Oft have they seen fate give the fatal blow!
The sea, in Skye, shrieked as the blood did flow,
When headless Charles warm on the scaffold lay!
As Boreas threw his young Aurora forth,
In the first year of the first George’s reign,
And battles raged in welkin of the North,
They mourned in air, fell, fell rebellion slain!
And as, of late, they joyed in Preston’s fight,
Saw, at sad Falkirk, all their hopes near crowned!
They raved, divining through their second sight,
Pale-red Culloden where these hopes were drowned.”This same power of second sight forms the groundwork of Campbell’s poem of
“Lochiel’s Warning,” in which the poet represents the aged seer or soothsayer in
the act of warning the ferocious Highland chieftain against the consequences of
joining Prince Charles Edward’s expedition of the ’45:—
“Lochiel, Lochiel, beware of the day
When the Lowlands shall meet thee in battle array.
The sunset of life gives me mystical lore,
And coming events cast their shadows before!”A curious superstition respecting “the non-giving of fire” lingers still in some
parts of Scotland, more particularly in the North, and seems to be connected with
the old sun-worship: a survival of the Pagan past which is strange enough in this
matter-of-fact and prosaic Present of ours. “At Craigmillar, near Edinburgh, a
woman, not long ago, refused to give a neighbour ‘a bit peat’ to light her fire,
because she was supposed to be uncanny. The old woman muttered, as she
turned away, that her churlish neighbour might yet repent of her unkindness.
This speech the other repeated to her husband on his return from work,
whereupon he went straight to the old woman’s house, and gave her a sharp cut
on the forehead, for which he was duly called to account, and pleaded his belief
that scoring the witch above the breath would destroy her glamour.”
On certain days, such as Beltane (or S. John’s Eve,) Midsummer, Halloween,
and New Year’s Day, it is regarded as most unlucky to allow a neighbour to take
a brand from your hearth, or even to light his pipe.
Evil-disposed persons, desirous of doing their neighbours an ill turn, will apply
to them for “a kindling.” Thus, in Ross-shire, an old beldame repaired to a