*The Prophecies of the Brahan Seer* (1877) – The Public Domain Review

The Seer’s last prophecy is his most famous. Well known in the Scottish Highlands, he was summoned by Lady Seaforth, the Countess of Brahan Castle, for news of her husband, Kenneth Mackenzie (no direct relation of our author Alexander), who had been visiting Paris. In a prominent version of the story, the prophet reveals that he sees Mackenzie “in a gay gilded room, grandly arrayed in velvet, with silks and gold fabrics, and on his knees before a fair lady, his arm about her waist and her hand pressed to his lips.” Humiliated and outraged, the Countess condemns the Brahan seer to be burned in a barrel of tar. In response, his final vision predicts the end of the male Seaforth line. The last of the Seaforth Mackenzies will be deaf and dumb, and all four of his sons will precede him. His remaining assets will be inherited by a white-hooded ‘girl from the East’, who will kill her sister. The doomed Lord will know that his time has come by the presence of four other Highland nobles – one ‘buck-toothed, another hare-lipped, another half-hearted and the fourth a stutterer.’