PREVENTION BY PECULIARITY IN CLOTHES
When speaking of the liability of nice-looking, well-dressed children suffering injury, the prevention by turning an article of clothing outside in was mentioned. The authorities in these cases are from Harris and from Islay. To show further the extent of this belief, a Ross-shire man says a thing he has often seen done for the prevention of evil influences was to turn a child’s coat or other garment wrong side out, because: “It is believed that a witch is rendered powerless in respect of any person who happens at the time when they might be injuriously affected to be wearing any article of clothing wrong side out.”
Another preventative in connection with clothing also comes from Harris. When a dress is put on for the first time a small burning peat or burning stick is waved over it, inside and out, and this is believed to be an efficient protection of the wearer from an attack by the Evil Eye. This is evidently the purification by fire already alluded to.
Attracting the Evil Eye by a piece of cloth also appears in the following from a farmer and office-bearer in the church, a man of about seventy, but an undoubted believer in what we may call superstitions. Where he was brought up a rag was put in a bruchag (cranny) of the wall at the head of every milk cow in the byre as a protection against the Evil Eye.