minister of Dingwall, who died in 1704—“Duncan being an old man in the year 1654, when General Monk, afterwards Duke of Albemarle, came to Kintail, retired from his house in Glenshiel to the hills, where, being found by some of the soldiers who had straggled from the body of the army in hopes of plunder, and who, speaking to him roughly, in a language he did not understand, he, like Old Orimanus, drew his sword, &c., and was immediately killed by them. This was all the blood that General Monk or his soldiers, amounting to 1500 men, had drawn, and all the opposition he met with, although the Earl of Middleton and Sir George Monro were within a few miles of them, and advertised of their coming, Seaforth having been sent by Middleton to the Isle of Skye and parts adjoining, to treat with the Macdonalds and the Macleods, &c.” Regarding the evictions which would take place in the Parish of Petty, he said, “The day will come, and it is not far off, when farm-steadings will be so few and far between, that the crow of a cock shall not be heard from the one steading to the other”. This prediction has certainly been fulfilled, for, in the days of the Seer there were no fewer than sixteen tenants on the farm of Morayston alone.