V · Exceeding ordinary sight

Second Sight

What did communities call knowing that seemed to exceed ordinary sight?

Martin Martin, collecting in the Western Isles, printed in 1703 an account of the second-sight, in Irish called Taish.

He is a collector. He is not the people collected.

“The second-sight is a singular faculty of seeing an otherwise invisible object, without any previous means used by the person that sees it for that end.”

Martin Martin, 1703

The faculty, as he records it, is involuntary. The seer does not choose the object, the time, or the place before it appears.

Rain on old window glass seen from a dark room
Interpretive still. Weather on glass. Not a picture of Taish.

Judgment without the faculty may still weigh what arrived.

Martin writes that several persons of judgment, without this faculty, are more capable to judge of the design of a vision than a novice that is a seer. Having the sight is not the same office as weighing it.

Robert Kirk, a minister at Aberfoyle, wrote his notes in 1691. He is one informant in one parish. He is not Scotland.

A record is not a race. A collector is not the people collected.

The CHARISMATA question is not whether every such report is supernatural.

It is how a community named an arrival that seemed to outrun ordinary seeing, and what they did with it afterward.

Further interiors of this record remain Coming Soon.

Between two worlds

Sources
  1. PRIMARY HISTORICAL SOURCEMartin Martin, A Description of the Western Islands of Scotland (London, 1703), “An Account of the Second-Sight, in Irish Called Taish.” Involuntary: seeing an otherwise invisible object without any previous means used by the person that sees it for that end. Judgment: several persons of judgment, without this faculty, are more capable to judge of the design of a vision, than a novice that is a seer. Collector, not a people speaking as one. 1703 object: https://archive.org/details/bim_eighteenth-century_a-description-of-the-wes_martin-martin-gent_1703
  2. PRIMARY HISTORICAL SOURCERobert Kirk, The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies, written 1691, later printed. A minister’s notes from Aberfoyle, not a national belief. https://archive.org/details/secretcommonweal00kirk
  3. OPEN QUESTIONRegion, period, collector, informant, and text are kept distinct. “The Irish believed” and “the Scots believed” are not used. Taish is not baptised as 1 Corinthians 12.
  4. INTERPRETIVE STILLRain on glass is atmosphere. Not Martin’s islands. Not a Highland collage.
  5. DIRECTORYDirectory Article §34 · Adult Registry #34.