“She is churning, and is going away with the churn, for the last time you were here she did not get one bit of butter off the churn.”
“I am sorry to hear that; I am sure I did nothing to keep the butter from coming.”
“I do not know; she got none at any rate, that’s all I can say.”
Of two women living beside each other in Islay, one was credited with the Evil Eye, and supposed to take away the dairy produce from her neighbours. One year her neighbour for a whole summer was unable to get a bit of butter from her churning. Her suspicion rested strongly on the other. Her account of it was as follows: “I tried everything. They told me to put a horseshoe in the churn, and I did that. Others told me to put salt in it, and I did that, but neither did any good. I scrubbed and scrubbed the churn and the milk dishes, but it was of no use. The milk would only come up with a hissing sound. I was even afraid to use the sour milk in baking scones, for I was sure there was something not right about it. The pig got fat that year, for it was getting the most of the milk. At last I consulted a neighbour, and she told me just what I knew already, that it was a bad woman beside me that was taking away the butter. She advised me not to bother any more, and to keep churning, for the woman would stop her mischief by-and-by, and then the butter would come back as it had gone. I did as she told me, and through time the butter came. I was not speaking about it to any one, for I did not want people to know I believed that she could do so much harm.”
A well-educated small farmer’s wife, a woman of five-and-thirty, knew a husband and wife who both possessed the Evil Eye. They were quite aware themselves that they did, and could not help it. Passing through a park where several colts were grazing, one of which took their fancy, they expressed their admiration of it. That evening the colt took ill and never recovered.
One would think that a little consideration would have made it clear that with two in the same house equally unfortunate nothing they had could have succeeded with them, and yet there was no account of this couple being in worse circumstances than their neighbours.
It certainly is a curious development, the belief already alluded to of the injurious action of the Evil Eye of the farmer on his own stock. “W. C. was on intimate terms with a neighbouring farmer, whom he visited frequently. It was observed that if at any time he (the farmer) praised an animal, something for certain happened to it afterwards. On one occasion he talked admiringly of the poultry, and shortly after all of them died.”
Another reciter said: “In our own time a farmer required to be kept from going among his own cattle, lest by looking on them they should be injured.” These cases respectively were in Islay and Harris.
Judging from personal experience of an old friend addicted to prophesying on his first appearance in the morning the sort of weather for the day, the result being, as we of a younger generation all believed, almost invariably wrong, it seems probable that these stories have arisen in connection with men who talked freely, giving opinions based upon hurried observation. Where silence would have left no ground for animadversion the wordy man had his sayings remembered against him, especially when he was wrong, and the good beasts subsequently turned out failures, as the fine days foretold were generally wet.