Evil Eye in the Western Highlands

Part 1

Transcriber’s Notes

Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected. Variations in hyphenation and accents have been standardised except in the Gaelic passages, but all other spelling and punctuation remains unchanged.

Italics are represented thus italic, bold thus =bold= and superscripts thus y^{en}.

EVIL EYE

IN THE

WESTERN HIGHLANDS

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

THE GAMES AND DIVERSIONS OF ARGYLESHIRE. Demy 8vo, viii.-270 pp., cloth, uncut, 10s. 6d. net.

This volume forms No. 47 of the Publications of the Folk-Lore Society.

EVIL EYE

IN THE

WESTERN HIGHLANDS

R. C. MACLAGAN, M.D.

AUTHOR OF “THE GAMES AND DIVERSIONS OF ARGYLESHIRE”

LONDON DAVID NUTT, 57-59 LONG ACRE 1902

Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO. At the Ballantyne Press

CONTENTS

PAGE

INTRODUCTION 1

EVIL EYE 10

LOCALITY OF BELIEF 20

SOCIAL POSITION OF BELIEVERS 22

DESCRIPTION OF POSSESSORS OF EVIL EYE 24

OBJECTION TO MEETING AN EVIL EYE 28

AVOIDING SUSPICION OF EVIL EYE 32

ACTION OF EVIL EYE INDEPENDENT OF POSSESSOR 35

EVIL EYE TAKES EFFECT EVEN ON THINGS NOT SEEN 37

MORAL SOURCE OF THE EVIL EYE 40

Part 2

THINGS THAT SPECIALLY ATTRACT 43

STRANGERS SPECIALLY LIABLE TO BE ACCUSED OF THE POSSESSION OF THE EVIL EYE 46

PEOPLE SHOULD GIVE WHEN ASKED 48

SYMPTOMS IN ANIMALS ASCRIBED TO EFFECT OF EVIL EYE 51

BENEFIT TO THE OWNER OF AN EVIL EYE 68

DISADVANTAGE TO THE OWNER OF AN EVIL EYE 70

CONSEQUENCE OF DIRECT PRAISE 76

A LOOK DOES IT 80

AVOIDING THE LOOK 84

CONVERSION TO BELIEF IN EVIL EYE 88

GIVING AWAY MILK DANGEROUS 89

SCIENCE VERSUS EOLAS 91

HURTER AND HEALER 98

TRANSMISSION OF EOLAS 101

FORMS OF INCANTATION 104

FORM OF PAYMENT 108

THE NECESSITY OF FAITH 112

PREVENTING EVIL BY BLESSING 114

PREVENTING BY DISPRAISING 117

PREVENTING BY ROWAN AND JUNIPER 119

PREVENTING BY HORSE NAILS AND SHOES 121

PREVENTING BY A SMALL GIFT 122

A PREVENTATIVE BY BURNING CLOTHING 125

PREVENTION BY SPITTING 126

PREVENTING BY CHURNING 129

PREVENTION BY PECULIARITY IN CLOTHES 131

TAR AS PREVENTATIVE 132

NICKING THE EAR 134

Part 3

URINE AS PREVENTATIVE 135

A BURNT OFFERING 140

CHARMS. (STRING) 141

UISGE A’ CHRONACHAIDH (WATER OF INJURY) 151

STONES AND WATER 167

IRON AND WATER 172

WOOD AND WATER 175

SALT AS CURE AND PREVENTATIVE 176

MOST SUITABLE WATER 181

TABOO WHEN IN POSSESSION OF WATER 184

WATER, WHERE APPLIED 192

ODD CURES 195

HONEYSUCKLE CURE 195

CAT CURE 196

RUBBING HAIR THE WRONG WAY 196

CHANGING THE FIREPLACE 197

THE POWER OF A CHILD’S MUTCH 197

WHISKY CURE 198

LEAD DROPPING 198

AN EYE FOR AN EYE 200

SHOWING WHO IS THE MISCHIEF MAKER 205

PUTTING ELSEWHERE 214

APPENDIX 219

INDEX 225

EVIL EYE

INTRODUCTION

The Evil Eye is a superstition arising not from local circumstances, or peculiarity of a great or small division of the human family, but is a result of an original tendency of the human mind. The natural irritation felt at the hostile look of a neighbour, still more of an enemy, is implanted in the breast of all, however much they may be influenced by moral teaching. When we add to this the feeling that some valued possession has attracted the coveteous desire of another, the fear of loss is added to the irritation of mere anger. To some such natural feeling we must ascribe the belief in an Evil Eye.

Theories of an origin more restricted, founded on the fear of loss or damage to particular possessions of individuals guaranteed them by the custom of law, developed in the community of which they form part, scarcely satisfy after inquiry. Where a subsistence can be easily procured the Evil Eye would be little regarded in connection with food, but might naturally develop itself in connection with the relations of the sexes. No doubt the latter, the most interesting to individuals of all passions, causes feelings of hostility between rivals universally, but where the food supply is difficult to procure one would naturally expect that damage from the covetous desires of others, where they seemed to affect the life-preserving store, would become equally important.

Part 4

In the following study of the belief of an Evil Eye among the Gaelic-speaking peoples of Scotland at the present day, an attempt is made neither to disguise nor to improve upon what those in contact with believers have learned from their mouths. The writer is a believer in the Evil Eye only in so far as it may be a term for the natural selfishness of the human being, as a “tender heart” is a recognised way of speaking of a nature apt to sympathy. Selfishness, natural to all of us, is apt to find expression in our habits, however much we may disguise it by religious or charitable profession. Were it a part of our nature to have for our neighbour the same affection that we have for ourselves, no such superstition as that of the Evil Eye could have arisen. But we are not made that way, and so reformers, in endeavouring to cure this sin, as they consider it, have preached and tried to practise such ordinances as “Thou shalt not covet,” and “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” Truly hard sayings, and in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out of a thousand with difficulty getting beyond the status of a pious opinion.

Not that that teaching has been without effect; and we may hope that with the extension of communications and the progress gradually being made to that condition of things where

“Man to man the world o’er Shall brithers be for a’ that,”

the bad e’e may some day in these isles be merely a study for folklorists as Totemism is, and as difficult to find as an auk’s egg.

Right or wrong, the theory here advanced accounts, satisfactorily, as far as the writer can judge, for the present-day widespread belief in Scotland of the power for evil of the glance of the human eye.

As will be seen afterwards, there are those who theorise on the bad heart influencing the eye, the ill effect of the Evil Eye only arising from the glance of the covetous; but this is probably the result of preconceived religious ideas, and of the moral teaching to which its believers have been accustomed. It is not to be wondered at; it would be impossible indeed, but that the teaching of Christianity should have affected and given a direction to this ancient superstition. Thus we find it Christianised to a marked degree, its origin is conceived of as a breaking of the commandment “Thou shalt not covet,” and its cures are mostly connected with a reference to the Deity, and to the Trinity of the Christian. The magic thread with the three knots on it, though heathen in its origin, has surely some connection with the rosary, the aspersion with water, with baptism, and the holy water of the Roman Church. But it is not a superstition introduced with Christianity, it is as native as the heather of our hills, or the sandstone rock of the Coronation Stone.

This statement might be safely enough advanced upon general principles, but we are not without satisfactory literary evidence of what we advance. In the Ossianic “Acallam na Senorach” (The Colloquy with the Ancient Men), the second longest prose composition of the mediæval Irish, a collection (probably made in the late twelfth or thirteenth century) of separate stories united together in one framework, we find the following as related in MSS. of the fifteenth century and later.

The Fiann are on a visit to the King of Munster. The son of the King of Ulster marries the daughter of the King of Munster.

“The damsel bore him a famous and beautiful son named Fer Oc (‘young man’), and in all Ireland there were scarcely one whose shape and vigour and spear-casting were as good as his.”

On a subsequent visit, the three battalions of the Fiann are lost in admiration of the activity and skill of a young man who turns out to be this Fer Oc. “Then was a hunt and a battue held by the three battalions of the Fiann. Howbeit, on that day, owing to Fer Oc (and his superior skill) to none of the Fiann it fell to get first blood of pig or deer. Now when they came home, after finishing the hunt, a sore lung-disease attacked Fer Oc, through the (evil) eyes of the multitude and the envy of the great host, and it killed him, soulless, at the end of nine days.” “He was buried on yonder green-grassed hill,” says Cailte, “and the shining stone that he held when he was at games and diversion is that yonder rising out of his head.” The Gaelic here simply says “tre tsuilib na sochaide” (through the eyes of the multitude), and it will be seen that modern reciters sometimes speak in exactly the same way of the “eye” unqualified, but meaning the Evil Eye. But there is more than this in the story; it is a young man who suffers, and the young are most easily affected. It is a remarkable and handsome youth that suffers, and what attracts the eye, especially beauty, is peculiarly liable to injury, and the statement is made that it was the envious glance which affected the victim. Cormac’s Glossary (an Irish compilation begun in the tenth century, and added to throughout the Middle Ages), preserved in MSS. of the commencement of the fifteenth century, mentions the Evil Eye:—

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