This story was told apparently with full belief, and the only conclusion we can draw from it, seems either that some cattle sickness prevailing in the neighbourhood was credited to the unfortunate lad, or else that for some revengeful or other purpose of his own he had damaged the stock of his master.
We have another account of the same belief from a native of Kilbrandon, Seil Island, where a belief in the Evil Eye was exceedingly common. He said: “When a beast dies, there being a suspicion that the death has been caused by such an Eye, the owner buries it stealthily, not on his own ground, but on the ground of some other person, the idea being that if buried on his own ground the influence of the Evil Eye would be likely to remain, and he might lose still more beasts, but by burying the animal on the ground of another he transfers the evil from himself to the person on whose land it was buried.” The reciter knew of the following instance of this:—
A very superstitious family, who believed in and were much afraid of witchcraft and the Evil Eye, lost some of their beasts and were quite sure that the Evil Eye was the cause of death. The head of the family, watching a convenient opportunity, went at night and buried them in the dunghill of another man who lived a distance of about two miles from him. No one knew this at the time, and it was only when putting out the manure they found the remains of the beasts and came to know that they had been buried there.
It would be unfair to encourage the belief that the professors of eolas always give themselves to spreading evil reports of neighbours. One being called in where the butter supply was unsatisfactory, after advising the use of earthenware dishes in preference to wooden ones for gathering the milk, the dairymaid asked if she could tell her who had taken the toradh. The answer was, “Is not your name A.?” On being answered that that was so, the eolas woman said, “It may have been yourself.”
APPENDIX
An attempt has been made to give an honest account without literary varnish of the present-day influence of the belief in an Evil Eye in the Gaelic-speaking districts of Scotland. It is difficult to be certain that nothing of moment has escaped observation. The influence of Bible texts, no doubt used divorced from their contexts generally, as well as the protective power of the Divinity, have been pointed out as influencing the superstitious. One other instance we would give from the island of Luing, which has been handed in since the rest has been in type.
The reciter said: “I knew a real good woman who always, when the first meal of the season was got from the mill, sent a pitcherful of it here and there to the poor people round about. But there were some to whom she would give none, because she suspected them of having evil in their hearts, and that if they got a pitcherful they could take all the strength out of what she kept for her house use. You see, Hezekiah should not have shown the King of Babylon all his treasures.” Compare 2 Kings xx. 12-19, and Isaiah xxxix. Evidently the idea was that the King of Babylon was envious of Hezekiah’s possessions, as the others might have been of the good lady’s meal.
Mention has been made of the belief that the Evil Eye could split the rocks themselves. A traditional account of such an incident comes from the island of Coll. “One time a man was carrying a quern (hand corn-mill) on his back in a poke, and was met by a servant of St. Columba. Thinking the quern was a cheese, he coveted it, and when the man came to take it out of the bag he found it in two. Columba said of it, ‘B’e farmad na suil a bhris a’ chlach.’(‘It was the envy of the eye that broke the stone.’)” The same story reached us at the same time from a Breadalbane source. A local laird who hurt his own cattle, and whose dairymaid had to slam the byre door in his face, met a girl on her way home from the shieling. The girl had a quern (muileann brath) in a bag on her back. When she passed the laird looked after her, and supposing what she was carrying was a ceapag caise (a small cheese), he put his eye in it. When the girl reached home the mill-stone was in halves, his Evil Eye had broken it.
Some verses describing the powers of a certain Macandeoir, give us a lesson in popular comparative philology:—
“A Mhurach biorach lom na suil olc.