Note 6 — Chapter XLII

Footnote 6: Francis, Lord Seaforth, died 11th January, 1815, in his 60th year, having outlived four sons, all of high promise. His title died with him, and he was succeeded in his estates by his daughter, Lady Hood, now the Hon. Mrs. Stewart-Mackenzie of Seaforth.—See some verses on Lord Seaforth's death, in Scott's Poetical Works, vol. viii. p. 392 [Cambridge Ed. p. 419]. The Celtic designation of the chief of the clan MacKenzie, Caberfae, means Staghead, the bearing of the family. The prophecy which Scott alludes to in this letter is also mentioned by Sir Humphry Davy in one of his Journals (see his Life, by Dr. Davy, vol. ii. p. 72),—and it was, if the account be correct, a most extraordinary one, for it connected the fall of the house of Seaforth not only with the appearance of a deaf Caberfae, but with the contemporaneous appearance of various different physical misfortunes in several of the other great Highland chiefs; all of which are said—and were certainly believed both by Scott and Davy—to have actually occurred within the memory of the generation that has not yet passed away. Mr. Morritt can testify thus far—that he "heard the prophecy quoted in the Highlands at a time when Lord Seaforth had two sons both alive and in good health—so that it certainly was not made après coup." [Mrs. Stewart-Mackenzie died at Brahan Castle in 1862, in her 79th year. "Her funeral was one of the largest ever witnessed in the North." The Seaforth estates passed to the eldest of her three sons.][Back to Main Text]