Part 24

From a good correspondent in the North of Argyllshire comes the following account of a clerk in a factor’s office. He complained at times, and certainly did not look very well, but not much attention was paid to him, as any illness he had did not seem serious. “A frail old woman came into his parents’ house one evening as the lad returned to supper. She looked at him keenly, waited till he went out, and then asked, ‘What is he complaining of?’ His mother was surprised, but answered that he was feeling the confinement in his office a good deal, but that there was not much wrong. ‘You need not tell me that,’ said the old woman, ‘I can easily see there is something very real the matter with him. Some one has laid their Evil Eye upon him. I’ll tell you what you should do. Go to the woods, get a good long bit of the iadh-shlait, take it and twist it this way round his whole body, repeating the following words, and you will see your son hale and hearty soon.’ The lad’s mother did not believe in the cure and did not try it, nor could she give the words recommended to be used.” The plant here is the honeysuckle, the Gaelic name given being used for it alone in the district. Dictionaries, however, say that it is also used for “ivy,” which in those parts as elsewhere is called eitheann.

CAT CURE

The reciter, a probationer of the Free Church and well up in folklore matters, when in Harris, of which he was a native, heard of the following. A man’s cow was taken suddenly ill, and the only conclusion they could come to was that it was a case of Evil Eye. The owner of the cow, acting on advice, took a cat and rubbed it on the cow. The cow recovered.

RUBBING HAIR THE WRONG WAY

The reciter’s grandfather was a Stratherrick man (Loch Ness), and when attending the market there, was approached by another man to sell him a stirk. There was a good deal of bargaining. No agreement was come to, the offerer leaving as if dissatisfied. Before the market closed the stirk fell to the ground and could not be got to rise. F.’s suspicions of course fell upon the rejected offerer. An acquaintance who also was attending the market, and was supposed to have eolas, happened to come about, and seeing F. in distress reassured him: “Cha’n eagal do’n bheachan a laochain.” (“No fears of the beast, my lad.”) He then drew the palm of his hand up the stirk’s back against the hair, repeating words which the reciter, however, had never heard. The stirk got on its feet and was soon brisk and well.

CHANGING THE FIREPLACE

“There was a man living in Machri whose cattle and horses were dying, and things generally going against him. He knew quite well it was the Evil Eye, so he consulted a buidseach. The buidseach told him to change his fire to the other end of the house. Having done this his cattle recovered, and he was prosperous ever after.”

Unfortunately this is the whole information available. The cattle not improbably were housed beneath the same roof as himself; but it would be of no benefit speculating as to the effect of changing the fireplace nearer to or farther from his stock. All that can be said is that the change of position of the fireplace was credited with a change in the man’s luck.

THE POWER OF A CHILD’S MUTCH

Whether the child in this case was suffering directly from the Evil Eye the reciter was not prepared to say.

In the neighbourhood of Tayinloan, Kintyre, there were several women who professed to be able to cure sicknesses arising from the Evil Eye. One of these women was sent for in the case of a child thought to be dying. When she arrived the household were gathered round the child, thinking he was approaching immediate death. When the woman looked at him she said nothing, but asked for a child’s mutch (close cap), and when it was given her she went outside, repeated a charm over it, and returning, put the mutch on the child’s head and said he would soon be well. In a little while he kicked and stretched himself, and it was not long till he was all right.

WHISKY CURE

In only one case have we heard of this universal solvent of misfortune being used as a cure for the Evil Eye. The churning was unsuccessful; the dairymaid was convinced that it was a case of Evil Eye, and advised that a glass of whisky should be put in the churn. The advice was not taken, so we have still to learn the effects of whisky in like case. This was in Caithness-shire, where belief in the Evil Eye is very common.

LEAD DROPPING

We have already considered the reference of the diagnosis to the augury of a piece of silver sticking to the bottom of a dish. All sorts of prognostications are got by pouring albumen of eggs into water as well as melted lead; the latter was used in the following instance of what it disclosed as a case of Evil Eye.

The reciter was a well-educated sick-nurse, of middle age and thoroughly reliable. A girl had taken suddenly ill. A young man in the neighbourhood was desirous of marrying her, but the suitor was not acceptable, and the girl took every opportunity of letting this be seen. A neighbour, supposed to have special skill and whose method of hanky-panky was the dropping of melted lead into water, was consulted. She went through her performance and showed the lead, part of it at least, in the form of a heart with a hole through it. She explained to the sick girl, “Look at that, his eye is in you and you are far better to take him.” The match was made, and the girl recovered her health. The same woman, going through the same performance with reference to a sick lad, showed to his aunt and sister some of the lead in the form of a coffin, and from that pronounced the case hopeless. The lad shortly thereafter died.

In the case of the pierced heart, there is no doubt, the idea on the part of the reciter was that actual illness was brought on by the desirous eye of the young man, not merely that the lad had an eye to her as a satisfactory partner.

AN EYE FOR AN EYE

We have pointed out that the belief in an Evil Eye is founded upon a literal acceptance apparently of the validity of the commandment “Thou shalt not covet.” To the writer this seems the hardest of the Decalogue. It forbids thoughts which pass involuntarily through the mind. A person to whom Nature has given an ambitious and acquisitive disposition breaks this commandment necessarily, however openhanded may be his practice. With all reverence, the commandment seems to be a pushing into the region of thought what has been forbidden in practice by the commandment “Thou shalt not steal.” No doubt to covet means more than a simple liking to possess, and it is the inordinate, the excessive desire which is forbidden. The theory of the Evil Eye as demonstrated in the beliefs of the West Highlanders shown here may have sprung entirely, and owe their origin to, if not the tenth commandment of the Decalogue, an acceptance as valid of the instruction therein contained. The acceptance of this commandment as binding, demonstrates that there is a power for evil in thought alone. The covetous man’s eye is “in it,” let him do as he likes. This power is shown vividly by the belief so often expressed that admiration of one’s own possessions will result in evil to them.

To counteract this deleterious result the possible sufferer has to be put under the protection of a higher Power, and so, if the person coveting remembers, a simple “God bless” will ward off evil. But the Evil Eye is not the sole property of the active-minded Christian, and even when it is so it is not necessarily a simple matter to suggest to him that he is breaking the tenth commandment; in fact there may be a difference of opinion on the matter, and it will not do to leave to the other’s goodwill your security from loss and damage. A curative ritual has been excogitated. In these ceremonies the Trinity is frequently made, or, let us say, called on to take a part. The curative water is prepared on three metals—gold, silver, and copper—the magic thread has three knots on it, and sickness thus divided into three is destroyed, say by burning two portions, one in the name of the Father, the other of the Son, while that given over to the influence of the Holy Spirit, which may be naturally supposed to counteract the covetous instinct, remains attached to the sufferer in the third and unburned knot. To show that this symbolism is carried out fairly consistently, we would call attention here to the use of the three-knot charm in the procuring for sailors of a favouring breeze. Readers must take it on our authority that there are numberless accounts of the giving of a three-knotted thread for this purpose, and the usual instructions for its use fully bear out our contention. After starting one knot is to be unloosed, and the breeze will be favouring and probably gentle. To expedite matters the second knot may be untied, and the result will be increase in the force of the favouring wind, but on no account must the third knot be interfered with, or the breeze will rise to a gale, and none will be able to answer for the effect. Compare the above statement with what appears in the Gospel of St. John iii. 8: “The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.” Add to this Genesis i. 2: “And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.”

This is not to be considered as a reasonable deduction from the texts quoted. It merely shows that the authority may seem to give support to a connection being suggested as existing between the Spirit of God, and the Holy Spirit of the Trinity, and the uncertainty and force of the wind which is put under its governance.

But when we come to symbols and metaphors we open a wide field which need not be restricted by what is within the domain of the Church. The fact stares us in the face that the uisge a chronachaidh (the water of (against) injury) is more frequently prepared from one metal—silver—even than from three. It is in fact frequently called Silver Water. There can be here no traceable connection with a Trinity. The idea seems to be that the white metal represents an eye. Seeing that the principal medium of exchange among the people is silver, as things go, it is not very far fetched to make a silver coin stand for what is acknowledged to be hurtful from the point of view of covetousness, seeing that St. Paul tells us, 1 Timothy vi. 10, that “the love of money is the root of all evil.” Having this in mind, we can easily see how the adherence of a silver coin to the bottom of a wooden or other vessel comes to be relied on as settling the cause of an illness, whether it be the Evil Eye or something else. The round white coin staring at you, as it were, from the bottom of the cogue says “Eye” as distinctly as it is possible. If it does not adhere no suggestion of an eye is made, consequently the sickness in question arises from something else. We do not hear of a copper, and very rarely of a gold coin being used by itself. We hear of gold being used in the form of the marriage ring, but the symbolism here is the same as in the serpent stones and the honeycombed stones in Kintyre, it represents an eye by its form.

A reciter from the Chanonry, Ross-shire, says he has frequently seen women take the ring off their finger, and hurriedly putting water on it in a dish, dash the water over their children if they saw a person coming to call about whom they had any suspicion. This was with a view to prevent cronachadh, either witchcraft or the Evil Eye.

This connection with an eye explains also how the giving away of a darning needle means the giving away of one’s luck. This seems somewhat peculiar to the island of Arran. We give the following as a sample:—

An Arran reciter said: “Bettie many a time tells me of a woman they have beside them who never darns stockings or anything else. One day this woman came in and asked Bettie for a darning needle. Bettie suspected it was for no good end she wanted it and would have refused it, but the woman having seen it went and took it with her. For some time thereafter Bettie was very unlucky. Things were going against her, and one night she dreamed that somebody came to her and said, ‘Why did you give away your darning needle? You have given away your luck with it.’ When she got up in the morning she just went into the woman’s house, and seeing the darning needle stuck in a pincushion, she went and took it with her.”

Bettie here had given away the magic eye of its owner, which acted as a counter charm to the Evil Eyes of others. The above is not the only power inherent in a darning needle in Arran. There, stuck in the cap or bonnet, it is as complete protection against the under-world as represented by fairies, as elsewhere a knife is frequently quoted as being.

SHOWING WHO IS THE MISCHIEF MAKER

We are so easily content to waive aside these superstitions when they come in our way, as if they were the unconsidered dreamings of the insane. Not one of them but has its origin, generally no doubt in a misguided fancy, but still based on something real enough to the mind of the believer, even if it be a mind of childlike simplicity. But when eolas men and women take on themselves to find out for the instruction of their clients to whom the Evil Eye damaging them belongs, one begins to doubt but that there is more of the wisdom of the serpent than of the simplicity of the dove in this part of their performance. We have already mentioned a case in which the eolas woman described to the reciter’s cousin “exactly” the man and woman who had harmed her child, though neither man nor woman had been mentioned to her, and the reciter expressed wonder at the knowledge so displayed.