256 years ago, Francis Mackenzie, Lord Seaforth, caught scarlet fever. The twelve year old schoolboy was put into a makeshift ward at his school along with a number of other boys. This infectious disease usually affects children between 5 and 15 years old and up to the beginning of the 20th century, it was one of the leading causes of their death.
The school had had a very difficult week caring for the many boys afflicted but during a quiet moment, the nurse caring for them left the room just to take a few minutes break.
Francis awoke to find the room empty other than his sick and sleeping fellow pupils. He gradually became aware that the door to the room was slowly opening. What entered, sent him into blind panic. A vile, old woman, with straggly hair, a pronounced nose and rheumy eyes peered from under a hood. Her posture was bent and a bag hung from her shoulder.
Unable to speak, Francis watched as the crone approached one of the boys and took a wooden peg from her bag. Next she took a mallet and placing the peg against the boy’s head she struck a lethal blow. Francis heard in all its gory detail as the bone splintered and peg entered the brain. He was frantic but could neither move nor speak. Again the hag moved to another bed and repeated her murderous act. She continued around the ward ignoring as many as she killed.
When she finally reached Francis’ bed, she took a peg and placed it on his scalp. The petrified boy felt the pressure of the point digging into his skin and utterly terrified he awaited the blow that would end his life. The blow never came. Instead, she reached out and with claw like fingers she grasped his ears. Grinning, she continued her macabre journey around the sick beds.
Her grotesque work complete, she slid through the door. Free from her malign presence, Francis screamed at the top of his voice. Both the nurse and a doctor who had been caring for the boys ran to discover the cause of the bloodcurdling screeches.
The young Lord Seaforth was understandably hysterical and feverish. They were able to show him that his companions were quietly sleeping and that the scarlet fever had probably caused him either to have had a dreadful nightmare or perhaps even hallucinate.
The doctor was fascinated by the detailed story the young boy had told them and wrote down the details. As the disease ran its course, many of the boys recovered but of course, there were those that unfortunately succumbed. We can only imagine the doctor’s horror when he realised that it was the boys that Francis saw being murdered that died of the disease. As for Francis, he recovered but was left deaf either by the fever or by the touch of the hag. In any event it fulfilled the prophesy of Coinneach Odhar, the Brahan Seer who around 150 years beforehand met a terrible death by burning in a spiked barrel of tar. He cursed the family that brought about his doom and pronounced that the last chief of Seaforth Mackenzie house would be both deaf and dumb. Francis, did indeed, later lose the ability to speak through shock at the loss of his four sons.