“Donald Ban and the Bocan,” Scotland: An 18th Century ‘Talking Poltergeist’ Case

Culloden Moor photo from www.nts.org.uk

In the 1990s when I was researching ‘talking poltergeist’ cases, two European accounts described by Andrew Lang in The Book of Dreams and Ghosts (1897) reminded me of some of the occurrences chronicled in M. V. Ingram’s An Authenticated History of the Bell Witch (1894) although there are far more testimonials preserved about the Tennessee case of the nineteenth century.  The Donald Ban account from Scotland mentions the 1746 Battle of Culloden that resulted with more than 1,000 Highlanders’ lives lost upon being outnumbered by the English soldiers. 

During a recent Internet search, I found a source that shows how Lang learned about Donald Ban — an article that may be read in Folk-Lore, “a Quarterly Review of Myth, Tradition, Institution, & Custom Being The Transactions of the Folk-Lore Society and incorporating The Archaeological Review and The Folk-Lore Journal,” Vol. VI.—1895.  Lang is listed as one of nine vice-presidents of the Society and the article is entitled “Donald Bán and the Bócan” by W. A. Craigie, M.A. “Read at Meeting of June 19th, 1895.”  In his book’s preface, Lang wrote, “I owe much to Mr. W. A. Craigie, who translated the stories from the Gaelic and the Icelandic.”

Both the article and the portion of Lang’s book offer similar information and each cite the Gael, vol. vi., p. 142 (1877) with information about this Scotland case communicated by D. C. Macpherson.  Below is the information provided in Lang’s book; however, I have omitted the translation of the verses of a hymn attributed to Donald Ban.

It is fully a hundred years since there died in Lochaber a man named Donald Ban, sometimes called “the son of Angus,” but more frequently known as Donald Ban of the Bocan.  This surname was derived from the troubles caused to him by a bocan—a goblin—many of whose doings are preserved in tradition.

Donald drew his origin from the honourable house of Keppoch, and was the last of the hunters of Macvic-Ronald.  His home was at Mounessee, and later at Inverlaire in Glenspean, and his wife belonged to the MacGregors of Rannoch.  He went out with the Prince, and was present at the battle of Culloden.  He fled from the field, and took refuge in a mountain shieling, having two guns with him, but only one of them was loaded.  A company of soldiers came upon him there, and although Donald escaped by a back window, taking the empty gun with him by mistake, he was wounded in the leg by a shot from his pursuers.  The soldiers took him then, and conveyed him to Inverness, where he was thrown into prison to await his trial.  While he was in prison he had a dream; he saw himself sitting and drinking with Alastair MacCholla, and Donald MacRonald Vor.  The latter was the man of whom it was said that he had two hearts; he was taken prisoner at Falkirk and executed at Carlisle.  Donald was more fortunate than his friend, and was finally set free.

It was after this that the bocan began to trouble him; and although Donald never revealed to any man the secret of who the bocan was (if indeed he knew it himself), yet there were some who professed to know that it was a “gillie” of Donald’s who was killed at Culloden.  Their reason for believing this was that on one occasion the man in question had given away more to a poor neighbour than Donald was pleased to spare.  Donald found fault with him, and in the quarrel that followed the man said, “I will be avenged for this, alive or dead.” 

It was on the hill that Donald first met with the bocan, but he soon came to closer quarters, and haunted the house in a most annoying fashion.  He injured the members of the household, and destroyed all the food, being especially given to dirtying the butter (a thing quite superfluous, according to Captain Burt’s description of Highland butter).  On one occasion a certain Ronald of Aberardair was a guest in Donald’s house, and Donald’s wife said, “Though I put butter on the table for you to-night, it will just be dirtied.”  “I will go with you to the butter-keg,” said Ronald, “with my dirk in my hand, and hold my bonnet over the keg, and he will not dirty it this night.”  So the two went together to fetch the butter, but it was dirtied just as usual.

Things were worse during the night and they could get no sleep for the stones and clods that came flying about the house.  “The bocan was throwing things out of the walls, and they would hear them rattling at the head of Donald’s bed.”  The minister came (Mr. John Mor MacDougall was his name) and slept a night or two in the house, but the bocan kept away so long as he was there.  Another visitor, Angus MacAlister Ban, whose grandson told the tale, had more experience of the bocan’s reality.  “Something seized his two big toes, and he could not get free any more than if he had been caught by the smith’s tongs.  It was the bocan, but he did nothing more to him.”  Some of the clergy, too, as well as laymen of every rank, were witnesses to the pranks which the spirit carried on, but not even Donald himself ever saw him in any shape whatever.  So famous did the affair become that Donald was nearly ruined by entertaining all the curious strangers who came to see the facts for themselves.

In the end Donald resolved to change his abode, to see whether he could in that way escape from the visitations.  He took all his possessions with him except a harrow, which was left beside the wall of the house, but before the party had gone far on the road the harrow was seen coming after them.  “Stop, stop,” said Donald; “if the harrow is coming after us, we may just as well go back again.”  The mystery of the harrow is not explained, but Donald did return to his home, and made no further attempt to escape from his troubles in this way.

If the bocan had a spite at Donald, he was still worse disposed towards his wife, the MacGregor woman.  On the night on which he last made his presence felt, he went on the roof of the house and cried, “Are you asleep, Donald Ban?”  “Not just now,” said Donald.  “Put out that long grey tether, the MacGregor wife,” said he.  “I don’t think I’ll do that to-night,” said Donald.  “Come out yourself, then,” said the bocan, “and leave your bonnet.”  The good-wife, thinking that the bocan was outside and would not hear her, whispered in Donald’s ear as he was rising, “Won’t you ask him when the Prince will come?”  The words, however, were hardly out of her mouth when the bocan answered her with, “Didn’t you get enough of him before, you grey tether?”

Another account says that at this last visit of the bocan, he was saying that various other spirits were along with him.  Donald’s wife said to her husband: “I should think that if they were along with him they would speak to us”; but the bocan answered, “They are no more able to speak than the sole of your foot.”  He then summoned Donald outside as above.  “I will come,” said Donald, “and thanks be to the Good Being that you have asked me.”  Donald was taking his dirk with him as he went out, but the bocan said, “leave your dirk inside, Donald, and your knife as well.”

Donald then went outside, and the bocan led him on through rivers and a birch-wood for about three miles, till they came to the river Fert.  There the bocan pointed out to Donald a hole in which he had hidden some plough-irons while he was alive.  Donald proceeded to take them out, and while doing so the two eyes of the bocan were causing him greater fear than anything else he ever heard or saw.  When he had got the irons out of the hole, they went back to Mounessie together, and parted that night at the house of Donald Ban.

A concluding paragraph by Lang mentions two further incidents that leave the reader wondering.

The bocan was not the only inhabitant of the spirit-world that Donald Ban encountered during his lifetime.  A cousin of his mother was said to have been carried off by the fairies, and one night Donald saw him among them, dancing away with all his might.  Donald was also out hunting in the year of the great snow, and at nightfall he saw a man mounted on the back of a deer ascending a great rock.  He heard the man saying, “Home, Donald Ban,” and fortunately he took the advice, for that night there fell eleven feet of snow in the very spot where he had intended to stay.

Craigie found similarities between the Donald Ban account and a chapter in George Sinclair’s Satan’s Invisible World Discovered (1685) about “The Devil of Glenluce” although there was no mention of this case in Lang’s book so it was not known to me when I was researching ‘talking poltergeist’ cases during the first half of the 1990s.

Also noted by Craigie was “a similar Icelandic story, narrated in 1750 by the Sheriff Hans Wium, who was an eye-witness to the reality of the events.”  This account was included by Lang in The Book of Dreams and Ghosts under the heading “The Devil of Hjalta-Stad.”  Thus, the Glenluce and Hjalta-Stad accounts present incidents that resulted in affiliations with the Devil and Satan yet it would be absurd to take literally such associations in context with the occurrences described. 

Andrew Lang’s other European account is the subject of the blog post “The Devil of Hjalta-Stad,” Iceland: An 18th Century ‘Talking Poltergeist’ Case.