GHOSTS

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 53, Issue 3800, 26 August 1936, Page 6

GHOSTS

PROPHECIES WHICH MADE SEEN BY SCOTS RULERS. KINGS TREMBLE. (By L. Spence in Weekly Scotsman). The occult history of Scottish royalty might almost fill a comfortable volume if the entire circumstances of ghostly appearance and phophetic vision associated with the lives of our Kings werfe to be included in its pages. The Stuart line in particular had a decided- leaning to the spiritually mysterious, but within short compass it is difficult to indi cate any but the' moi,e remarkable cases of royal occult experience. Aleccander 111., that monarch whose reign from first to last was so beset by omens and portents, beheld perhaps the most terrifying of these a few dfeys after his wedding to Margaret of England. The occurrence took place at Jedburgh, where a great ball was -being held to celebrate the royal union. Just as the dance was at its height, and all was merriment and goodwill among the English and Scottish nobility who had been invited to the entertainment, a frightful apparition broke through the happy and distinguished circle. This took the form of a grisly skeleton shape, like the King of Terrors, which trod in mockery of the dance down the middle of the illumined hall. No man stayed its progress, which was hailed with shreiks and cries of fear and dismay. Halting before the dais where the young King sat, the dread vision bowfed thrice in front of him, and then, before a man could count five, vanished into thin air.

.Some authorities believe that the apparition was of the nature of .1 cowardly stratagem designed by the enemies of the Crown to frighten the newly-married children out of their senses, but these fail to account for the abrupt disappearance of the phantom. Alexander at the time was only ten years of age while his queen was but eleven. If the reign of Alexander was among the most prosperous known to Scotland, his tragic death at Kinghorn almost in the flower of his age and the ruinous circumstances which followed it would seem to have justified the terrible portent with which it almost commenced.

WILD ,W)OMAN’S WARNING. A prophetic warning of a profoundly disturbing nature preceded the assassination of James I. at Perth in 1437. His stern treatment of the lawless nobility had aroused their hatred and resentment and a widespread conspiracy was on foot to surprise the King at Perth and take his life. As He was about to pass the Firth of Forth on his way north, a Highland woman suddenly appeared before the Royal cavalcade, and solemnly warned him that “if he crossed that water he should never return again alive.”

The woman’s wild words and even wilder appearance seem to have impressed the King profoundly, and he asked one of his entourage to inquire the meaning of her prophetic outburst.

'“Hudart told me,” she cried, “to wlarn you, Sir King, of what is toward.”

The courtier, believing her to -be mad or intoxicated, turned the affair aside with a laugh and the train rode on. The “Hudart” of whom she spoke, which some modern historians, ignor-

ant of Scottish folklore, have turned into “Hurbert,” was of course that “hoodie craw” to which our native superstition attributes prophetic powers, and which is, in all likelihood, derived from the Hug-inn or oracular Raven of the Norse god Odin, though some authorities believe it to have been Odin himself in his shape of “the Hooded One,” the mysterious visitant with shrouded face.

Once more the Highland sibyl warned James, or his following-, of comingdanger on the -very eve of his assassination, and begged to see the King with such earnestness that he almost received her. But, occupied with the evening’s pleasures, he gave orders that she should call on the morrow and she quitted the royal lodging declaring that no morrow should dawn for the fated King. Some hours later he fell beneath the daggers of his mortal enemies.

ASTROLOGER’S PROPHECY. Around the tragic personality of James 111. phophecies and omens seemed to multiply with such astonishing- frequency that the events of his reign can almost be identified with them. A man devoted to occult study -and the science of astrology, the lore of the stars, he gathered round him many experts in its practice, chief among whom was William Scheves, later Archbishop of St. And. reys, who had qualified in astrology at Louvain, where he had been instructed by the celebrated Spemicus in the principles of divination by the planets.

A certain Andreas, a Flemish astrologer who frequented tha Court, foretold that “in Scotland a lion would soon be devoured by his whelps,” the reference being to the * conspiracies of the King’s brothers Mar and Albany against his life. A prophetess who claimed to have intercourse with a familiar spirit also assured the King that Mar was employing magical arts to destroy him, and in terror the superstitous James shut himself up among his astrologers and his books of divination in the hope of averting the threatened danger. Shortly afterward Mar was arrested and east into Craigmillar Castle, while the witches and warlocks with whom he had been consorting and conspiring were seized and -burned on the Castlehill of Edinburgh. The un happy Mar, removed to a house in the Canongate, was bled by the royal physicions for a fever induced by the rigours of his captivity, and appears to have died from the the effects of the drastic treatment he had been subjected to. The prophecy was in the end justified and James perished near Sauchieburn by the dagger of an assassin in the pay of the party which had adopted his son, afterwards James IV., as its leader.

TWJO APPARITIONS. If his father had been addicted to the occult, James IV. seems equally to have been so. He imported numerous astrological and magical books from the Continent, and encouraged men of astrological knowledge to frequent his court. Among these was Damien, who he appointed Abbot of Tungltad, and who assured him, that pieces of gold money could be “bred” or multiplied from their kind by a certain process. He it was who made the first experiment in flying from the walls of Stirling Castle, with disastrous results to himself, leading from the battlements supported by a pair of wings made of feathers and breaking his thigh-bone. Two ghostly apparitions marked the last years of this monarch’s reign be-

fore -he met his death at Flodden. The first occurred at Linlithgow, while he was attending vespers at the Church of St. Michael, near the ancient palace. A venerable stranger- of stately (appearance entered the aisle where the King knelt. He Was attired in a blue robe and his long hairfloated over his shoulders. Addressing- the King, he said in solemn tones that he had bean sent to warn him against marching into England, and that did he persist in doing so, the undertaking would have a fatal issue. Having delivered his message, the stranger retreated and vanished among the croiwd', nor could the strictest inquiries discover whence he had gone. The King, though struck with superstitious dread, did not, however, abstain from his rash intention.

The second of these ominous apparitions, which was certainly a stratagem of the anti-war party to influence the King against the invasion of England, took place at the Miercat Cross of Edinburgh, which, on the eve of the army’s departure, seemed to blaze with a superpatural fire, while the names of the Scottish nobility who were to follow the King in his English adventure wore solemnly called out in summons from the Cross, and commanded by the power of Platcock, or Pluto, Lord of Death, to appear before him within forty days. That the whole affair was a piece of rather clumsy theatrical make-be-lieve can scarcely be questioned.

SIGNIFICANT OMEN. While yet an infant in his cradle in Dunfermline Palace the hapless King Charles I. drew upon himself an omen of peculiarly dreadful significance. For a red rag blown in at the window wrapped itself round the child’s neck, and was afterwards regarded as a portent of the manner in which he later met his death by the executioner’s axe. His father, James VI. and 1., was a profound student of the arts of sorcery, which, however, he feared and hated. His writings on witchcraft compose perhaps the most learned if grossly superstitious treatises extant on the subject.

The thing which most fortified him in his belief in the powers.- of the witches occurred when he demanded of the miserable Women on whom he sat in judgment a display of their magical -arts. One of the hags, taking him aside, whispered in his ear the conversation he had had with his queen, Anne of Denmark, on the nighlt of their wedding. If she had hoped to escape her fate by pandering to the royal curiosity she greatly erred, for the accuracy of her report only served to strengthen James in his belief in the occult powers of herself and her associates, whom he forthwith condemned to the flames.