“On one occasion,” said a native of Harris, “I was out fishing till
twelve or one o’clock in the morning, with several others, of whom one,
a man about 35, was reputed to have the Second Sight. As we were coming
home, I kept the middle of the road, thinking it was the safest place,
and that no evil could come near me there. Suddenly the man, who had the
Second Sight, caught me by the shoulder and pulled me to the side of the
road. As he laid his hand on my shoulder I saw a funeral procession—a
coffin and men carrying it. I was afterwards at that funeral myself, and
at the place where I met the taïsh, the men were in the same order in
which I had seen them.”
A young man going home at night, along the south side of Loch Rannoch,
was joined by a funeral procession. One of the poles of the bier was
thrust into his hands, and he had to march in the procession above a
mile. He was on the lochside of the coffin, and had great difficulty in
keeping on the road. The other bearers of the ghostly coffin were laying
the weight to push him off the road.
A woman, near Loch Scavaig (_Scathabhaig_), in Skye, saw a funeral
procession, with the coffins, passing along a hillside, where no road
lay, and no one was ever observed to pass. After the woman’s death, and
two years after her vision, a boat was lost in Loch Scavaig, and the
bodies of three persons lost in her were buried near the shepherd’s house
at the loch side. They were afterwards raised and carried along in the
direction the woman had pointed out as that taken by her vision.
One of these mystic processions was seen in Strathaird, in the same
neighbourhood, carrying something in a grey plaid. A man was drowned in
a river there, and his body was not recovered for a week. It was then
carried in a grey plaid in the same direction the spectral procession had
taken.
A man in Skye met at night a funeral procession, and some occult
influence made him walk along with it till he came to Portree churchyard.
He then for the first time asked whose funeral it was. He received for
answer, “Your own.”
A man living in the Braes of Portree went daily to Portree, four miles
away, to work. A neighbour, whose house was a little further away, was
engaged in the same work, and was in the habit of calling him as he
passed in the morning. The two then walked together to the scene of
their labour. One clear moonlight night he was awakened by what he took
to be his companion’s call. He hastily threw on his clothes and followed.
Every now and then he heard a call before him on the road telling him
to make haste. He followed, without thought, till he came to Portree
churchyard. It did not strike him till then that the call was from no
earthly voice.
WRAITHS SEEN BEFORE DEATH.
When a person was about to die, especially if his death was to be by
violence or drowning, his wraith or phantom was seen by those who had the
Second Sight, or it might be by those who had no such gift.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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