CHAPTER XIX.

SECOND SIGHT: DIVINATION:

UNIVERSALITY OF CERTAIN

SUPERSTITIONS: FAIRIES IN SCOTLAND.

THERE are many aspects of the Past which have an interest for the

psychological student as well as for the antiquary, and there are not a few to
which everybody may occasionally direct their attention with advantage. We are
too much inclined to put it aside as a “sealed book,” which none but the scholar
can open,—which, when opened, is hardly worth the reading. Or we are attracted
only by its picturesque and romantic side, and take no heed of the valuable
lessons which may be deduced upon a careful examination. Yet, as all history is
more or less the history of human error and human folly, those chapters which
treat of the credulities and superstitions of the Past, must surely embody many
warnings and much counsel for the present.

Our glance at Halloween superstitions in Scotland reminds us of other old
Scottish practices, which serve to point a moral, if not to adorn a tale. We have
met with a volume by a Mr. Walter Gregor, which furnishes some curious
illustrative instances. On his vivid picture of the gloom and desolation of a
Scottish Sabbath, we will not dwell, for our readers will probably have gathered
from other sources, or even from personal experience, an idea of the dreariness
of that sombre institution in the days when bigotry was mistaken for zeal, and
the spirit was killed outright by the letter. It is pleasanter to read of the strong
yearning for knowledge that then possessed the hearts of our Scottish youth; and
how, in the age before School Boards were conceived of, the parish school
supplied for twenty shillings per annum an education which fitted the scholar for
entering the University. No Royal Road to Learning had as yet been discovered;
and with much sweat of brain did the aspiring student brood over his Homer or
Virgil by the flickering light of the peat-fire. When the time came for his