IRON AND WATER
An Islay woman tells the following of her mother. “She was telling me how one time the butter went away from their milk, and for a good while they could not get a bit of butter. She was advised to go to that woman, and she went. When she told her that she could get no butter the woman took an iron and put it into the fire until it was red-hot; she then took it out and put it into a stoup of water, repeating some words at the same time. Some of this water was given to my mother to put into the churn, and would you believe it, the butter came back, and not only that, but with the very first churning there was a great quantity, equal to all that had been lost since things had gone wrong.”
The reciter was a woman of about five-and-thirty, now a small farmer’s wife, and well educated for her station.
The iron in this case was heated, but in another instance, in which a horse belonging to the reciter’s grandfather was supposed to be injured by the Evil Eye, the eolas professor, a woman, having got water, dipped a bunch of keys into it and then hung the keys round the horse’s neck, and sprinkled the water over the animal, repeating words which the reciter could not catch. The horse got well.
That for the cold iron, and now for the heat. “Nan tigeadh neach a steach gus an tigh againne ‘nuair a bhitheamaid a’ maistreadh dhe nach biodh m’athair ro chinnteach, ghabhadh e eibhleag as an teine agus chuireadh e ann an soitheach uisg’ e, agus ghleidheadh sin an toradh.” (“If a person of whom my father would not be quite sure would come into our house when we would be churning, he would take a live ember from the fire and put it in a dish of water, and that would preserve the produce.”)
As a mere suggestion, a guess for what it is worth, knowing that the old process of preparing hot water by immersing heated stones in it was practised by Highlanders, we here may have the ordinary method of scalding the churn and dishes, at one time common, become a superstitious formula.
The power of iron as protective against witchcraft, fairies, and all supernatural powers is too widespread to need special consideration. We must not however always conclude that when what is used as a means of cure is composed of iron that the iron is the principal matter. A reciter near Campbeltown gave the following information:—
“Mattie Lavarty used to be going about the country here makin’ eolas. I mind yince a coo belongin‘ tae yin Neil R. took ill before calfing, an’ they sent for Mattie Lavarty. She worked aboot the coo wi’ water, an’ said her paternoster or somethin’ else o’er’t an left a horseshoe in front o’t. But the next mornin’ whan Neil gaed intae the byre the calf was lyin’ deed in the greep (byre gutter). That pit Neil frae gaun near Mattie or the like o’ her ever after.”
Our business here is not with Mattie’s success or failure, but with the subject matter used in her attempted cure. The illness of the cow was probably a protracted labour, and Mattie put before it what was symbolical of a free passage for the expected calf. It was no mere placing of something for luck, but a use of the symbol of reproduction on an appropriate occasion.