into a damp room; illness came on, and her husband was roused up one night with tidings of her being in a dangerous state. It was the morning indicated by the dream. The Earl remembered it, and rose up (as he afterwards expressed it) with a yell of agony. Before nightfall she had expired.
Second-sight, again, belongs properly to the Highlands, and accordingly lies beyond the limits I have laid down for myself in this work. Mr. Wilkie says little respecting it, except that the seventh sons of seventh sons are persons marked out to be the possessors of the mysterious gift. He calls the seer an Elleree, a name I only know in his manuscript, but which doubtless means a person skilled in the affairs of Elle or Fairydom, and says that, if he sees sparks of fire falling on a person, that person’s death is near at hand. But the more common presage of death is for the Elleree to see the man wrapped in his shroud, and, according as the shroud covers more or less of the figure, will the death be near or remote. Again, should the Elleree see a funeral, and distinguish the persons of any of the attendants, those men are marked for an early grave.
It is to be regretted that this subject of second-sight—which, as Sir Walter Scott asserts, is attested by evidence which neither Bacon, Boyle, nor Johnson were able to resist,—has not arrested the attention of some philosophical thinker qualified to inquire into the matter, and give what explanation may be possible. For myself, I will only relate one incident which has always appeared to me very remarkable, and, professing myself wholly unable to offer any explanation, I will simply detail the circumstances, which for five-and-twenty years have been clearly imprinted on my memory.
About a quarter of a century has passed away since I started from D—— to join a party of tourists near Glasgow. We met, and determined that the gentlemen should take a walking and fishing ramble through Ross-shire and Inverness-shire, while the ladies should remain at the country-house of a friend, who had already gathered round her a merry group of young people, lately set free from the restraints of school, and bent on enjoying the beauty and freedom of the Western Highlands. The walking
