Brahan Seer

Brahan Seer Stone in Craig Wood. It is inscribed in both English and Scottish Gaelic with the words "The shadow over Culloden will rise and the sun will shine brighter".

The Brahan Seer, known in his native Scottish Gaelic as Coinneach Odhar ("Dark Kenneth"), and Kenneth Mackenzie, was, according to legend, a predictor of the future who lived in the 17th century.

The Brahan Seer is regarded by some to be the creation of the folklorist Alexander MacKenzie (1838-1898) whose accounts occur well after some of the events the Seer is claimed to have predicted.[1] Others have also questioned whether the Seer existed at all.[2][3]

  1. ^ Macleod, John. (2011). None Dare Oppose Birlinn, Edinburgh. pp. 35-36. ISBN 978-1841589091
  2. ^ Thompson, Francis. (1976). The Supernatural Highlands. R. Hale. p. 72. "There is, however, in an otherwise well-documented century, no direct evidence that Coinneach Odhar ever existed."
  3. ^ Wilson, Damon. (1999). The Mammoth Book of Nostradamus and Other Prophets. Carroll & Graf. p. 211. ISBN 978-0786706280 "In her conclusion to the 1977 edition of Mackenzie's Brahan Seer, the historian Elizabeth Sutherland hypothesizes that Coinneach Odhar might never have existed as an actual individual. Instead, she suggests, he might be a conglomeration of hundreds of years of taibhsear folklore."