TO GET RID OF THE SECOND SIGHT. It was a belief in the island of Coll that a person afflicted with the second sight might get rid of his unhappy gift, and, as it were, bind it away (_nasg_) from himself, by giving alms (_déirc_) and praying the gift may depart. A seer living near Arinagour in that island had two sons in the army, then engaged in foreign wars, and in his visions saw what was happening to them. The visions preyed so much on his mind that, to rid himself of them, he gave half-a-crown to an old woman, and prayed his second sight might be taken away. After this he saw nothing of his sons, and, anxious to know their fate, he went to Tiree for a celebrated taïsher, and brought him to Coll with him. He placed him beside the fire, which was on the middle of the floor. It was held by the best seers that visions are best seen through the fire (_roi’ n teine_). Before long the Tiree seer began to sweat, and the other, who knew that this was caused by a painful vision, begged him to tell what he saw, and hide nothing. He told that both the sons were killed—the one by a bullet through the head, the other shot through the heart and through the neck. Soon after a letter came to the Laird of Coll corroborating the seer’s vision. CHAPTER V. HOBGOBLINS. The term _Bòchdan_ (pron. Baucan) is a general name for terrifying objects seen at night, and taken to be supernatural, bugbears, ghosts, apparitions, goblins, etc., in all their variety. The word conveys as much the idea of fright in the observer as of anything hurtful or violent in the object itself. It is derived from _bòchd_, to come in a swelling and resistless flood, not an unapt description of the manner in which fear takes possession of its victims. Any object, indistinctly seen, may prove a hobgoblin of this kind. It may be merely a neighbour playing pranks by going about in a white sheet, a stray dog, a bush waving and sighing in the night wind, or even a peat-stack looming large in the imperfect light. There is a story of a man on Loch Rannoch-side who fought a bush, in mistake for a ghost, in a hollow, which had an evil name for being haunted. The conflict continued till dawn, when he was found exhausted, scratched, and bleeding.