The future through a stone

On our way south after the trip to the Outer Hebrides, we stopped at Brahan - Brathainn in Gaelic, the ancient seat of the Seaforths, the chiefs of the great Mackenzie clan and erstwhile home at the beginning of the seventeenth century, of Coinneach Odhar," Brown Kenneth" otherwise known as the Brahan Seer.

Brahan today

The stable block and clock tower at Brahan

There is little left of Brahan, the house long demolished but the legend of the Seer lives on.

Coinneach was credited with forseeing the Highland Clearances - the crow of a cock will not be heard north of Drumochter, people would flee from their country before an army of sheep to islands as yet unknown; the Caledonian Canal - Ships in full sail shall pass by Tomnahurich; the coming of the railway or motor car- long strings of carriages without horse or bridle; the Battle of Culloden-Drumossie, thy bleak moor will be stained with the best blood of the Highlands and even the discovery of oil - black rains; as well as many many more.

It is his prediction of the fall of the clan Mackenzie with all the detail of the characteristics of the neighbouring lairds alive at the time which allowed for the incumbent to know when his fate would come, that has captured people's imagination since then.

The Countess of Seaforth had summoned Coinneach and asked him of news of her husband, the third Earl, who was in Paris as an ambassador for King Charles II. Coinneach applied his divination stone, a pebble with a hole through it, to his eye and replied that the Earl was well and happy. The countess plagued him with further questions until the Seer, perhaps feeling aggrieved that his strange abilities were being trivialised, admitted that he saw the the Earl in the company of a young woman enjoying all the delights of Paris. The countess' fury at her husband's behaviour was inflamed further in that it had been made known in front of retainers and servants. In a rage, she condemned Coinneach to a cruel death at Chanonry Point, to be burnt to death in a tar barrel.

 Before of his execution he predicted the death of the last Earl of Seaforth, predeceased by all his four sons and the downfall of the House of Mackenzie with such accuracy that the last Earl would be in no doubt that his line was coming to an end.

In 1815, the last lord Seaforth died in the circumstances predicted by Coinneach Odhar.

Did these giant oaks at Brahan witness the end of the Seaforths?

The Seer made his predictions after peering through a natural hole in a stone. Such "holey " stones are sometimes called hag stones, Odin's stones, or in Scotland, adder-stanes and there is a long-held belief that they enable the viewer to catch a glimpse of other worlds or, like the Seer, the future. They were also worn or hung from doors and boat prows as charms. Some are made by boring molluscs called piddocks, others by the action of sea currents on the stones, swirling one upon another.

Holey Stones

On the point of his execution, after making his famous prediction foretelling the end of the Seaforths, all the more powerful for its being made before an assembled company and in such dramatic and violent circumstances, Coinneach Odhar threw his stone into a loch. It was lost forever.

Dungeness

Flowers in the shingle

A year or two ago, I found such a stone on Dungeness beach or, as is the belief, it found me.

It lies on my desk today.

I have often held it to my eye but no glimpses of the future or of Faerie has it offered me. I live in hope.

A word of warning. Attempts to make such a stone by artificial means are said to bring bad luck on the perpetrator.