TAR AS PREVENTATIVE
The application of hot pitch to open wounds in ancient surgery is a well-known fact. It may have acted as an antiseptic, and like its congener tar applied for skin eruptions, may have so got into popular use as a preventative of evil. In the island of Islay tar was well known as an application against the Evil Eye, but its use seems to have been restricted to Beltane night, May Eve. One of our reciters, a man now of about fifty, when herding cattle as a boy remembers how all the time he was on the farm of C. at a fixed hour on Oidhche Bhealtuinn he went to the byre with the farmer and his son. They took with them a small pot of tar and a bit of stick, little larger than an egg-spoon. Our reciter held the dish while the son took hold of the ears of each of the cattle in turn and the old man put a little tar into each ear with the stick. If any words were spoken the boy did not hear them.
Another old man, a man of eighty, can neither read nor write, without any English, adds to the putting it in the ears that it was also put on the noses of the cattle for the purpose of “preventing injuries from the Evil Eye.”
Another, a woman of about fifty-five, says her father was regular in the habit of putting tar on the horns of his cows on May Eve to protect the beasts from the Evil Eye.
A fourth reciter says he has often seen it put on the horns and ears, and also rowan berries tied to the cows’ tails on the same occasion, and adds that this was usually accompanied with the repeating of some good words to protect the beasts from being hurt with the Evil Eye.
The germicide powers of tar products seem to have been further reaching, and even more highly appreciated in those days than they are now.