SOCIAL POSITION OF BELIEVERS
The persons among whom this belief is most usual are undoubtedly to be found principally among the agricultural and fishing population, though it is not unknown, by any means, even in such a town as Oban, where a reciter of Evil Eye incidents says “it is pretty common.” When one speaks of a farmer in many parts of the Low Country, one naturally thinks of well-educated men with comparatively large holdings, and such men, of course, are to be met with in the Highlands in appreciable numbers. There is no evidence that these have faith in the Evil Eye; but the smaller farmers, doing their own work with assistance, are often deeply imbued. A native of Kintyre says, “I know a respectable farmer who, when anything goes wrong with his horses, is quite in the habit of suspecting that it is injury by the Evil Eye, and will send at once for a certain woman in the neighbourhood, who is supposed to be able to cure in cases of cronachadh.”
So lately as July 1898, in one of the islands a child was unwell. The doctor was there and the minister was there, but still the child was getting worse. At length the parents concluded that it was a case of cronachadh, and a man who practises as a professional in cases of that kind was sent for. On arriving he confirmed them in their suspicion, and told them that it was a woman with brown hair that had done the harm. The reciter (a minister’s wife) did not know what means he took to cure the child, but whatever they were they were not successful. The child died.
Most of our beliefs are inherited, and so it is, perhaps, no wonder if one comes upon a young man, a probationer of the Church who has gone through his curriculum of study, and yet believes in the Evil Eye. No evidence, however, is forthcoming of a licensed medical man having any belief in it. It must be admitted that the greater part of the information is got from women, and if believers were polled, the majority would be found of the less stern sex.
From the small farmer downwards, among all owners of stock, and this includes chickens and the pig, believers are frequent.
In some places there is but little secrecy as to those who have the Evil Eye, or at least are supposed to have it. We refrain from publishing the full names, so that if by any chance those spoken of see this they may not be offended; but this is a sample of a common style of remark: “Tha, tha, tha droch shuil aig Anna nic E. Nach robh Mrs. MacT. ag innseadh dhomh fhein nach bu mhor nach robh aon da clann marbh le droch shuil a’ bhoirionnach sin uair. Bha e air a chronachadh leatha, agus bhitheadh e marbh ach airson Anna T.” (“Yes, yes, Ann McE. has an Evil Eye. Was not Mrs. MacT. telling myself that one of her children was once nearly dead through the Evil Eye of that woman. He was injured by her, and would have been dead had it not been for Ann T.”) Ann T. was a practitioner of eolas.