McKenzie Scotland's Nostradamus

A Quest for the Brahan Seer
1. Auflage 2024
ISBN: 978-1-916846-89-0
Verlag: Unicorn
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 160 Seiten

This is the first comprehensive study of Coinneach Odhar Mackenzie, the celebrated Highland Seer, and is the result of years of first-hand research surrounding the author's own family's history. McKenzie argues that this figure was the product of a patchwork of oral storytelling traditions that thrived in the Highlands, but was initially based on Michael Scot, the Borders born mathematician and astrologer who moved to Sicily in the early 1200s and became scientific adviser to the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II. The Battle of Culloden, the Highland Clearances, mass-emigration and industrialisation - all those major changes that the Brahan Seer was purported to have predicted- had a huge impact in society in the same way that modern conspiracy theories have had around more recent disasters.

After studying History at Cambridge University, during which time he first addressed the Brahan Seer in his degree dissertation about the last Lord Seaforth, Andrew McKenzie has maintained a lifelong interest in his Highland family history, including in 2013 writing May we be Britons? A History of the Mackenzies. After Cambridge, McKenzie has worked at Bonhams, the London auction house, where he became Head of Old Master Paintings, continuing to indulge his passion for 16th, 17th and 18th century European history and culture. After a spell working at Phillips, between 1994 and 2000, he was invited back to Bonhams to head the Old Master Paintings Department, where he remains as a senior consultant.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Mckenzie, Andrew

Leseproben

The Legend

The first mention that I can find of the man who came to be known as the Brahan Seer is in Thomas Pennant’s A Tour in Scotland, in 1769: ‘Every country has its prophets … And the Highlands their Kenneth Oaur.’ He is later mentioned in the Bannatyne Manuscript history of the MacLeods, which dates from about 1832, in which he was said to predict the downfall of the MacLeods, placing him as a native of Ness in the Isle of Lewis, and born in the sixteenth century. The first extensive literary reference to the Brahan Seer, however, was made by the folklorist and geologist from the Black Isle in Ross-shire, Hugh Miller, first pub- lished in 1831 and based on material largely collected between fifteen and twenty years earlier, in his Scenes and Legends of the North of Scotland: Or The Tradi- tional History of Cromarty. According to Miller, ‘when serving as a field labourer with a wealthy clansman who resided somewhere near Brahan Castle’, Kenneth Ore,

made himself so formidable to the clansman’s wife by his shrewd, sarcastic humour, that she resolved on destroying him by poison. With this design, she mixed a preparation of noxious herbs with his food, when he was one day employed in digging turf in a solitary morass, and brought it to him in a pitcher. She found him lying asleep on one of those conical fairy hillocks which abound in some parts of the Highlands, and her courage failing her, instead of awaking him, she set down the pitcher by his side and returned home. He woke shortly after, and, seeing the food, would have begun his repast, but feeling something press heavily against his heart, he opened his waistcoat and found a beautiful smooth stone, resembling a pearl, but much larger, which had apparently been dropped into his breast while he slept. He gazed at it in admiration, and became conscious as he gazed, that a strange faculty of seeing the future as distinctly as the present, and men’s real designs and motives as clearly as their actions, was miraculously imparted to him; and it is well for him that he should become so knowing at such a crisis, for the first secret he became acquainted with was that of the treachery practised against him by his mistress. But he derived little advantage of the faculty ever after, for he led, it is said, till extreme old age, an unsettled, unhappy kind of life, wandering from place to place, a prophet only of evil, or of little trifling events, fitted to attract notice when they occurred, merely from the circumstances of their having been fulfilled.

Of Kenneth’s predictions, Miller went on to inform us:

There was a time of evil, he said, coming over the Highlands, when all things would appear fair and promising, and yet be both bad in themselves, and the beginnings of what would prove worse. A road would be opened upon the hills, from sea to sea, and a bridge built over every stream; but the people would be degenerating as their country was growing better; there would be ministers among them without grace, and maidens without shame; and the clans would have become so heartless, that they would flee out of their country before an army of sheep. Moss and muir would be converted into corn-land, and yet hunger press as sorely upon the poor as ever. Darker days would follow, for there would arise a terrible persecution, during which a ford in the River Oickel, at the head of the Dornoch Firth, would render a passage over the dead bodies of men, attired in the plaid and bonnet; and on the hill of Finnbheim in Sutherlandshire, a raven would drink her full of human blood three times a day for three successive days. The greater part of this prophecy belongs to the future; but almost all his minor ones are said to have met their fulfilment. He predicted, it is affirmed, that there would be dram-shops at the end of almost every furrow; that a cow would calve on the top of the old tower of Fairburn; that a cub would rear a litter of calves on the hearth- stone of Castle Downie; that another animal of the same species, but white as snow, would be killed on the western coast of Sutherlandshire; that a wild deer would be taken alive at Fortrose Point; that a rivulet in Wester Ross would be dried up in winter; and that there would be a deaf Seaforth.

Just under half a century later, what has since been regarded as the definitive col- lection of the Seer’s prophecies was first published by Alexander Mackenzie in 1877 in his The Prophecies of the Brahan Seer, Coinneach Odhar Fiosaiche. Known by the nickname of ‘Clach’ (derived from his clothes shop business in Clach na Cudainn House), Mackenzie was a writer and politician who campaigned for security of tenure for crofters and who became the Editor and Publisher of the Celtic Magazine, and the Scottish Highlander, as well as writing several clan his- tories. As with Hugh Miller’s account of ‘Kenneth Ore’, it is worthwhile quoting here Mackenzie’s introduction to what he had recorded surrounding the folklore that he said was then being repeated at the time in local oral tradition. This is because, surprising though it might at first seem, there is more to these stories than being simply pretty fairytales and I will show in due course that a thorough historical investigation can uncover certain elements in them that were firmly rooted in an amalgamation of authentic collective memories:

Kenneth Mackenzie, better known as Coinneach Odhar, the Brahan Seer (according to Mr. Maclennan), was born at Baile-na-Cille, in the Parish of Uig and Island of Lews, about the beginning of the seventeenth century. Nothing particular is recorded of his early life, but when he had just entered his teens, he received a stone in the following manner, by which he could reveal the future destiny of man: – While his mother was one evening tending her cattle in a summer shealing on the side of a ridge called Cnoceothail, which overlooks the burying-ground of Baile-na-Cille, in Uig, she saw, about the still hour of midnight, the whole of the graves in the churchyard opening, and a vast multitude of people of every age, from the newly born babe to the grey-haired sage, rising from their graves, and going away in every conceivable direction. In about an hour they began to return, and were all soon after back in their graves, which closed upon them as before. But, on scanning the burying-place more closely, Kenneth’s mother observed one grave, near the side, still open. Being a courageous woman, she determined to ascertain the cause of this singular circumstance, so, hastening to the grave, and placing her ‘cuigeal’ (distaff) athwart its mouth (for she had heard it said that the spirit could not enter the grave again while that instrument was upon it), she watched the result. She had not to wait long, for in a minute or two she noticed a fair lady coming in the direction of the churchyard, rushing through the air, from the north. On her arrival, the fair one addressed her thus – ‘Lift thy distaff from off my grave, and let me enter my dwelling of the dead.’ ‘I shall do so,’ answered the other, ‘when you explain to me what detained you so long after your neighbours.’ ‘That you shall soon hear,’ the ghost replied; ‘My journey was much longer than theirs – I had to go all the way to Norway.’ She then addressed her: – ‘I am a daughter of the King of Norway; I was drowned while bathing in that country; my body was found on the beach close to where we now stand, and I was interred in this grave. In remembrance of me, and as a small reward for your intrepidity and courage, I shall possess you of a valuable secret – go and find in yonder lake a small round blue stone, which give to your son, Kenneth, who by it shall reveal future events.’ She did as requested, found the stone, and gave it to her son, Kenneth. No sooner had he thus received the gift of divination than his fame spread far and wide. He was sought after by the gentry throughout the length and breadth of the land, and no special assembly of theirs was complete unless Coinneach Odhar was amongst them. Being born on the lands of Seaforth, in the Lews, he was more associated with that family than with any other in the country, and he latterly removed to the neighbourhood of Loch Ussie, on the Brahan estate, where he worked as a common labourer on a neighbouring farm. He was very shrewd and clear-headed, for one in his menial position; was always ready with a smart answer, and if any attempted to raise the laugh at his expense, seldom or ever did he fail to turn it against his tormentors.

There are various other versions of the manner in which he became possessed of the power of divination. According to one – His mistress, the farmer’s wife, was unusually exacting with him, and he, in return, continually teased, and, on many occasions, expended much of his natural wit upon her, much to her annoyance and chagrin. Latterly, his conduct became so unbearable that she decided upon disposing of him in a manner which would save...