THE NECESSITY OF FAITH
A native of Lewis who professed disbelief in the Evil Eye, though she knew numbers who did believe, was advised when her cow was ill to send for a skilled woman. She refused. A woman who was in the habit of assisting when they were busy, being told she might do as she liked, went to the eolas woman. When our reciter, Mrs. McN., looked into the byre shortly afterwards she found the servant girl and the occasional assistant hiding a bottle. “I asked them what they had in the bottle. The woman answered that she had just gone to K. McI. for eolas, and that that was what was in the bottle. They had put it in the cow’s ears and over her back in the name of the Trinity, and the woman remarked that if it would not do good it would do no harm at any rate. I told them again that I did not believe in it at all, and as it turned out I did not need to believe it, for the cow died not long after. But if I did not believe the woman did, and so did the person who had made the eolas, and they maintained that it was because I did not believe in it that it failed to cure the cow, for it is believed the success of eolas a chronachaidh in its attempts to cure depends much upon whether it is believed in or not.”
Compare this with the statement of another reciter, who on hearing of a case of cure said, “When I was herding, one of the cows was air a cronachadh, but the people did not believe in eolas, and if it had not been that some of the neighbours went to A. T. the cow was dead.”
In another case in which the owner of the sick cow said that there was many a thing that might happen to a beast, and that she did not believe that the cow had been hurt by the Evil Eye. A friend persisted in her opinion that it was the Evil Eye, and when the reciter’s mother refused to send for eolas, the woman went off herself and came back with a bottle which she sprinkled on the cow, and in less than an hour the cow was eating as well as ever, and before the water had been put on her she was groaning and would neither eat nor move. The probability is, of course, that if no success had followed the application of the remedy, want of faith on the part of the owner might have been urged as a reason for failure.