The Scottish Brahan Seer and Game of Thrones
Bran Stark, a prophet, a seer, a visionary, one of my favourite characters and the eventual “winner” of Game of Thrones, was very possibly based on a Scottish person.
Coinneach Odhar or the “Brahan Seer” as he was known, was said to have been born on the Isle of Lewis in the 16th century, later moving to Dingwall in Ross-shire, and going on to make several prophecies which apparently came true. George RR Martin is a renowned history buff, especially regarding British and French history, and the Song of Ice and Fire and Game of Thrones writer must have known about him and in some ways been inspired. This Scottish Nostradamus, who lived around the same time as the more famous Frenchman, was also a mystic and from “the north.” It is difficult not to see the similarities. Though another Celtic nation, Wales, could also have been an origin, with “Bran” in Welsh meaning “Raven,” and “Bran the Blessed” being an ancient mythological Welsh king, but he did not have the prophetic power or vision of the Brahan Seer.
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Most likely, it is a combination of them both, and perhaps one or two more characters from Celtic history. But the Brahan Seer to me, seems clear in the character.
After moving to Ross-Shire, the Brahan Seer moved around working as a labourer and giving out prophecies. With his “second sight”, some of his most well-known predictions included the coming of sheep and the highland clearances, and the many deaths at Drummossie Moor in the battle of Culloden. At the site, at least a century before the battle, it is claimed he said “Oh! Drummossie, thy bleak moor shall, ere many generations have passed away, be stained with the best blood of the Highlands. Glad am I that I will not see that day, for it will be a fearful period; heads will be lopped off by the score, and no mercy will be shown or quarter given on either side.”
He also spoke of “Great black, brideless horses, belching fire and steam, drawing lines of carriages through the glens.” Two hundred years later, the railways were laid down throughout the Highlands and the trains went steaming through.
But most impressive for me, is the detail of the Highland Clearances, the men and women forced to move from the land in place of sheep, and later deer farms, and the immigration of the masses to the Americas and other continents like Australia. “The sheep shall eat the men.. the day will come when sheep shall become so numerous that the bleating of the one shall be heard by the other, from Lochalsh to Kintail they shall be at their height in price… the ancient proprietors of the soil shall give place to strange merchant proprietors, and the whole Highlands will become one huge deer forest, the whole country will be so utterly desolated and depopulated that the crow of a cock shall not be heard north of Drumochter, the people will emigrate to Islands now unknown, but which shall yet be discovered in the boundless oceans.
He reportedly met his end when he was asked by Lady Isabella Seaforth, the wife of the 3rd Earl of Seaforth, to give news of her husband, who was abroad in Paris at the time. The Brahan Seer reluctantly told her that her husband was with another woman, more beautiful than her, and for this she shot the messenger, and he was burned alive as a witch, in a barrel of tar.
You can still go to see a memorial to him where he died, at Chanonry Point, a place where many other so-called witches were burnt to death. Unlike centuries ago, the idea and validity of prophets and seers, and of witches, has diminished now almost to the point of non-existence. But the Brahan Seer lives on, with some prophecies as yet unfulfilled, and through characters like Bran in Game of Thrones. And in the imaginations of us all.
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