Part 9

A parallel case was mentioned as happening in Islay. “I remember it was a few days before the market a man came the way and wanted to buy a beast from A. McI. The drover was very anxious to get it, but they would not sell. The drover left, and before the sun went down that evening that beast was dead and buried. The reciter of this, a man of about fifty and a good workman, living by himself, is a piper, and possibly the addition of the beast’s hurried burial may be the result of a natural tendency to ‘blow,’ as they say. Anyhow, the piper said that it was believed that it was the drover’s eye that had killed the cow.”

Another reciter tells that a farmer in Islay had two good horses which some dealers wished to buy. The farmer would not sell either, and the following day one of them died. It was believed to be a case of Evil Eye.

The risk of refusing purchasers is not solely in the case of drovers. “Many are of opinion that it is risky for a person to refuse to sell any animal he may have to any one who shows a great desire to purchase it; some would sell at a sacrifice rather than run the risk. A native of Killean, Kintyre, tells of a fine cow his father had, and on which the family set a considerable value. A man who had known something about the cow came all the way from Campbeltown purposely to buy her, but the owner declined to sell her. “If he did, he hardly got any good of her thereafter, for in a short time she became unwell, and lingering for a time, died. The neighbours thought it was a real case of Evil Eye.”

From the mainland of Argyllshire a lady relates: “An uncle had a farm five miles from Oban. A neighbour on his way to attend a funeral, thinking her uncle might drive along with him, called. As he was passing the cow-fold the calves were being let out to their mothers, and one of the cows had a beautiful calf. The neighbour fixed his eyes on them and kept looking at and admiring them. He then asked her uncle if he would sell him the calf, but the proprietor refused, saying he did not intend to sell either cow or calf. That very week the calf was dead, and they never doubted but that it was the man’s Evil Eye that had killed it.”

A native of Applecross in Ross-shire told he had bought a fine horse, but before the purchase another man had been looking at it and been very anxious to have it, and praised it as a splendid beast. It was not long in the reciter’s possession until it had some complaint from which it died. The people—the reciter does not himself say he shares the feeling—believe that it was killed by the Evil Eye, for it had been known to everybody how anxious the disappointed man had been to get it, and how highly he had spoken of it.

SYMPTOMS IN ANIMALS ASCRIBED TO EFFECT OF EVIL EYE

One naturally asks what are the symptoms which, when present in animals, have given rise to the supposition that they were affected by the Evil Eye.

A woman gives the following account of what happened to her mother. She had been married very young, and was sitting by the fire suckling her first child with her breasts bare. The child had fallen asleep on her left arm. “My mother heard something behind her, and when she turned her head, there was a tall, grey-haired, ill-favoured-looking woman standing. My mother got up hurriedly, and having a great deal of milk, the milk spouted from her right breast into the fire. The cailleach gave an unpleasant laugh and said, ‘The milk has gone along with the pee.’ My mother answered pleasantly enough, ‘Oh no, the milk and pee will be all right,’ and gave the cailleach what she wanted. She was a Tiree cailleach, and they were all looked upon as being bad ones. The next time my mother was going to give her baby a drink she found she had not a drop of milk for him. The baby was crying, and when he would cry she would cry too, and what was to be done? This state of things lasted for a day, and my father then went for assistance from a person supposed to be skilled.”

The expression used by the Tiree woman was understood by the reciter to mean the milk that should have nourished the child was to turn into water in the mother’s system, and be so discharged.

Yawning has been ascribed to the effect of the Evil Eye.

An Islay man said: “Bha piuthair aig an te nach maireann agus bha i cho boidheach ’sa chunnaic sibh riomh. Aon uair thainig boireannach a stigh agus thoiseach i air a chaileag a mholadh gu ro mhor. Well, cha robh a bhean sin ach gann air dol amach nur a thoiseach a chaileag air meunanaich, agus cha robh fad gus an robh i cho dona agus gun robh iad a saoilsinn gum bitheadh i air falbh.”

(“My late wife had a sister, and she was as pretty as ever you saw. Once a woman came in and commenced praising the girl excessively. Well, scarcely was that woman gone out of the house when the girl began to yawn, and it was not long till she was so bad that they thought that she would be away (die).”)

In the case of a child which was quite quiet and looking well, with the mother sitting nursing it, a neighbouring woman, who is not much liked in the place, came in. She sat a little while, and was no time away until the child began to cry. It cried long and bitterly, and its mother got into a fearful state, protesting of the other woman: “Co fior’s tha mi beo, chronaich i mo phaisde” (“As true as I am alive she injured my child”). It is interesting to note that in this case “a little white powder” prescribed by a qualified practitioner counteracted that Evil Eye.

Another case in which a child was ill was told as follows:—A woman went to inquire after a man who had just lost his wife in the Low Country, and brought their child home to his relations. She was told that the child was “not but poorly.” “What is the matter with him?” I asked. My informant answered me, that his mother had been sitting at the fire and the child in her bosom, when two women came to ask for the child’s father. The child was quite well and brisk when they came in, but before they went away he began to cry and groan. “He was quite sure,” he said, “that one or other of them had injured the child, but why they should do that he did not know, for they both had families of their own.” This case was cured by an unlicensed practitioner.

The following is from a woman of her own experience in the case of her own son. She told that his sister went out with him one day to a neighbour’s house. He was sitting in her lap, when the neighbour’s daughter called her mother’s attention to the white beauty of the child’s legs. The mother agreed, and something more was said praising the child, and he then got a drink of milk. Well, as soon as he took the milk, he began as if he were singing, “Do re do, do re do.” This he continued to do for a good while, and was very fretful. This child was cured by a magic thread which stopped the “humming.”

Cattle, in popular belief, are much more liable to damage from the Evil Eye than other animals, judging from the greater number of instances related of it in their case. “Two of M. McN.’s cattle died within a short time of each other, and all the old people of the place persisted in saying they were injured by some Evil Eye.” A reciter told of her mother, who had married the elder of two brothers occupying a farm in common, getting the credit of the Evil Eye because, shortly after her marriage, the cattle on the farm “began to die right away.”

In the following case motive is given, and if any overt act of a magical nature had been said to occur, it would certainly have to be classified as witchcraft, but seeing there is no such history, it is one of those cases in which the action of an Evil Eye was evidently not supposed to be involuntary. The heir to a tenant who had fallen into arrears, having paid what was owing, got possession from the superior. Meanwhile a woman had been living in the house. She was warned to leave, but paid no heed to the warning, and it became necessary to turn her out by force. She got shelter from a relative near by, while the new tenant went to live in the house from which she had been ejected. “But if he did, he soon suffered for it, for he was not long there until he had lost nine of his cattle by death, and he and every one else believed that they had been “air an cronachadh” by the woman from spite.

There are no symptoms recounted in these general losses.

More rarely than of cows, we hear of stirks being affected. This is rather an old story, and the authority for this is the reciter’s father, who told it of his own father. He was at market in Stratherrick, and refused to part, after considerable bargaining, with a stirk he had to a would-be buyer. “Before the market-day closed, down fell the stirk on the ground and nothing could make it get up.”

In a quite recent case, however, a stirk, said to be affected by the Evil Eye, “was very ill; its horns were quite cold, and it could not eat anything. The beast recovered.”

By far most commonly, evil from a “bad eye” comes to cows. A reciter tells of an instance that occurred to himself, where in a farm previously occupied, his mother had a particularly good cow. “One day my sister was in a neighbour’s house, and she was telling the woman about the lot of milk this cow had. The next day when my mother went out at the usual hour to milk the cow, she had scarcely begun when this woman passed close to where she was milking. Well, not a drop of milk could my mother get from that cow. The cow became suddenly unwell and fell to the ground. The skin came off her udder and not a bit of skin was on it after that. There was not the least doubt but that it was the other woman that had injured her.”

A native of Skye, in whose younger days the belief in the Evil Eye was very common there, and who remembers seeing “a general turn up” in the township in which she was brought up, caused by the alleged effect of one person’s Evil Eye upon the cattle of the neighbours, tells how her father had a fine Ayrshire cow. She was such a good milker that it was necessary to milk her three times every day. “All of a sudden her milk left her, and they never could account for it, except on the supposition of the action of an Evil Eye, and in fact were quite sure that this was the case.”

The reciter of the following says she remembers a Sutherlandshire minister telling it to her mother. He said that one time his cows were not giving the right milk. The milk was more like water than milk, and as for butter, not a bit could he get, no matter how well it might be churned. The minister here, on the advice of his housekeeper, resorted to witchcraft for a cure.

Another reciter says: “When my sister and myself were lumps of lasses we were down the road one day with a cow of my father’s. When we brought her home the milk was running from her, and she lay down on the floor and she wouldn’t rise. When they tried to put her up she would make as if she would climb up the wall.”

In fact, as another reciter in Rothiemurchus said: “It used to be a very common experience to have cows going off their milk, and sometimes dying from the effects of a person possessed of an Evil Eye looking upon them, and it is still believed that cases of this kind happen.”

A cow that was “kicking and would let nobody milk her,” being cured by one of the processes against the Evil Eye, the cure was understood to certify the diagnosis.

Mrs. McN. was milking her cow. A woman passing at the time remarked, looking at the cow the while, “That is a grand cow, and she gives a great deal of milk.” “Yes, she is a good cow,” replied the owner, and the woman having passed on there was no more about it, until a little while after the milking was done the cow lay down on the ground and began to roll in great pain. There never was any doubt but that it was a case of injury by the Evil Eye. The cow was cured by magic.

Another cow “grew to be unwell, and she was rolling herself upon the ground.” She was so unwell that the schoolmaster, who was a great friend of her owner’s, advised him to send for a man to flay her. She recovered.