CHARM FOR SPRAINS.
(Eòlas an t-sìochaidh.)
This charm also to be efficacious must be thrice repeated. The variations in the versions met with, have been almost entirely in the omission of lines in some that are found in others:
“A charm in sooth.
The charm that Colum-Kil applied
To a young man’s knee
In the hill
For pang, for swelling,
For hurt, for wound,
For abrasion, for sprain,
For portions, for divisions,
For varicose vein, for dislocated bone;
Christ went out
At early morn,
He found the legs of horses,
Broken by turns;
When he alighted on the ground,
He healed a horse’s leg;
He put marrow to marrow,
And bone to bone,
He put blood to blood
And flesh to flesh,
Juice to juice, and vein to vein
As he healed that,
May he heal this,
Because of Christ and His Powers together.
One-third to-day,
Two-thirds to-morrow,
And the whole the day after.”
Part of the charm consisted of a handful of earth from a grey mound (làn an dùirn an ùir a cnoc glas) applied to the foot. The sufferer must go three times deiseal (southwardly) round the mound on Sunday. In the extreme west of Tiree there is a hillock called Cnocan an t-sìachaidh (the hillock of the sprain), but the practice of using it for cures of this kind has become obsolete.