to A Legend of Montrose, Sir Walter Scott speaks of the portents which announced the Highland clearings—the notes of the night wind howling down the pass of Balachra modeled to the tune of We Return no More, the song with which Highlanders usually bade farewell to their native land; "the uncouth cries of the Southland shepherds and the barking of their dogs in the midst of the hills long before their actual arrival." I have been told at St. Pierre-Miquelon that the Acadians who fled to those French islands from the country of Evangeline were quite sure they had been forewarned of what was in store by the appearance of British armies in the sky, by dirgelike sounds from the ocean, and the wailing of souls in purgatory heard during Mass for a year before the calamity. In 1811-'12 Bishop Plessis visited Prince Edward Island, and in the account of his journey, published long afterward,[1] we are told that mysterious voices were heard in the Acadian churches, but not in the churches frequented by the Roman Catholics of Highland Scotch extraction. There was a groaning or sighing voice like that of a person in distress, and a singing voice like that of a woman or a child. On the mainland of New Brunswick these voices followed the Acadians to the lumber shanties, and were heard on Sundays when they gathered for prayer. In the churches the voices were loudest during the recitation of the litany of the Holy Name of Jesus. The good bishop asks: "What are these voices? Whence come they, and for what reason do they make themselves heard?" He comes to the philosophical conclusion that "as they have done no one any harm it matters little whether they cease or keep on." At the grand dérangement, as they call their deportation, the Acadians received at least one mark of favor from the Virgin Mary. Abbé Ferland tells the story in his La Gaspesie. Two hundred and fifty of them on board a vessel bound from Port Royal to the Carolinas overpowered the crew during a storm, fastened a scapular to the rudder, and invited the Virgin to take charge; she did so, and in a few hours they made land at Rivière Saint-Jean. The Virgin helped the French at the battle of Ticonderoga, appearing in white on the breastworks as the enemy came up for each fresh attack. She did not appear on the Plains of Abraham, nor during Montgomery's invasion; in the latter campaign, indeed, the mass of the French Canadians would probably have been glad if she had helped the Bostonnais.
There were legends among the French Canadians of revelations from heaven having been vouchsafed to the Indians. Mgr. de S. Valier traveled through the Gulf region in 1685-'87 in the capacity of grand-vicaire to Laval, and published a report at
- ↑ Le Foyer Canadien, 1865.
