Post by wren on Oct 26, 2006 16:56:27 GMT -5
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Kenneth Mackenzie, also known as Coinneach Odhar or the Brahan Seer, was a legendary Scottish clairvoyant. Tradition dates his birth to the early 17th century in Uig, on the island of Lewis. This is the northernmost island of the Outer Hebrides, a chain of islands to the west of Scotland's northern coast. Legend has it that he came into his talent after napping on a fairy hill and finding a small stone in his coat, which allowed him to view the future. Predictably, legend has it that he was eventually burned to death as a sorcerer by being immersed in a barrel of burning tar. Before his death he forespoke the doom of the noble Mackenzie family who had him executed: the last male heir of this line would be deaf. In the 19th century this came true, as the last of the Mackenzies lost his hearing in his youth.
He is inevitably compared with Nostradamus. However, unlike Nostradamus, many of predictions attributed to the Brahan Seer are very straightforward and literal, instead of being cloaked in word games, riddles and allegory. For instance, a typical prediction is that a specific church roof would collapse when a magpie made a nest in it for three years running. There are predictions of the birth of a two-headed calf, a boulder falling over, and the plaintive death of a French expatriate in the Isles, mourned by a local woman. Other reputed predictions were of "a chariot without horse or bridle", and "fiery chariot" which could interpreted as a premonition of railroads or automobiles (p. 35), and "hills strewn with ribbons", (p. 10) which sound like powerlines, but this is about as futuristic as he gets. Unlike Nostradamus, none of his predictions are about geopolitics, global war, or the distant future.
The problem with the Brahan Seer is that there is no contemporary or historical record of any such individual ever existing. This is not surprising given the paucity of Scottish written sources from that period. This book, written by the noted Scottish folklorist Alexander Mackenzie, is the primary source for the Brahan Seer legend, and it was written in the late 19th century. The fact is, there are no Brahan Seer manuscripts or old editions with known provenance which could be used to back-test his predictions, as with Nostradamus. These accounts are oral tales which doubtless 'grew in the telling.' Given the Scottish fascination with 'second sight' and story-telling, it is not impossible that the Seer's best predictions were invented after the fact to match up with events, and a generation or two later ended up as being accepted as fact. Indeed, it appears that people are still creating Brahan Seer lore. Some of the material you will find elsewhere on the Internet about him doesn't appear in this book: draw your own conclusions.
However, the narrative is a gripping tale with a punchline delayed by two centuries. There is definitely a subversive subtext in the story arc of a man of humble origins who gains magical powers, and foretells the doom of the landed nobility before his brutal execution. Whether or not he was 'The Scottish Nostradamus,' the tale of the Brahan Seer can be a source of national pride for Scottish people everywhere.
PROPHECIES AS TO THE FULFILMENT OF WHICH THERE IS A DOUBT.
WHEN a magpie (pitheid) shall have made a nest for three successive years in the gable of the Church of Ferrintosh, the church will fall when full of people," is one of those regarding which we find it difficult to decide whether it has been already fulfilled or not. Mr. Macintyre, who supplies this version, adds the following remarks:--The Church of Ferrintosh was known at an earlier period as the Parish Church of Urquhart and Loggie. Some maintain that this prediction refers to the Church of Urray. Whether this be so or not, there were circumstances connected with the Church of Ferrintosh in the time of the famous Rev. Dr. Macdonald, which seemed to indicate the beginning of the fulfilment of the prophecy, and which led to very alarming consequences. A magpie actually did make her nest in the church gable, exactly as foretold. This, together with a rent between the church wall and the stone stairs which led up to the gallery, seemed to favour the opinion that the prophecy was on the eve of being accomplished, and people felt uneasy when they glanced upon the ominous nest, the rent in the wall, and
p. 25
the crowded congregation, and remembered Coinneach's prophecy, as they walked into the church to hear the Doctor. It so happened one day that the church was unusually full of people, insomuch that it was found necessary to connect the ends of the seats with planks, in order to accommodate them all. Unfortunately, one of those temporary seats was either too weak, or too heavily burdened: it snapped in two with a loud report and startled the audience. Coinneach Odhar's prophecy flashed across their minds, and a simultaneous rush was made by the panic-struck congregation to the door. Many fell, and were trampled underfoot, while others fainted, being seriously crushed and bruised.
Among a rural population, sayings and doings, applicable to a particular parish, crop up, and, in after times, are applied to occurrences in neighbouring parishes. Having regard to this, may it not be suggested that, what is current locally in regard to Ferrintosh and Coinneach's sayings, may only be a transcript of an event now matter of history in a parish on the northern side of the Cromarty Firth. We refer to the destruction of the Abbey Church at Fearn by lightning, October 10, 1742. We have never seen a detailed account of this sad accident in print, and have no doubt the reader will be glad to have a graphic description of it from the pen of Bishop Forbes, the famous author of the "Jacobite Memoirs," who visited his diocese of Ross and Caithness in the summer of 1762. This account is taken from his unpublished MS. Journal, now the property of the College of Bishops of the Scottish Episcopal Church, and presently in the hands of the Rev. F. Smith, Arpafeelie, who has kindly permitted us to make the following extract:--
"The ruinous Church of Ferne was of old an Abbacy of White Friars (see Keith's Catalogue, p. 247). The roof of
p. 26
flagstones, with part of a side wall, was beat down in an instant by thunder and lightning on Sunday, October 10th, 1742, and so crushed and bruised forty persons, that they were scarcely to be discovered, who or what they were, and therefore, were buried promiscuously, without any manner of distinction. The gentry, having luckily their seats in the niches, were saved from the sudden crash, as was the preacher by the sounding-boards falling upon the pulpit, and his bowing down under it. Great numbers were wounded (see Scot's Magazine for 1742, p. 485). But there is a most material circumstance not mentioned, which has been carefully concealed from the publishers, and it is this: By a Providential event, this was the first Sunday that the Rev. and often-mentioned Mr. Stewart, had a congregation near Cadboll, in view of Ferne, whereby many lives were saved, as the kirk was far from being so throng as usual, and that he and his people, upon coming out from worship, and seeing the dismal falling-in just when it happened, hastened with all speed to the afflictive spot, and dragged many of the wounded out of the rubbish, whose cries would have pierced a heart of adamant. Had not this been the happy case, I speak within bounds when I say two, if not three, to one, would have perished. Some of the wounded died. This church has been a large and lofty building, as the walls are very high, and still standing."
It has been suggested that the prediction was fulfilled by the falling to pieces of the Church at the Disruption; but we would be loth to stake the reputation of our prophet on this assumption.
Another, supposed by some to be fulfilled by the annual visits of the militia for their annual drill, is--"That when a wood on the Muir of Ord grows to a man's height, regiments of soldiers shall be seen there drawn up in battle order."
p. 27
In connection with the battle, or battles, at Cille-Chriosd and the Muir of Ord, Mr. Macintyre says:--The Seer foretold that "Fear Ruadh an Uird (the Red Laird of Ord) would be carried home, wounded, on blankets". Whether this saying has reference to an event looming in the distant future, or is a fragment of a tradition regarding sanguinary events well known in the history of Cille-Chriosd, and of which a full and graphic account, both in prose and verse, can be seen on pp. 82-86 and 136-139, Vol. I. of the Celtic Magazine, it is impossible to say.
more here www.sacred-texts.com/neu/celt/pbs/index.htm
Kenneth Mackenzie, also known as Coinneach Odhar or the Brahan Seer, was a legendary Scottish clairvoyant. Tradition dates his birth to the early 17th century in Uig, on the island of Lewis. This is the northernmost island of the Outer Hebrides, a chain of islands to the west of Scotland's northern coast. Legend has it that he came into his talent after napping on a fairy hill and finding a small stone in his coat, which allowed him to view the future. Predictably, legend has it that he was eventually burned to death as a sorcerer by being immersed in a barrel of burning tar. Before his death he forespoke the doom of the noble Mackenzie family who had him executed: the last male heir of this line would be deaf. In the 19th century this came true, as the last of the Mackenzies lost his hearing in his youth.
He is inevitably compared with Nostradamus. However, unlike Nostradamus, many of predictions attributed to the Brahan Seer are very straightforward and literal, instead of being cloaked in word games, riddles and allegory. For instance, a typical prediction is that a specific church roof would collapse when a magpie made a nest in it for three years running. There are predictions of the birth of a two-headed calf, a boulder falling over, and the plaintive death of a French expatriate in the Isles, mourned by a local woman. Other reputed predictions were of "a chariot without horse or bridle", and "fiery chariot
The problem with the Brahan Seer is that there is no contemporary or historical record of any such individual ever existing. This is not surprising given the paucity of Scottish written sources from that period. This book, written by the noted Scottish folklorist Alexander Mackenzie, is the primary source for the Brahan Seer legend, and it was written in the late 19th century. The fact is, there are no Brahan Seer manuscripts or old editions with known provenance which could be used to back-test his predictions, as with Nostradamus. These accounts are oral tales which doubtless 'grew in the telling.' Given the Scottish fascination with 'second sight' and story-telling, it is not impossible that the Seer's best predictions were invented after the fact to match up with events, and a generation or two later ended up as being accepted as fact. Indeed, it appears that people are still creating Brahan Seer lore. Some of the material you will find elsewhere on the Internet about him doesn't appear in this book: draw your own conclusions.
However, the narrative is a gripping tale with a punchline delayed by two centuries. There is definitely a subversive subtext in the story arc of a man of humble origins who gains magical powers, and foretells the doom of the landed nobility before his brutal execution. Whether or not he was 'The Scottish Nostradamus,' the tale of the Brahan Seer can be a source of national pride for Scottish people everywhere.
PROPHECIES AS TO THE FULFILMENT OF WHICH THERE IS A DOUBT.
WHEN a magpie (pitheid) shall have made a nest for three successive years in the gable of the Church of Ferrintosh, the church will fall when full of people," is one of those regarding which we find it difficult to decide whether it has been already fulfilled or not. Mr. Macintyre, who supplies this version, adds the following remarks:--The Church of Ferrintosh was known at an earlier period as the Parish Church of Urquhart and Loggie. Some maintain that this prediction refers to the Church of Urray. Whether this be so or not, there were circumstances connected with the Church of Ferrintosh in the time of the famous Rev. Dr. Macdonald, which seemed to indicate the beginning of the fulfilment of the prophecy, and which led to very alarming consequences. A magpie actually did make her nest in the church gable, exactly as foretold. This, together with a rent between the church wall and the stone stairs which led up to the gallery, seemed to favour the opinion that the prophecy was on the eve of being accomplished, and people felt uneasy when they glanced upon the ominous nest, the rent in the wall, and
p. 25
the crowded congregation, and remembered Coinneach's prophecy, as they walked into the church to hear the Doctor. It so happened one day that the church was unusually full of people, insomuch that it was found necessary to connect the ends of the seats with planks, in order to accommodate them all. Unfortunately, one of those temporary seats was either too weak, or too heavily burdened: it snapped in two with a loud report and startled the audience. Coinneach Odhar's prophecy flashed across their minds, and a simultaneous rush was made by the panic-struck congregation to the door. Many fell, and were trampled underfoot, while others fainted, being seriously crushed and bruised.
Among a rural population, sayings and doings, applicable to a particular parish, crop up, and, in after times, are applied to occurrences in neighbouring parishes. Having regard to this, may it not be suggested that, what is current locally in regard to Ferrintosh and Coinneach's sayings, may only be a transcript of an event now matter of history in a parish on the northern side of the Cromarty Firth. We refer to the destruction of the Abbey Church at Fearn by lightning, October 10, 1742. We have never seen a detailed account of this sad accident in print, and have no doubt the reader will be glad to have a graphic description of it from the pen of Bishop Forbes, the famous author of the "Jacobite Memoirs," who visited his diocese of Ross and Caithness in the summer of 1762. This account is taken from his unpublished MS. Journal, now the property of the College of Bishops of the Scottish Episcopal Church, and presently in the hands of the Rev. F. Smith, Arpafeelie, who has kindly permitted us to make the following extract:--
"The ruinous Church of Ferne was of old an Abbacy of White Friars (see Keith's Catalogue, p. 247). The roof of
p. 26
flagstones, with part of a side wall, was beat down in an instant by thunder and lightning on Sunday, October 10th, 1742, and so crushed and bruised forty persons, that they were scarcely to be discovered, who or what they were, and therefore, were buried promiscuously, without any manner of distinction. The gentry, having luckily their seats in the niches, were saved from the sudden crash, as was the preacher by the sounding-boards falling upon the pulpit, and his bowing down under it. Great numbers were wounded (see Scot's Magazine for 1742, p. 485). But there is a most material circumstance not mentioned, which has been carefully concealed from the publishers, and it is this: By a Providential event, this was the first Sunday that the Rev. and often-mentioned Mr. Stewart, had a congregation near Cadboll, in view of Ferne, whereby many lives were saved, as the kirk was far from being so throng as usual, and that he and his people, upon coming out from worship, and seeing the dismal falling-in just when it happened, hastened with all speed to the afflictive spot, and dragged many of the wounded out of the rubbish, whose cries would have pierced a heart of adamant. Had not this been the happy case, I speak within bounds when I say two, if not three, to one, would have perished. Some of the wounded died. This church has been a large and lofty building, as the walls are very high, and still standing."
It has been suggested that the prediction was fulfilled by the falling to pieces of the Church at the Disruption; but we would be loth to stake the reputation of our prophet on this assumption.
Another, supposed by some to be fulfilled by the annual visits of the militia for their annual drill, is--"That when a wood on the Muir of Ord grows to a man's height, regiments of soldiers shall be seen there drawn up in battle order."
p. 27
In connection with the battle, or battles, at Cille-Chriosd and the Muir of Ord, Mr. Macintyre says:--The Seer foretold that "Fear Ruadh an Uird (the Red Laird of Ord) would be carried home, wounded, on blankets". Whether this saying has reference to an event looming in the distant future, or is a fragment of a tradition regarding sanguinary events well known in the history of Cille-Chriosd, and of which a full and graphic account, both in prose and verse, can be seen on pp. 82-86 and 136-139, Vol. I. of the Celtic Magazine, it is impossible to say.
more here www.sacred-texts.com/neu/celt/pbs/index.htm