Evil eye in the western Highlands

by Robert Craig Maclagan

Acquaintances might be divided into two classes. The Evil Eyes and the Non-Evil Eyes. Precautions should be taken against the former, and with them it was safe to class strangers. The daughter of a tradesman, a clever, intelligent woman, a farmer’s wife, whose husband’s people and her own mother are very superstitious, having moved from one district to another, her new neighbours, not long after she had came to live beside them, lost a number of geese. The owners made a great “ado,” and the position they took up relative to our reciter, the suspected one, was: “Faicibh fein an droch shuil tha aice. Cha deachaidh na geoidh air seachran riomh roimhe, ach ghabh iad fuath ‘nuair a’ dh’ amhairc ise orra.” (“See for yourself the Evil Eye she had; the geese never before wandered, but took fright when she looked at them.”)

The owners of these geese seem to have had a very lively faith in the Evil Eye. The collector having mentioned the experience to another neighbour, she said: “That’s not so bad as I got. I went to inquire for a friend if they would sell a goose. They said they would not sell, and there was no harm in that; but shortly after all the geese flew away, and if I did not catch it. They were in a fearful rage, blaming me for putting my Evil Eye in them. Another time their hens ceased laying, and they blamed my eye for that also.”

It is scarcely to be wondered at, the jealous ascription of the Evil Eye to strangers, though Highland publications speak largely of the noble characteristics of Highlanders at large, and the writer is the last man to deny them credit due. It must be confessed there is a large quantity of a ‘parochial’ feeling of jealousy in the Highlands generally. It is not necessary to go into the question whether this is or is not the modern aspect of previous district quarrels. Tramps trade upon this fear of strangers in other Gaelic places than the Scottish Highlands. A minister relates the following, which came under his own observation in Antrim. A tramp was passing a house, and he went and asked the housewife for a drink of milk. She said she had no milk, but the tramp was sure she had, but did not want to part with it. He said, “Oh, very well, I’ll take a drink of water, and let what will happen to the cows.” This was enough; she was sure that this was a challenge that he would have the milk in spite of her, so she repented and gave him as good a drink of milk as he could wish for, no doubt in this way escaping evil consequences.

PEOPLE SHOULD GIVE WHEN ASKED

The danger of refusing a request is great, not so much from the purely Christian-charity point of view, as from that of escaping the Evil Eye. A native of Knapdale, a believer, tells of a woman notorious in that neighbourhood. She went to a farmer for a barrel of potatoes, which he refused her. No more was said, but she had not long gone when the best horse he had fell down and could not rise. It was foaming at the mouth. A man skilled in counteracting the Evil Eye was consulted, and declared that the horse had been injured by it. Having been informed by the farmer that he had refused to give a barrel of potatoes to the woman, he said it was that that had done the harm. His advice was a little peculiar, not in that he recommended the sending the potatoes to the woman, but that they should be sent on the injured horse, with evidently a view to its cure. The potatoes were got into a bag, the bag lifted on the horse’s back, and away it went quite briskly, and they were delivered at the woman’s house, and thereafter the horse was quite well.

Drovers are not, of course, complete strangers in the districts in which they do business, but as a class they are looked on with some suspicion. Thus we are told, “Some drovers are possessed of the Evil Eye, and in consequence it is reckoned foolish not to sell any animals to them if they appear anxious to have them.” The reciter’s father had a good cow, and some drovers coming about wanted to buy her. His father refused to sell. The drovers persisted, but still met with a refusal. At last the drovers left, but shortly after the cow sickened, died, and nothing remained of her value to the owner but her skin.

A parallel case was mentioned as happening in Islay. “I remember it was a few days before the market a man came the way and wanted to buy a beast from A. McI. The drover was very anxious to get it, but they would not sell. The drover left, and before the sun went down that evening that beast was dead and buried. The reciter of this, a man of about fifty and a good workman, living by himself, is a piper, and possibly the addition of the beast’s hurried burial may be the result of a natural tendency to ‘blow,’ as they say. Anyhow, the piper said that it was believed that it was the drover’s eye that had killed the cow.”

Another reciter tells that a farmer in Islay had two good horses which some dealers wished to buy. The farmer would not sell either, and the following day one of them died. It was believed to be a case of Evil Eye.

The risk of refusing purchasers is not solely in the case of drovers. “Many are of opinion that it is risky for a person to refuse to sell any animal he may have to any one who shows a great desire to purchase it; some would sell at a sacrifice rather than run the risk. A native of Killean, Kintyre, tells of a fine cow his father had, and on which the family set a considerable value. A man who had known something about the cow came all the way from Campbeltown purposely to buy her, but the owner declined to sell her. “If he did, he hardly got any good of her thereafter, for in a short time she became unwell, and lingering for a time, died. The neighbours thought it was a real case of Evil Eye.”

From the mainland of Argyllshire a lady relates: “An uncle had a farm five miles from Oban. A neighbour on his way to attend a funeral, thinking her uncle might drive along with him, called. As he was passing the cow-fold the calves were being let out to their mothers, and one of the cows had a beautiful calf. The neighbour fixed his eyes on them and kept looking at and admiring them. He then asked her uncle if he would sell him the calf, but the proprietor refused, saying he did not intend to sell either cow or calf. That very week the calf was dead, and they never doubted but that it was the man’s Evil Eye that had killed it.”