Evil eye in the western Highlands

by Robert Craig Maclagan

SALT AS CURE AND PREVENTATIVE

Salt is employed as a cure and preventative. The following experience of a Kintyre farmer’s wife, recited by herself, gives considerable detail of the process carried out. “I mind yin o’ oor ain coos was ill, an’ I sent for M. McC., that was a woman beside us that had eolas. As shune as she seen the coo she said M. McS. was here. That was a woman folk didna’ like, for they thocht she had a bad e’e. Says I: ‘Ay, she was here.’ ‘Weel, she did harm to the coo.’ She gied to the march burn and lifted water oot o’t in three pairts. The first she lifted in the name o’ the Father, the second in the name o’ the Son, and the third in the name o’ the Holy Ghost. Then she got salt and did the same wee hit. She pit the first taitie intae the bottle in the name o’ the Faither, the second in the name o’ the Son, and the third in the name o’ the Holy Ghost. She then gied tae a corner o’ the byre and prayed some prayer. When that was finished she pit the water in the coo’s ears and some on her back, an’ then said, ‘She has plenty noo.’ The coo shune got better. Peter, Paul, and Mary’s names war in the prayer. She offered to learn me that eolas, but I didna want tae learn’t.”

From an Islay reciter who saw the performance we have the operation described as follows. She (the professor) first went on her knees and repeated words, then put salt on a paper. This salt she measured with a thimble painted blue in the inside. She then put it into a cloth, poured water through it into a bottle, after which she repeated words over it and gave the bottle to the man who had come to consult her about the cow.

The salt seems sometimes to be used dry. We have mentioned George ——, described as a worthy man, who was consulted to cure a cow so ill that the schoolmaster had already advised its owner to send for a man to flay it. George required that it should be put in the byre, and it had to be pulled in by main force with a rope round its horns. This being accomplished, he told the boys that they might go now and he would do the rest himself. He then asked my mother if she had salt, and when she replied that she had, he ordered her to give him the full of her hand. She gave him that, and said if there was anything he would like to have one of the children would go for it. But he answered, “This will do my business.” He went back to the bothan (byre), and he began to work the salt in the palm of his hand. After a good while he came out and said to my mother, “Your cow is dressed now, Flora.” They then went to take her out of the bothan, but still she would not walk, and they had to drag her out and leave her again on the green. With this my father was after coming back, and a man along with him, to take the skin off the cow. George advised her to let her alone, for she would be all right yet. The cow recovered.

The use of urine as a preventative has been considered already. The following from an intelligent woman of about fifty, a farmer’s wife in Kintyre, a well-read woman who takes an interest in things which she admittedly does not believe in, tells that when she was young, in one farm in Kintyre where she was in service, her mistress was regularly in the habit of sprinkling urine (house slops) on every cow after calving, and before she was allowed to go out, the intention being to protect the cow from the effects of the Evil Eye.

In another farm, however, in Kintyre, at the same time and for the same purpose, salt was sprinkled on every cow’s back as soon as she had calved. It was an encouraging sign if the cow licked off the salt, which was specially sprinkled on either side of the rump.

It seems quite fair here to consider the salt as a more civilised representative of the other fluid, though in fact the latter is of considerable value as a cleanser under certain circumstances.

Another native of Kintyre informs us that it was a common custom at farms when the cattle were being put out on the 1st of May for the mistress to stand and throw a handful of salt on each as they passed out of the byre. She saw this done in a farm in the parish of Campbeltown, and was well aware of it being a common practice. It was avowedly done against cronachadh.

The writer having no skill in churning, has no knowledge what result would come from putting of salt in the churn, but an Arran woman is responsible for the statement that she had herself often seen salt put into a churn as a protection against any evil influence.

A careful observer in Islay tells how that at one time their butter having left them and they had got none for some weeks, they sent for a woman, a professor in the neighbourhood. When she came they had a churning ready to commence with, but on examining it she advised that it should be thrown to the pigs, and added that they must clean and scrub well all the dishes used for gathering the milk, and that she would return on the next day they were ready for a churning. That day having come, the eolas woman returned, and the first thing she did was to sprinkle a little salt on the bottom of the empty churn. The milk was then poured in and the churning commenced, with unexpectedly satisfactory results. The practitioner here was an eolas woman of a very good sort, and set about her operations in a manner well calculated to be successful. On the farm, however, they regarded that butter with suspicion and sold it.

To judge from what we are told in the following as having occurred in the north of Ireland, so strong is the action of salt that it will put matters right with a bad churning, even though it neither touch cream nor churn. Failing one day to get their butter properly, the reciter’s master sent for an old woman in the immediate neighbourhood. When she came she just glanced at the churn, and seeing at once what was wrong, she said to the farmer, “If you like I will show you the one who has done the harm.” He assured her that he did not wish that, but would be pleased if she could do anything with the churning. Without more ado, so far as W. could see, she took a handful of salt, which she threw into a pot boiling on the fire. She then gave a turn or two at the churn, and sure enough the butter came all right.

We have already mentioned the use of salt in connection with sugar as put in milk given to a woman suspected of influencing her source of supply, and from which the dairymaid took the first mouthful as a sure preventative of evil, not only for the quantity immediately given, but also for any that would be supplied subsequently during the season.

One other instance of the use of salt we give on the authority of an Arran man of about sixty-five years of age, a shrewd business man, but of whom the collector says that to judge from appearances he thinks his knowledge of the island and his family connection with it extends about as far back as the origin of the island itself.

He said his father was a great believer in the Evil Eye. One day a neighbour, walking with him while ploughing, had spoken in praise of a brown horse that was in the plough. His acquaintance had hardly left when the horse turned ill, and lay down and kicked and groaned. It was unyoked and taken home, and the Evil Eye being suspected N. R.’s wife was sent for. She came and got a mixture of salt, soot, and a lot of other things which she rubbed on the horse. She felt it all over with her hand to find out the particular spot where the eye had struck. Whatever did it, the horse recovered and was quite well afterwards.

The passing the hand over the animal to feel for material damage is peculiar. This is a usual proceeding in cases of elf-shot, but not of the Evil Eye; however, of course the woman was thoroughly entitled to make her own diagnosis in her own way.