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.

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.