’CASE X.—­She heard her son exclaim in Gaelic, “This is a fatal lamb for me.”  As her son lived several miles from Uig, and was a fisherman, realisation seemed to my father very unlikely, but one month afterwards the realisation occurred only too true.  Unknown to his mother, who had warned him against having anything to do with sheep or lambs, the son one day, instead of going out in his boat, thought he would take a holiday inland, and went off to Uig, where a farmer enlisted his services in separating some lambs from the ewes.  One of the lambs ran away, and the fisher lad ran headlong after it, and not looking where he was going, on catching the lamb was pulled by it to the edge of one of the very picturesque but exceedingly dangerous rocks at Uig.  Too late realizing his critical position, he exclaimed, “This is a fatal lamb for me,” but going with such an impetus he was unable to bring himself up in time, and, along with the lamb, fell over into the ravine below, and was, of course, killed on the spot.  The farmer, when he saw the lad’s danger, ran to his assistance, but was only in time to hear him cry out in Gaelic before disappearing over the brink of the precipice.  This was predicted by the mother a month before.  Was this simply a coincidence?’

Dr. Macgregor’s remarks on the involuntary and unwelcome nature of the visions is borne out by what Scheffer, as already quoted, says concerning the Lapps.

In addition to visions which thus come unsought, contributing knowledge of things remote or even future, we may glance at visions which are provoked by various methods.  Drugs (impepo) are used, seers whirl in a wild dance till they fall senseless, or trance is induced by various kinds of self-suggestion or ‘auto-hypnotism.’  Fasting is also practised.  In modern life the self-induced trance is common among ’mediums’—­a subject to which we recur later.

So far, it will be observed, our evidence proves that precisely similar beliefs as to man’s occasional power of opening the gates of distance have been entertained in a great variety of lands and ages, and by races in every condition of culture.[23] The alleged experiences are still said to occur, and have been investigated by physiologists of the eminence of M. Richet.  The question cannot but arise as to the residuum of fact in these narrations, and it keeps on arising.

In the following chapter we discuss a mode of inducing hallucinations which has for anthropologists the interest of universal diffusion.  The width of its range in savage races has not, we believe, been previously observed.  We then add facts of modern experience, about the authenticity of which we, personally, entertain no doubt; and the provisional conclusion appears to be that savages have observed a psychological circumstance which has been ignored by professed psychologists, and which, certainly, does not fit into the ordinary materialistic hypothesis.