Chapter V: Phantasmagoria

On the 29th of January, 1719, a Scottish gentleman, named Alexander Jaffray, Laird of Kingswells, was riding across a piece of wide and waste moorland to the westward of Aberdeen, when, about eight o'clock in the morning, he beheld--to his great alarm and bewilderment, as he states in a letter to his friend, Sir Archibald Grant of Monymusk (printed by the Spalding Club)--a body of about seven thousand soldiers drawn up in front of him, all under arms, with colours uncased and waving, and the drums slung on the drummers' backs. A clear morning sun was shining, so he saw them distinctly, and also a commander who rode along the line, mounted on a white charger.

Dubious whether to advance or retire, and sorely perplexed as to what mysterious army this was, the worthy Laird of Kingswells and a companion, an old Scottish soldier, who had served in Low Country wars, reined in their horses, and continued to gaze on this unexpected array for nearly two hours; till suddenly the troops broke into marching order, and departed towards Aberdeen, near which, he adds, "the hill called the Stockett tooke them out of sight."

Nothing more was heard or seen of this phantom force until the 21st of the ensuing October, when upon the same ground--the then open and desolate White-myres--on a fine clear afternoon, when some hundred persons were returning home from the yearly fair at Old Aberdeen, about two thousand infantry, clad in blue uniforms faced with white, and with all their arms shining in the evening sun, were distinctly visible; and after a space, the same commander on the same white charger rode slowly along the shadowy line. Then a long "wreath of smoak apiered, as if they had fired, but no noise" followed.

To add to the marvel of this scene, the spectators, who, we have said, were numerous, saw many of their friends, who were coming from the fair, pass _through_ this line of impalpable shadows, of which they could see nothing until they came to a certain point upon the moor and looked back to the sloping ground. Then, precisely as before, those phantoms in foreign uniform broke into marching order, and moved towards the Bridge of the Dee. They remained visible, however, for three hours, and only seemed to fade out or melt gradually away as the sun set behind the mountains. "This will puzzle thy philosophy," adds the laird at the close of his letter to the baronet of Monymusk; "but thou needst not doubt of the certainty of either."

Scottish tradition, and even Scottish history, especially after the Reformation, record many such instances of optical phenomena, which were a source of great terror and amazement to the simple folks of those days; and England was not without her full share of them either; but science finds a ready solution for all such delusions now. They are chiefly peculiar to mountainous districts, and may appear in many shapes and in many numbers, or singly, like the giant of the Brocken, the spectator's own shadow cast on the opposite clouds, and girt with rings of concentric light--or like the wondrous fog-bow, so recently seen from the Matterhorn.

Almost on the same ground where the Laird of Kingswells saw the second army of phantoms, and doubtless resulting from the same natural and atmospheric causes, a similar appearance had been visible on the 12th of February, 1643, when a great body of horse and foot appeared as if under arms on the Brimman Hill. Accoutred with matchlock, pike, and morion, they looked ghost-like and misty as they skimmed through the gray vapour about eight o'clock in the morning; but on the sun breaking forth from a bank of cloud, they vanished, and the green hill-slopes were left bare, or occupied by sheep alone. Much about the same time, another army was seen to hover in the air over the Moor of Forfar. "Quhilkis visons," adds the Commissary Spalding, "the people thocht to be prodigious tokens, and it fell out owre trew, as may be seen hereafter."

Many such omens are gravely recorded as preceding and accompanying the long struggle of the Covenant, and the fatal war in which the three kingdoms were plunged by Charles I. and his evil advisers.

Indigestion, heavy dinners, and heavier drinking had doubtless much to do in creating some of the spectral delusions of those days; and inborn superstition, together with a heated fancy, were often not wanting as additional accessories. But in the gloomy and stormy autumn that preceded the march of the Scottish Covenanters into England, omens of all kinds teemed to a wonderful extent in the land. When Alaster Macdonnel, son of Coll the Devastator, as the Whigs named him, landed from Ireland, at the Rhu of Ardnamurchan, in Morven, to join the Scottish cavaliers under the Marquis of Montrose, then in arms for the king, it was alleged that the _hum_ of cannon-shot was heard in the air, passing all over Scotland from the Atlantic to the German Sea; that many strange lights appeared in the firmament; and that, on a gloomy night in the winter of 1650, a spectre drummer, beating in succession the Scottish and English marches, summoned to a ghostly conference, at the castle-gate of Edinburgh, Colonel Dundas of that Ilk, a corrupt officer, who, on being bribed by gold, afterwards surrendered to Cromwell the fortress, together with some sixty pieces of cannon.

All the private diaries and quaint chronicles, of late years published by the various literary clubs in England and Scotland, teem with such marvels, but the latter country was more particularly afflicted by them; omens, warnings, and predictions of coming peril rendering it, by their number and character, extremely doubtful whether Heaven or the _other place_ was most interested in Scottish affairs.

In 1638, fairy drums were heard beating on the hills of Dun Echt, in Aberdeenshire, according to the narrative of the parson of Rothiemay; in 1643, we hear of the noise of drums "and apparitions of armyes" at Bankafoir in the same county. "The wraith of General Leslie in his buff-coat and on horseback, carrying his own banner with its bend _azure_ and three buckles _or_, appeared on the summit of a tower at St. Johnstown. Science now explains such visions as the aerial Morgana, produced by the reflection of real objects on a peculiar atmospheric arrangement; but then they were a source of unlimited terror." Law, in his _Memorials_, records that, in 1676, a wondrous star blazed at noon on the hill of Gargunnock, and a great army of spectres was seen to glide along the hills near Aberdeen.

A folio of _Apparitions and Wonders_, preserved in the British Museum, records that, at Durham, on the 27th September, 1703, when the evening sky was serene and full of stars, a strange and prodigious light spread over its north-western quarter, as if the sun itself was shining; then came streamers which turned to armed men ranked on horseback. J. Edmonson, the writer of the broadsheet, adds: "It was thought they would see the apparition better in Scotland, because it appeared a great way north; the same," he continues gravely, "was seen in the latter end of March, 1704," and the battle of Hochstadt followed it. This must refer to the second battle fought there, which we call Blenheim, when Marshal Tallard was defeated and taken prisoner by Marlborough. But this wonderful light which turned to armed men at Durham was outdone by a marvel at Churchill, Oxfordshire, where (in the same collection) we find that, on the 9th January, 1705, _four suns_ were all visible in the air at once, "sent for signs unto mankind," adds the publisher, Mr. Tookey of St. Christopher's Court, "and having their significations of the Lord, like the hand-writing unto his servant Daniel."

In 1744, a man named D. Stricket, when servant to Mr. Lancaster of Blakehills, saw one evening, about seven o'clock, a troop of horse riding leisurely along Souter Fell in Cumberland. They were in close ranks, and ere long quickened their pace. As this man had been sharply ridiculed as the solitary beholder of a spectre horseman in the same place in the preceding year, he watched these strange troopers for some time ere he summoned his master from the house to look too. But ere Stricket spoke of what was to be seen, "Mr. Lancaster discovered the aerial troopers," whose appearance was as plainly visible to him as to his servant. "These visionary horsemen _seemed_ to come from the lowest part of Souter Fell, and became visible at a place named Knott; they moved in successive troops (or squadrons) along the side of the Fell till they came opposite to Blakehills, where they went over the mountain. They thus described a kind of curvilinear path, their first and last appearances being bounded by the mountain." They were two hours in sight; and "this phenomenon was seen by _every person_ (twenty-six in number) in every cottage within the distance of a mile," according to the statement attested before a magistrate by Lancaster and Stricket, on the 21st of July, 1745.

During the middle of the last century, a toll-keeper in Perthshire affirmed on oath, before certain justices of the peace, that an entire regiment passed through his toll-gate at midnight; but as no such force had left any town in the neighbourhood, or arrived at any other, or, in fact, were ever seen anywhere but at his particular turnpike, the whole story was naturally treated as a delusion; though the Highlanders sought in some way to connect the vision with the unquiet spirits of those who fought at Culloden, for there, the peasantry aver, that "in the soft twilight of the summer evening, solitary wayfarers, when passing near the burial mounds, have suddenly found themselves amid the smoke and hurly-burly of a battle, and could recognize the various clans engaged by their tartans and badges. On those occasions, a certain Laird of Culduthil was always seen amid the fray on a white horse, and the people believe that once again a great battle will be fought there by the clans; but with whom, or about what, no seer has ventured to predict."

Shadowy figures of armed men were seen in Stockton Forest, Yorkshire, prior to the war with France, as the _Leeds Mercury_ and local prints record; and so lately as 1812, much curiosity and no small ridicule were excited by the alleged appearance of a phantom army in the vicinity of hard-working prosaic Leeds, and all the newspapers and magazines of the time show how much the story amused the sceptical, and occupied the attention of the scientific.

It would appear that between seven and eight o'clock on the evening of Sunday, the 28th October, Mr. Anthony Jackson, a farmer, in his forty-fifth year, and a lad of fifteen, named Turner, were overlooking their cattle, which were at grass in Havarah Park, near Ripley, the seat of Sir John Ingilby, when the lad suddenly exclaimed: "Look, Anthony; what a number of beasts!" "Beasts? Lord bless us!" replied the farmer with fear and wonder, "they are _men_!" And, as he spoke, there immediately became visible "an army of soldiers dressed in white uniforms, and in the centre a personage of commanding aspect clad in scarlet." These phantoms (according to the _Leeds Mercury_ and _Edinburgh Annual Register_) were four deep, extended over thirty acres, and performed many evolutions. Other bodies in dark uniforms now appeared, and smoke, as if from artillery, rolled over the grass of the park. On this, Jackson and Turner, thinking they had seen quite enough, turned and fled.

Like the spells of the Fairy Morgana, which were alleged to create such beautiful effects in the Bay of Reggio, and which Fra Antonio Minasi saw thrice in 1773, and "deemed to exceed by far the most beautiful theatrical exhibition in the world," science has explained away, or fully discovered the true source of all such spectral phenomena. The northern aurora was deemed by the superstitious, from the days of Plutarch even to those of the sage Sir Richard Baker, as portentous of dire events; and the fancies of the timid saw only war and battle in the shining streamers; but those supposed spectral armies whose appearance we have noted, were something more, in most instances, than mere _deceptio visus_, being actually the shadows of _realities_--the airy reproductions of events, bodily passing in other parts of the country, reflected in the clouds, and imaged again on the mountain slopes or elsewhere, by a peculiar operation of the sun's rays.