URINE AS PREVENTATIVE
The detergent, and let us say with all gravity, the cleansing power of stale urine, is well known, and it is hardly to be wondered at when we find this used to clear away, as it were, evil influences.
“There was at one time a farmer in Gruinart who used regularly to sprinkle his cows when putting them out with the contents of the chamber pot. This was with the view of protecting them against witchcraft, and I have done that myself.”
Our informant for this was a woman of about sixty. This is supported by another reciter in Islay, who said it was done in the morning.
Two other reciters tell that it was done in spring, or the early part of summer, when they were put out on the grass “for the first time that season.” The sprinkling was done with a broom from the chamber pot as the cattle were passing out of the byre.
What was good for cows was also considered good for horses; they also got their share of attention. Finally, in this particular, an intelligent crofter’s wife who can read, and is of about seventy years of age, informs us that it was customary to collect the bedroom slops for a day or two before the birth of a child. So soon as the child was born, to prevent any mischief from cronachadh, the house was sprinkled both outside and in. She saw this done in her mother’s house.
The remark that this sprinkling was done when the cattle were first turned out, and of a statement that it was common among farmers to have the services of a man believed to have colas to notch the ears of cattle on May Eve against witchcraft, have to be taken together, May Day being supposed to be a specially active moment for the witch sisterhood. Two reciters mention this sprinkling with “salt” and “urine” in connection with each other. That they were looked upon as having somewhat the same action there can be no doubt, whatever analogy drawn between the two may have existed in the mind of the reciter. One of the two reciters gave an instance which, though undoubtedly unperceived by the narrator, throws a sidelight upon the ideas connected with it. The mother of our reciter consulted an eolas man for the bettering of defective churning. He gave her a bottle, directing her to hold it in her hand all the way on her journey home, and on no account to let it touch the ground. When she got home she was to sprinkle some of it on the cow and the outside of the churn, and round about it. On her way home she rested for a minute, and forgetting about the instructions, put down the bottle. Sprinkling the cow did no good, and the scientist was again consulted. “Leig thu leis fheum a chall,” ars S. (“You allowed it to lose its usefulness,” said S.) “Rinn i gair bheag ag’radh gun do leig i sios e car mionaid.” (“She smiled, saying that she had let it down for a minute.”) “Chaill thu e mata.” (“You have lost it, then.”) Now comes the incident mentioned on page 119 of his retiring to the back of the house and giving his consulter the slip of iubhar-beinne (juniper), the flavouring matter of gin, the most diuretic of stimulants.
Putting all this together, it is not difficult to see why part at least of the magic fluid would lose its effect if it touched the ground, the place it most naturally reaches, if we accept Burt’s statement, in Highland houses, and even in a recognised house of entertainment. “But I had like to have forgot a Mischance that happened to me the next Morning, for rising early, and getting out of my Box pretty hastily, I unluckily set my Foot in the Chamber-pot, a Hole in the Ground by the Bed-side, which was made to serve for that Use in case of Occasion.”[8] When the next bottle reached the house and not the ground, the effect was quite satisfactory. The reciter of this openly professed belief in the whole story, even to the recovery of the missing butter.
Many will rise up in arms against my suggestion that the water to be used, and which was used, and which is called water, was in many cases and in its origin urine. In the Clonmel witch-burning case in Ireland in 1895, Mrs. Cleary, the victim, had “water” thrown over her, fetched by her cousin from an adjoining room. This was brought three or four times, and the process of sprinkling lasted at intervals over a period of ten or twenty minutes. This water, according to the Cork Examiner and other reports, was called “a certain noxious fluid.” According to accounts given by Leitrim people, the most effective way of disenchanting folk was to throw over them a concoction of strong urine and hens’ excrement. Compare with this the Arran man’s charm against the Evil Eye mentioned on page 18.[9]
[8] Burt’s “Letters from the North of Scotland,” vol. ii. p. 65.
[9] See “Folk-Lore,” vol. vi. p. 378.
The general protective power of stale urine is curiously illustrated in the following from a Mackay. The reciter said when he was young it was a general custom throughout the Reay country to have a tub of stale wash placed at the door cheek with a little stick always standing in it. The stick was preferably, if it could be got, of blackthorn—sloe. The object of this was that visitors might stir up the contents of the tub before going into the house, a process intended to protect the house and its inmates from being injured by any bad luck or misfortune, or evil of any kind, that otherwise might accompany the visitor. To comply with this condition was reckoned a sufficient passport for any caller, and no matter who he was, or on what business he had come, he was expected to do the stirring before crossing the threshold. The reciter said that he had done it himself regularly in his youth.
The conclusion arrived at that the water supplied in some cases, and in any case what ought to be supplied by the practitioner of eolas, was diluted urine, seems to get important endorsation from the following on the authority of John Kerr, LLD., late her Majesty’s Inspector of Schools:—
“A man had a child suffering from water in the head, and carried him on his back in a blanket from Lochcarron to Lochbroom and back—over a hundred and twenty miles—to see a man who professed to cure such ailments. He got a bottle of water, a spoonful of which was to be given several times a day. The doctor found the water absolutely putrid.”[10]
[10] “Memories Grave and Gay,” John Kerr, LLD., p. 323.
Dr. Kerr having this from a medical man, one is inclined to fancy that the description of the dose is given in a method corresponding to an ordinary prescription; spoonful doses remind one of the regular practitioner. The diagnosis ‘hydrocephalus’ is the doctor’s; the man consulted was not a curer of water in the head, but of the results of witchcraft or the Evil Eye. This, there can scarcely be any doubt of, or that that also was the father’s idea of the cause of the child’s illness—it had been air a chronachadh. Here the important point is the putridity of the water. If it had been pure water it might have been vapid enough, but we may be certain that no licensed practitioner would have said that the fluid was absolutely putrid without sufficient cause. The diagnosis is that its putridity was occasioned by containing a greater or less quantity of stale urine.