The doom is the story the Seer is chiefly remembered by, and it is the case sceptics find hardest to dismiss. Francis Humberston Mackenzie, Lord Seaforth, lost his hearing and nearly all speech to scarlet fever as a boy, and was known in Gaelic as MacCoinnich Bodhar, deaf Mackenzie. His four sons all died before him, and he died on 11 January 1815. The male line of Seaforth ended with him. See the separate records for the fulfilment and for the white coifed woman.
The sceptical point is the date of publication. Alexander Mackenzie printed his account in 1877, and the version of the doom he gives was told long after the events it describes. Bernard Burke is quoted as saying he suppressed the last unfulfilled part of the doom, which is why a complete text is hard to pin down. Historian Keith Thomas has observed that prophecies often appear during a crisis, to make an unwelcome change seem inevitable.
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