Part 12

The mere expression of admiration should be avoided by those who wish to escape the accusation of the Evil Eye. A youngish woman says, “You have seen my cousin J.’s third boy. He was the finest and nicest looking of all the children. When six months old he was a very pretty child. One day a woman came into the house; the baby was on his mother’s arm, and the visitor began to praise the child, and praised it very much. She was hardly away when a man came, and he began to praise the child as the woman had done. After he went away like a shot the baby took ill. They did not know what was the matter with him, or what to do, for he was growing worse. He continued in that way for some days. At last granny said she was sure he had been air a chronachadh, and advised the mother to consult a woman who was supposed to have knowledge to cure such cases. J. was not willing to go at first, but granny insisted that it would do no harm at any rate to go and speak to the woman. She went, but did not tell anybody at the time, for of course they would be speaking about it. As soon as she told the woman why she had come, the woman told her that the child had been injured by the Evil Eye, and she described exactly the man and woman who had done the harm, although my cousin had not mentioned man or woman to her. Was it not wonderful how she knew the very ones that had done it?” She cured the child. The above happened in one of the islands.

The following is from Ross-shire (Tarbat): “One of my sisters was blighted by a woman who lived beside them. She was well known for her uncanny ways. The way the thing happened was this: The little girl was tied on an elder sister’s back, and they were sent out for a walk. They had not gone far when the woman in question came forward, and putting the shawl back from the child’s face said, ‘What a pretty little girl! which of them is this?’ When the children returned their mother found that the young one was very ill, and on questioning the elder girl, she said that they had met this woman and repeated what she had said. Mother at once suspected what was the matter, sent for the woman, and charged her with having hurt her child. She protested that she had not done the child any injury, but the elder girl spoke up and said, ‘Yes, you looked at her and said she was pretty, and did not bless her.’ The woman admitted this, and that if she had done any harm to the child she was sorry for it, but it could be sorted if wrong had been done. She operated a charm, and the child was soon as brisk as ever.”

A domestic servant relates that a woman who lived in Kil C. had a first-rate cow that was giving a large quantity of milk. One evening when she was milking another woman came into the byre and began praising the cow, and expressing her amazement at the quantity of milk she gave. No more was thought of this, till at next milking the cow did not give so much, and continued to get worse. It became evident that she had been injured by the person who had praised her so much.

A Campbeltown man says, “I am sure I do not know about these things, for I have never seen anything of it myself, but I mind my neighbour over there, D. M., saying to me one day not long ago, that a woman was going past some time before that, and she began to praise one of his cows, saying what a grand udder she had and such fine teats. No doubt the cow was good, he said, and a fine milker, but after that day her milk went from her.”

A married woman of about forty-five “believes firmly in the existence of the Evil Eye,” and relates as a proof: Mrs. McD., a neighbour, told her lately that she was churning. The butter was actually on the churn when Mrs. B. came in, and looking into the churn began to praise the stuff, and said how well off she was to be getting such beautiful butter. She just stayed a minute or two and then went away. After she was gone the butter scattered on the churn, and do what she would she could not get it to gather again. All she could get was froth, and it continued that way with her for several churnings.

A girl of twenty-four, a domestic servant, a crofter’s daughter with a good School Board education, said, “Cronachadh is still in it. My mother was churning not long ago at all, and that woman Mrs. C. came in, and looking into the churn said, ‘Oh! what a lot of butter!’ Well, the butter went off, and though my mother churned and churned she did not get a bit of that churning, nor for a churning or two after that. We believed that the butter had been taken away.”

A woman who admits that she is a firm believer in the Evil Eye, tells of the following case within her own knowledge. Two women were living beside each other, and she knew them both personally. Each had a pig, and they were striving whose pig should be fattest. One of them had a cow, the other had not. The one that had the cow was giving her pig lots of milk. It was growing fast and surpassing the other. One day the neighbour came in, and while they were looking at it and saying how well it was thriving, she remarked, “Cha’n iongantach a mhuc agadsa bhi cho math on is e sin an seorsa biadh tha thu toirt dith.” (“No wonder your pig is so good, since that is the kind of food you are giving to her.”) After a little while the woman left, but was not long gone when the pig took ill, and when it was apparently getting no better they sent to Gortan-na-lag for one living there believed to have knowledge. When he came and saw the pig he said they had been too late in sending for him, and told them at once that it had been air a cronachadh, and he showed them who had done the mischief.

A cailleach, notorious as having the Evil Eye, was calling in the house of an acquaintance of the reciter, and when she was leaving she praised a fine hen that was in the yard. It was one of her best hens, and the woman praised it very much. That very day what happened but this hen was taken in dead, and the woman declared she could never get out of her mind that it had been a case of Evil Eye blight.

A LOOK DOES IT

The belief in an Evil Eye having arisen, it is perfectly clear that a mere look, quite unaccompanied by any other action, would soon be considered a quite sufficient cause of the mischief such an eye would occasion. A gamekeeper’s wife, a “canty body,” as she is described, told how some lads on a Sunday, who had watched a mare and foal grazing for some time, were credited with damaging the foal, because shortly after they left it lay kicking on the ground and would not suck.

A horse going up the main street of Bowmore in Islay was looked at by a man passing. A few minutes after it fell and could not rise, till a woman, C. McI., came and did “something to it.” The horse got all right, and the woman consulted maintained that it was a case of Evil Eye.

A man now resident in Glasgow was visiting some friends on a farm in one of the inner islands, and a man riding past was observed looking rather attentively at the cows in a field beside the road. He was supposed to have paid particular attention to a cow which, shortly after he had passed, was noticed to be unwell. It was treated as a case of the Evil Eye, and recovered.

These cases occurred with persons not notorious. The following is one in which the woman who affected the cattle was generally believed to have the Evil Eye. The reciter’s father was driving four cows from the park one evening, and when passing this woman’s house she stood at the door looking at the cows. In a moment off they went as hard as they could run. One of them, a handsome beast that had been bought from a farmer in Gartbreac, when they got them into the byre, was tied to a heavy kitchen grate which was there, but she ran out of the byre with the grate hanging to her neck, and climbed up a peat stack nearly reaching the top of it. From that day they never got any further good of that cow, and were decidedly of opinion that she had been bewitched by the woman.

Not the cattle alone but milk also is influenced by a mere look. We give an instance in the words of the narrator:—

“Bha ’n toradh air a thoirt uam fein an uiridh. Mhaistir sinn gus an robh Raonull agus Donull agus mi fein a ruith leis an fhallus ach ged a leanamaid air fathast cha ’n fhaigheamaid mir ime. ’S an anns an t-sabhal bhios sinn a cruinneachadh a bhainne agus thainig duine ’n rathad latha aig nach eil bo da chuid fein agus dh’amhairc e air a bhainne ’san t-sabhal: bha sinn a’ deanadh dhe gum b’esan a rinn an cron. Bha na cairdean gam’ chomhairleachadh gun a bhi leigeil le daoine bhi faicinn a’bhainne ach mi bhi cuimhnicheadh nach eil na h-uile duine cosmhuil rium fein. Well, o’n am sin, tha sinn a toirt fanear nach fhaigh neach sam bith cothrom air dol far am bheil am bainne agus tha sinn a faotainn a nis urrad ime’s bu chor air na h-uile maistreadh.” (“The butter was taken from myself last year. We churned until Ronald and Donald and myself were running with sweat, but although we had continued at it till now we could not get a bit of butter. It is in the barn that we gather the milk, and a man who has not got a cow of his own came the way one day and he looked on the milk in the barn, and we were making out that it was he who had done the harm. The friends were advising me not to be allowing people to see the milk, but that I should remember that every person is not like myself. Well, from that time we are taking care that nobody will get an opportunity to go where the milk is, and now we are getting as much butter as we ought to get on every churning.”)

The Isle of Man, from a Gaelic point of view, may be considered as likely to be much the same as the islands of Argyll, and a lighthouse-keeper, stationed there for some time, tells us he heard a good deal about the Evil Eye, and that belief in it is pretty common. “If a person is seen to look closely at a cow when passing her he is at once suspected, and is likely to be requested by the owner of the beast to take certain steps to prevent injurious consequences.”

As we have seen above, the very natural consequence of this belief in a look doing injury leads to the hiding of things liable to harm.

A somewhat amusing story of the effects of a look is from Arran.

“One time M. K. and myself were at a meeting, and there was an old bachelor there who kept looking at us all the time. We noticed it, but did not think much about it until after we went home, but when we got home both of us began to yawn and rift, and could not stop it. We were quite sure that we had been hurt by the ‘eye’ of the old fellow. M. K. made a drink of salt and water for us, and we took it and that cured us.”

Eructation in Arran seems to have a special connection with the Evil Eye and witchcraft. Another reciter remembers quite well a reputed witch going into her mother’s house, and not very long after she left her younger sister, a child at the time, became unwell. Her mother at once suspected that the fault lay with the woman who had left, so she sent after her and brought her back. The reputed witch “mixed salt and water, drank it herself, rifted fearfully, and in a little while the child got quite well.”

The use of salt as a “preservative” is illustrated in the case of an Arran woman who was a strong believer in and much afraid of the effects of the Evil Eye. She had one cow, and it gave her much discomfort when she saw the cow grazing near the roadside, fearing that some passer-by might “put his eye in her.” To keep the milk right, if she gave any to be carried away, or even “to be drunk on the premises,” she invariably put salt in it, and that sometimes to excess. The reciter said, “For a while we were getting milk from her for a man staying with us who was seriously annoyed when the milk was more than ordinarily salt, giving vent to his discontent saying, ‘Why the deuce does she not let us put saut in oor ain milk?’”

AVOIDING THE LOOK

The following recited by a Mull woman is interesting as showing that smiths and Druids, or their modern representatives, have still some affinity. The reciter told how her mother’s cow had taken suddenly ill as her brother Sandy was starting for the smithy. When he arrived there he mentioned the circumstance to the smith. “‘And did your mother no send any message to me?’ said the smith. Sandy said, ‘No, she had sent no message.’ ‘Well, I think your mother might ken that anything that I could do, I would do for her, and she might have sent for me.’ My brother suggested that he had better come away down to see her, so the smith came down and found my mother very vexed about the cow. He said, ‘The cow is bad enough, but it might have been one of the family, for the one that could do this could do the other thing just as well, but we’ll see what can be done.’ Having taken certain steps, he advised her also not to allow any one to see the cow on any account, for three would soon pass, he said, and if she would allow them in to see the cow, the cow would be gone. The three were strong, and she would need to use all her strength to keep them out. He told her that was all he could do just then, but that she must send Sandy over twice to him for a bottle. When he went away she told the children not to tell any one where she was, and she went to the byre to watch the cow. Having got tubs she filled them with stones and placed them against the byre door with spades and everything she could think of to keep the door from being opened. She was not long there when a man passed with a horse and a dog. He came to the kitchen door and asked the children where their mother was, but they did not tell him. He then came to the byre door, lifted the sneck, and when it did not yield tried to force it open with all his might, saying, ‘A Cheit nic Iain, am bheil thu ann sud?’ (‘Kate, John’s daughter, are you there?’) My mother knew his voice as that of a near neighbour, and answered: ‘Tha Iain, tha a’ mhart gu bochd agus tha i na laidh cul an doruis ’s cha ’n urrainn dhuit tighinn a steach.’ (‘Yes, John, the cow is unwell, and she is lying behind the door and you cannot get in.’) My mother had to tell the lie, or he would force the door open. The man went away, and these were the three that the smith had said would come the way—the man and the horse and the dog. And it was that man that had done the harm to the cow, but it was found out in time and the cow got better, but it was that very year my two brothers died, and nobody knows whether he had anything to do with their death or no.”

We include this under Evil Eye, because there is no statement of any accusation of witchcraft against the “man,” or for the matter of that “of the horse or the dog.”

In another case, in which a certain George T., by his devices, cured a cow of which he had said it was “bitten, wounded” (teum), he asked if there had been a man with a black head praising the cow. When he was told that they had no knowledge of such a thing, “Well,” said he, “it is a man with a black head that has injured your cow with the Evil Eye, but be under no anxiety, the cow is all right now.” He asked my mother if she had shown to any person the whole of the butter that came off the churn. My mother said that she was not showing (was not in the custom of showing) the butter to any one. “That is right, Flora. For all you have ever seen, although you would not keep but as much as the size of an egg, be sure that you do not let the whole of the butter be seen by anybody.”

An Islay farmer’s daughter remembers a certain woman who was supposed to possess an Evil Eye, and who paid them occasional visits. So terrified were they lest she should interfere with their butter, that whenever they saw her coming while they were churning, they would throw a cloth over the churn and put it out of sight until the woman left.

From Stratherrick, Ross-shire, a reciter said, “When she heard so much talk about cattle being injured by the Evil Eye, and the substance taken away, she became afraid of this, and especially when churning disliked anybody to come where the churn was, so much so that she used to do the churning in an out-of-the-way corner of the house.”

It is evidently not so easy to protect a horse or a cow from a glance of an Evil Eye, but a lady tells how that, visiting at a farmhouse, she saw the old cook, who had been long in the farmer’s service, running in great excitement to gather in a brood of young ducklings that were running about the yard. Being a frequent visitor and intimately acquainted with the cook, she asked her what was wrong, and why she was hurrying the ducklings at that hour of the day. “Oh,” said the cook, “Mr. A. is coming up the road, and last time he was here I had a beautiful brood of ducklings, and his eye took them and every one of them died, so I am putting these out of sight in case he should look at them.”