[1] Irische Texte. Stokes and Windisch, fourth series, vol i. pp. 232, 234, 161.
[2] Cormac’s Glossary, translated by O’Donovan, edited by Whitley Stokes, p. 107; and Three Irish Glossaries, by W. S., p. 28.
Our business is with the so-called facts of the Evil Eye, and whether or not in this case the philology of the compiler of the Glossary is right, there can be no sort of doubt of the allusion being to the present living belief in the Evil Eye.
Apart from the doing of evil, and causing sickness and death without immediate increase to the possessions of the witch, the effect of the Evil Eye centres round the natural covetousness of the greedy person. Where the owner of an evil eye gets no benefit himself, the effect ascribed is always to diminish what he might envy in the possession of another. It is always the young and toradh of cattle (milk and butter), or the fruits of the labour of the owner that is lessened or destroyed. Whatever the philological root of this word toradh, it must surely be allied with the irregular verb thoir (give); and though there seems at first sight no close relationship between personal beauty and a good churning, yet both of them are highly prized gifts. Toradh means fruit produce; thus Cain’s offering was the toradh of the earth.
The expression used in Kintyre for the power of taking away produce is pisreag. In Arran the word applied to the curative measures is pisearachd. Piseach means increase; thus in Proverbs xviii. 20, where it is said that a man shall be filled with the “increase of his lips,” the Gaelic word used is piseach, and so it comes to mean progeny and good fortune. Piseach ort (Good fortune be yours). Irish Gaelic gives piseog (witchcraft). Surely this is a secondary meaning from the idea of increase and good fortune being in certain cases brought about by charms and witchery. And thus we have found pisearachd explained as the Arran and Kintyre equivalent for geasarachd, of which all the evidence seems to favour its primary signification being connected with spells and charms.
Another word which has been used to collectors for eolas (science of its own magical sort) is fiosachd, which the dictionaries give as meaning “foretelling,” “augury.” This seems to be a secondary and limited application of a term meaning possession of fios (knowledge, information).
The popular mixing up of legitimate curative measures, such as come from the administration of drugs, with what undoubtedly is considered illegitimate, namely, the use of charms and sorcery in general, is of course as common as can be in the experience of those in contact with genuine savagery, but it occurs also nearer home. A native of Arran tells how she remembers an old woman, of whom the people were afraid because she was supposed to be a witch. The groundwork of this accusation was that she was to be often seen gathering herbs, and the reciter remembers when she herself was a girl, that, to use her own words, it was “the fright of her life” to meet her in a lonely place, or in the dark.
An inquiry such as this has to be conducted with care. The believer is sensitive to ridicule, and would take as a mortal offence being publicly gibbeted, so as to cause animadversion from others, even when he himself is convinced of the truth of his beliefs and sayings. For this reason we must be excused giving the name and residence of the various reciters. The information has to be drawn in general conversation and incidentally, but every care has been taken to avoid recounting anything in which mala fides is suspected. We consider in many cases things told by a daughter of her mother, or a son of his father, as equally reliable as if detailed by himself when we know they have been recited originally for information of the juniors. Undoubtedly the younger generation are in many cases more critical than their forefathers; but we have no hesitation in maintaining that what will hereafter be set down allows of a fairly perfect appreciation of the belief of the great majority of the less educated class, and of many much above that in the West Highlands, up to the introduction of the School Board as a universal institution. Of course there always were doubters, and the tricks played to take a rise out of a believer by an unbeliever may sometimes figure as accepted evidence of the bad effects of the Evil Eye, when it was a trick played off merely for fun, though in other cases deliberately intended to mislead. Tricks, however, will not carry us back to an original cause, however much they may have helped the maintenance of the belief in superstitious minds. These fail entirely in power of appreciation of the jocular, when what is done is dangerous according to their ideas. A strong believer in the Evil Eye, and of course much afraid of it, in the island of Skye, was one day out among the cows. Two of his neighbours passing, one of them, a bit of a wag, said to his companion: “Bheir mi da sgillinn duit ma theid thu agus do cheann a chuir fodh’n mhart sin agus glaodh ’nach mor an t-uth tha aig a bho” (“I will give you twopence if you will go and put your head under that cow and cry, Hasn’t the cow the big udder?”)
The fellow agreed, and went and bent his head under the cow and shouted out at the top of his voice, calling Rory’s attention to his supposititious admiration of the remarkable development of the cow in question. The man tempted to make the remark was “a little soft.” Rory at once thinking of the Evil Eye, seized his stick and rushed at him, threatening to break his head if he would not at once bless the cow. The suborned perpetrator of the joke, it need scarcely be said, at once took the method demanded to counteract his injudicious praise. How many of us are, not in the belief of the Evil Eye, but in other beliefs, just as touchy as our friend Rory.