Bourru
A monkish apparition spoken of in many tales as that of an imaginary phantom which appears to the Parisians, walking the streets in the darkest hours of the night, and glancing in at the windows of timid folkpassing and re-passing a number of times. Nurses are wont to frighten their small charges with the Monk Bourru. The origin of the spectre is unknown.
Boville (or Bovillus), Charles de: A Picard who died about 1553. He desired to establish in his work De sensu the opinion, anciently held, that the world is an animal,-an idea also imagined by Felix Nogaret. Others works by Boville are his Lettres, his Life of Raymond Lully, his Traite des douze nombres, and his Trois Dialogues sur l'Immortalitè de l'Ame, le Rèsurrection, et la Fin du Monde. Bowls, Magical (See Magic.) Brahan at Bergen-op-Zoom, in 1612. His Treatise on Dreams (Leyden 1639) is of great rarity.
Braccesco, Jean : A canon and alchemist of Brescia, who flourished in the seventeenth century He gave much study to the hermetic philosophy, and commented upon the work of Geber. His most curious work is The Tree of Life a dissertation upon the uses of the Philosophers' Stone in medicine. (Rome. 1542.) Bradlaugh, Charles: A prominent member of the Committee of the London Dialectical Society, appointed in 1869 to investigate the alleged phenomena of spiritualism. He and Dr. Edmunds were among those who served on subcommittee No, 5, which held séances with Home, at which the phenomena were not at all satisfactory. The two investigators named therefore signed a minority report, containing a careful and critical treatment of the evidence.
Bragadini, Mark Antony: An alchemist of Venice, beheaded in 1595, because he boasted that he had made some gold. from a recipe which he had received from a demon..
He was tried at Munich, by order of Duke William II.. Two black dogs which accompanied him were also arrested, charged with being familiars, and duly tried. They were shot with an arquebuse in the public square.
Brahan Seer, The Coinneach Odhar (Kenneth Ore). Although Coinneach Odhar is still spoken of and believed. in as a seer throughout the Highlands, and especially in the county of Ross and Cromarty, his reputation is of comparatively recent growth. The first literary reference to him was made by Hugh Miller in his Scenes and Legends of the North of Scotland (1835). About half a century later a collection of the Seer's predictions was published by the late Mr. Alexander Mackenzie, Inverness, the author of several clan histories. Many of these alleged foretellings are of a trivial character. The most important prophecies attributed to Coinneach (Kenneth) are those which refer to the house of Seaforth Mackenzies. One, which is supposed to have been uttered in the middle of the seventeenth century, foretold that the last of the Seaforths would be deaf. It was uttered at Brahan Castle, the chief seat of the Seaforths, near Dingwall, after the seer had been condemned to death by burning, by Lady Seaforth for some offensive remark. He declared to her ladyship that he would go to heaven, but she would never reach it. As a sign of this he declared that when he was burned a raven and a dove would hasten towards his ashes. If the dove was the first to arrive it would be proved his hope was well founded. The same legend is attached to the memory of Michael Scott-a rather suggestive fact. According to tradition, Kenneth was burned on Chanonry Point, near Fortrose. No record survives of this event. The first authentic evidence regarding the alleged seer, was unearthed by Mr. William M. Mackenzie, editor of Barbour's Bruce, who found among the Scottish Parliamentary records of the sixteenth century an order, which was sent to the Ross-shire authorities, to prosecute several wizards, including Coinneach Odhar. This was many years. before there was a Seaforth. It is quite probable that Kenneth was burned, but the legendary cause of the tale must have been a "filling in " of late tradition. Kenneth's memory apparently had attached to it many floating prohecies and sayings including those attributed to Thomas and Michael Scott. The sayings of "True Thomas" werehawked through the Highlands in Gaelic chap books, and so strongly did the bard appeal to the imaginations of the eighteenth century folks of Inverness, that they associate him with the Fairies and Fingalians (Fians) of the local fairy mound, Tom-na-hurich. A Gaelic saying runs, "When the horn is blown, True Thomas will come forth." Thomas took the place of Fingal (Finn or Fionn) as chief of the "Seven Sleepers" in Tom-na-hurich, Inverness. At Cromarty, which was once destroyed by the sea, Thomas is alleged to have foretold that it would be thrice destroyed. Of course, the Rhymer was never in Cromarty and probably knew nothing about it. As he supplanted Fingal at Inverness, so at Cromarty he appears to have supplanted some other legendary individual. The only authentic historical fact which remains is that Coinneach Odhar was a notorious wizard, and of mature years, in the middle of the sixteenth century. Wizards were not necessarily seers. It is significant that no reference is made to Kenneth in the letters received by Pepys from Lord Reay, regarding second-sight in the seventeenth century, or in the account of Dr. Johnson's Highland tour, although the learned doctor investigated the problem sympathetically. 66 دو 66 In the Scottish Highlands no higher compliment could be paid to the memory of any popular man than to attribute to him the gift of "second sight." Rev. John Morrison, minister of Petty, near Inverness, who was a bard, was one of the reputed seers of this order. Many of his "wonderful sayings were collected long after his death. Rev. Dr. Kennedy, a Dingwall Free Church minister, and a man of strong personality and pronounced piety, is reputed to have had not only the gift of prophecy but also the gift of healing." He was himself a believer in "second sight" and stated that his father was able to foretell events. In his The Days of the Fathers in Ross-shire (1861), he makes reference to several individuals who were similarly gifted" with what he believed to be a God-given power. One of his seers was reputed to have foretold the "Disruption of the Church of Scotland about sixteen years before the event took place. By this time the seers had acquired the piety of the people who believed in them. Even the notorious Kenneth, the Brahan seer a Pagan and a wizard, became glorified by doubtful tradition, like the notorious Michael Scott, one of his prototypes. 66 دو دو References to second sight in the Highlands are made in the following publications: Kirk's Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies; Martin's Western Isles of Scotland; Deuterosophia (Second Knowledge) or a Brief Discourse concerning Second Sight by Rev. John Frazer (Edinburgh, Ruddiman, Aned and Co, 1763), Miscellanies by John Aubrey, F.R.S (London, 1696). That there is sufficient evidence to justify the serious investigation of "Second sight" phenomena in the Scottish Highlands, no doubt can remain. But that is no reason why the "Brahan Seer legends should be accepted as genuine, especially when it is found that Kenneth died before the Seaforth branch of the Mackenzies came into existence. Whoever foretold the fall of that house, it was certainly not the "notorious wizard" of the Scottish Parliamentary records. No doubt, Kenneth made himself notorious by tyrannizing over a superstitious people in the sixteenth century, and was remembered on that arcount. During his lifetime he must have been credited with many happenings supposed to have been caused by his spells. After his death he gathered an undeserved reputation for prophecy and piety by the snowball process-a not unfamiliar happening in the past of the Scottish Highlands, where Sir William Wallace, St. Patrick, St. Bean, and others were reputed to have been giants who flung glaciated boulders from hill-top to hill-top across wide glens and over lochs of respectable dimensions.
DONALD MACKENZIE.