This first fully comprehensive attempt to establish the genuine history behind the legendary Brahan Seer, which explores the uniquely rich and imaginative oral culture of the Highlands, tracing his colourful story all the way back to a long-forgotten real-life Scottish scholar living in the early 1200s.
Hardcover
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Summary
This first fully comprehensive attempt to establish the genuine history behind the legendary Brahan Seer, which explores the uniquely rich and imaginative oral culture of the Highlands, tracing his colourful story all the way back to a long-forgotten real-life Scottish scholar living in the early 1200s.
Description
This is the first comprehensive study of Coinneach Odhar Mackenzie, the celebrated Highland Seer, and is the result of years of first-hand research surrounding the author’s own family history. Andrew McKenzie argues that this figure was the product of a patchwork of oral storytelling traditions that thrived in the Highlands, but was initially based on Michael Scot, the Borders born mathematician and astrologer who moved to Sicily in the early 1200s and became scientific adviser to the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II. The Battle of Culloden, the Highland Clearances, mass-emigration and industrialisation – all those major changes that the Brahan Seer was purported to have predicted – had a huge impact in society in the same way that modern conspiracy theories have had around more recent disasters.
Critic Reviews
'A fascinating exploration of local history and local tradition.' Peter Burke, Emeritus Professor of Cultural History, Cambridge University
'Andrew McKenzie has used a lifetime of research and immersion in Highland culture to separate the folklore from the facts and shed new light on one of Scotland's most enigmatic figures, the Brahan Seer. By delving beneath the magic and myth, McKenzie uncovers a history of the Highlands that helps to explain not only the origins of ‘Scotland’s Nostradamus’ but its importance and value today. I predict you will enjoy it.' George Mair, Saltire News
'The career and complexities surrounding Coinneach Odhar Fiosaiche in our culture and history make this reassessment timely and welcome.' Professor Hugh Cheape, Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, University of the Highlands & Islands
About the Author
After studying History at Cambridge University, during which time he first addressed the Brahan Seer in his degree dissertation about the last Lord Seaforth, Andrew McKenzie has maintained a lifelong interest in his Highland family history, including in 2013 writing May we be Britons? A History of the Mackenzies. After Cambridge, McKenzie worked at Bonhams, the London auction house, where he became Head of Old Master Paintings, continuing to indulge his passion for sixteenth-, seventeenth- and eighteenth-century European history and culture. After a spell working at Phillips, between 1994 and 2000, he was invited back to Bonhams to head the Old Master Paintings Department, where he remains as a senior consultant.
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