A Highland prophecy says the last Seaforth chief would be deaf and outlive his sons, Lord Seaforth's death in 1815 matched it, and historians say the seer may never have existed

The Brahan Seer is a figure of Highland folklore. Tradition says that while the third Earl of Seaforth was in Paris, his countess asked the seer Coinneach Odhar where he was. The seer said the earl was with a fair lady. She had him burned in a tar barrel at Chanonry Point. Before he died, the story says, he foretold the end of the Seaforths: a last chief "both deaf and dumb" who would outlive his sons, and estates passing to "a white-coifed (or white-hooded) lassie from the East" who would "kill her sister." Francis Humberston Mackenzie, Lord Seaforth, went deaf after scarlet fever as a boy. His sons all died before him, and he died on 11 January 1815, the last of his line. His eldest daughter, the widow of Admiral Sir Samuel Hood, came home from India in mourning and inherited. Later, with her driving a pony carriage, the ponies bolted and her younger sister Caroline was killed. The estates, including Lewis, were sold off piece by piece. Sir Bernard Burke wrote in 1883 that the prophecy had been current for generations. Historians reply that no contemporary record of the seer's predictions exists. William Matheson argued that Alexander Mackenzie's dating of the seer was wrong, and the only documented Coinneach Odhar is a man named in a 1577 witchcraft writ.