the remedy proved abortive; and if the tree were cut down, the patient relapsed
or died.
Borlase speaks of a similar custom in Cornwall, except that a perforated stone
was used instead of a cleft tree.
In Persia, according to Alexander, passage through a long fissure or crevice in a
rock, by crawling on hands and knees, is employed as a test of legitimate birth.
And in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, to pass between the
pillars supporting an altar and the neighbouring wall, was practised as a like test.
It has been suggested, as the meaning of these various transmissions through
cleft, aperture, skein of yarn, and garland, that they are symbolical of
regeneration; a second birth, whereby a living soul is cleansed from its former
impurities and imperfections. Wilford speaks of a sanctified fissure in a rock in
the East, to which pilgrims resort “for the purpose of regeneration, by the
efficacy of a passage through this sacred type.”
The faculty of divining events, passing at a distance from the seer, or of
passively receiving a knowledge that such events are taking place, is the well-
known “second sight,” which plays so important a part in many Scottish stories.
“In the stricter acceptation of this faculty,” we are told, “contemporary objects
and incidents are beheld at the time, however remote their locality, but neither
those which have passed, nor those which have yet to come. If extending to
futurity, the subject of the vision is about to be realised. Therefore the second
sight borders only on prognostication. It is affirmed to be more peculiar to
Scotland, for very faint analogy to such a property has been claimed for other
countries: and that the highlanders chiefly, together with the inhabitants of the
insular districts, or that portion of the kingdom less advanced, have enjoyed it in
the highest perfection. Marvellous to be told, they have said that their cattle are
gifted with it as well as themselves.”
The faculty was one which knew no distinction of age or sex, or class; it was
enjoyed by man and woman, young and old, rich and poor, high-born and
plebeians, and in many cases was inherited. It might occasionally be imparted by
a gifted person, or acquired by study and preparation. It is a proof, were proof
needed, of the living influence of the imagination, that the vision beheld by one
individual only, might be revealed to a companion visionary, thus confirmed in