The Secret Commonwealth by Robert Kirk

Author:Robert Kirk
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: New York Review Books
Published: 2019-05-13T16:00:00+00:00

A succinct account of My Lord of Tarbat’s relations in a letter to the Honorable Robert Boyle, Esquire (of the predictions made by seers whereof himself was ear- and eyewitness) I thought fit to adjoin hereunto, that I might not be thought singular in this disquisition, that the matter of fact might be undeniably made out, and that I might with all submission give some annotations, with animadversions on his supposed causes of that phenomenon, with my reasons of dissent from his judgment:

Sir,

I heard very much but believed very little of the second sight, yet its being affirmed by severals of great veracity, I was induced to make inquiry after it in the year 1652, being then confined to abide in the North of Scotland by the English usurpers. The more general accounts of it were that many Highlanders, yet far more Islanders, were qualified with this second sight. That men, women, and children indistinctly were subject to it, and children where parents were not. Sometimes people came to age who had it not when young, nor could any tell by what means produced. It is a trouble to most of them who are subject to it, and they would be rid of it at any rate if they could. The sight is no long duration, only continuing so long as they can keep their eye steady without twinkling. The hardy therefore fix their look that they may see the longer. But the timorous see only glances, their eyes always twinkling at the first sight of the object.

That which generally is seen by them are the species of living creatures and of animate things which are in motion, such as ships and habits upon persons. They never see the species of any person who is already dead. What they foresee fails not to exist in the mode and in that place where it appears to them. They cannot well know what space of time shall intervene between the apparition and the real existence. But some of the hardiest and longest experience have some rules for conjectures as: if they see a man with a shrouding sheet in the apparition, they will conjecture at the nearness or remoteness of his death by the more or less of his body that is covered by it; they will ordinarily see their absent friends, though at a great distance —sometimes no less than from America to Scotland—sitting, standing, or walking in some certain place, and then they conclude with assurance that they will see them so and there; if a man be in love with a woman, they will ordinarily see the species of that man standing by her, and so likewise if a woman be in love, and they conjecture at their enjoyments (of each other) by the species touching the person or appearing at a distance from her (if they enjoy not one another). If they see the species of any person who is sick to die, they see them covered over with the shrouding sheet.

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