OBJECTION TO MEETING AN EVIL EYE
Another informant, speaking of a woman with an Evil Eye and who consequently was unlucky to meet, said: “Three fishermen met her, and one of them proposed that they should turn back; it was no use going on, they would get nothing. The others persisted and overruled him. They were for a while unsuccessful, and he who had proposed returning was very impatient, and kept grumbling and saying they should have returned home. They did catch a few at last.”
Speaking of those who were supposed to take the milk and butter from other people’s cows, an educated Arran man said: “This class were looked upon as being unlucky to meet on the road, and people tried to avoid them, especially if they were going on any particular business.”
One would suppose that it would be exceedingly unpleasant to have the reputation of an Evil Eye, consequently it is resented, but precautions are taken sometimes, even before the accusation is made, to hinder the report arising about individuals. In one village, where twice a week a number of fishermen pass, the women and girls of the village try to keep out of sight of the men on their way to the fishing-ground, lest, if by chance a fisher should see one of them and he was unlucky immediately thereafter, he would report to the rest his want of luck and whom he had met, and she would be marked as one of the unlucky.
The reciter of this was an intelligent domestic servant, twenty-four years old, a reliable girl, brought up by respectable grandparents.
A Kintyre reciter, an educated woman of about thirty, informs us of a woman, a believer in the Evil Eye, living beside her father, and who does not conceal the fact that she looks with some suspicion upon certain of her acquaintances should they come her way, particularly should she be engaged in churning. Her neighbours, knowing this, are careful to avoid going to her house if she has a churning on hand. Suspected persons do not learn their own infirmity merely by being looked at askance.
A clergyman in one of the southern islands informs us: “It is said that in cases where injury has been done by the Evil Eye, a remedy is to charge the suspected party firmly and distinctly to his (or her) face with having done it. When a little boy, a cow belonging to his grandmother had lately calved, and a neighbour woman came one day and went to see the cow. She was considered to be a respectable person, even a good woman, but was believed to possess the Evil Eye. She was no time away when the cow became very unwell, although there had been nothing wrong with her up till then. There was considerable excitement, and they were sure that the cow would die, and just as sure it was the woman’s Evil Eye that had injured her. Another woman was sent for, supposed to be knowing in these matters, and the case submitted to her. She confirmed them in their suspicions, and advised, as the best remedy, that she who had done the mischief should be confronted and plainly told to her face that they believed her to be to blame. This was agreed to and carried out at once, with the result, as it was believed, that whatever power she had obtained over the cow to hurt her was broken, and in a very short time the cow was as well as she had ever been.”
An Arran woman tells us the same thing in some detail, but she says the injury can only be repaired by the doer of the mischief taking upon himself the evil done to the other, and illustrates it by the following story:—A tramp who was supposed to have a bad eye, and even suspected of witchcraft, made a request to Mrs. Mac—— which she refused. The woman being angered, left in a rage. She was no time away when they noticed that there was something wrong with the child, and when the husband came from his work his wife told him of the woman having been there, and her belief that she had injured their child. The man said the woman was still in the neighbourhood, and he would bring her back. He did so. They then charged her to her face with having hurt the child, and said she must now heal her. The woman did not try to deny this, but said: “Tha e gle chruaidh gum feumainnsa an cron a rinn mi air an leanabh agaibh a ghabhail orm fein, ach na’n d’thug sibhse bonn airgeid dhomhsa an ait’ an olann a thug sibh dhomh, cha do thachair so do’n leanabh” (“It’s very hard that I should require to take on myself the injury I have done your child, but if you had given me a silver coin instead of the wool you gave me, this had not happened to the child”).
She had to cure the child, however. What had happened to it was that its mouth kept always open, and it could not catch the breast. The reciter did not say that the malady of the open mouth stuck to the woman, but being somewhat notorious, and a different incident being told of her by another reciter, the latter remarked that “she had an ungainly face, and that if ever there was a witch in Arran, he thought that woman would pass for one.”