In many parts of Scotland the &urora borealis is regarded as a portent of ill omen. It regarded as à sign of the death of some important person or some impending tragedy, and there is a tradition that before the news of Flodden reached Edinburgh the "Northern Streamers," as they are often called, sent their warning of disaster:
All last night the -Northern Streamers Shot across the trembling sky. Fearful lights that never beckon Save when kings or heroes die. That is how Christopher North, in "Edinburgh after Flodden," described the visitation. It may be that their association with Flodden has given them in the minds of Scots an undeserved significance, but it is a fact that on the night Gladstone died there was a magnificent display.
"I was a small boy," writes a Press Association correspondent, "but I can remember my mother taking me to the door of cur house on the outskirts of a little town in Angus and pointing to the skies. They were leaping with colour. 'Look,' she said, there are the Northern Streamers. Some great man has died tonight.' Next day the newspapers announced the death of Gladstone.
Another occasion when I saw the lights was on the night of King Edward VII's death."
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.