Most of our beliefs are inherited, and so it is, perhaps, no wonder if one comes upon a young man, a probationer of the Church who has gone through his curriculum of study, and yet believes in the Evil Eye. No evidence, however, is forthcoming of a licensed medical man having any belief in it. It must be admitted that the greater part of the information is got from women, and if believers were polled, the majority would be found of the less stern sex.
From the small farmer downwards, among all owners of stock, and this includes chickens and the pig, believers are frequent.
In some places there is but little secrecy as to those who have the Evil Eye, or at least are supposed to have it. We refrain from publishing the full names, so that if by any chance those spoken of see this they may not be offended; but this is a sample of a common style of remark: “Tha, tha, tha droch shuil aig Anna nic E. Nach robh Mrs. MacT. ag innseadh dhomh fhein nach bu mhor nach robh aon da clann marbh le droch shuil a’ bhoirionnach sin uair. Bha e air a chronachadh leatha, agus bhitheadh e marbh ach airson Anna T.” (“Yes, yes, Ann McE. has an Evil Eye. Was not Mrs. MacT. telling myself that one of her children was once nearly dead through the Evil Eye of that woman. He was injured by her, and would have been dead had it not been for Ann T.”) Ann T. was a practitioner of eolas.
DESCRIPTION OF POSSESSORS OF EVIL EYE
Anybody may have the Evil Eye, but that certain people suggest the Evil Eye to others from their appearance must be admitted. A minister, himself a son of the manse, who has had Highland surroundings all his early life, bears witness, “The possession was more frequently ascribed to females than to males, and for the most part to elderly women.” Another minister, an older man than the former, says of the Evil Eye: “They were chiefly women that were suspected, and were generally much disliked in the communities.” These two reciters were as far apart as Arran and Ross-shire.
Was the Evil Eye ascribed to them because they were disliked, or were they disliked because they had the Evil Eye? Women do not improve in appearance with age, nor men either, for the matter of that, and one of our reciters, in describing a case of cronachadh, said that the operator was “a bad-looking woman at any rate, and had a queer look.” In Knapdale we hear of one who was “a decent enough looking woman, but there was this about her, people always suspected her of having some evil power, and nobody liked to refuse her if she asked anything.” Another of the accused was “strange in her dress, and spoke in an imperious manner.”
It is curious to note that, having quoted all the descriptions of individuals we have, the criticisms should all be levelled at women; but it must not be supposed that men are at all exempt. The writer was amused, and not a little astonished, to hear that an old gentleman, a connection of his own, a large farmer and not unknown beyond his own district, certainly not a greedy man, and a pleasant companion, was among some as notorious for his Evil Eye as for his knowledge of his business. He was a Low Country man by descent, ignorant of Gaelic, and surrounded by Gaelic-speaking Highlanders, some of whom however, proprietors and taxmen, were said to be as bad as himself.
The only diagnostic mark that has been mentioned, physically demonstrating a possessor, was got from an Islay woman, who said that she had always heard that a person whose eyes are of a different colour has the Evil Eye. This seems explicable enough; if one were a nice bright blue eye or a deep and gentle brown one, and the other paler and less expressive, their best friends might say that they had a “bad eye.” All the parti-coloured eyes in Scotland would not account for a tenth part of the results accredited to evil eyes.
Small are the changes in the ideas of men in some respects, even after long intervals.
In the old Irish saga, entitled the Sack of Da Derga’s Hostel, describing events which occurred, according to the Irish analysts, either B.C. 31, or A.D. 43:[4] “When they were there they saw a lone woman coming to the door of the hostel, after sunset, and seeking to be let in. As long as a weaver’s beam was each of her two shins, and they were as dark as the back of a stag-beetle. A greyish, woolly mantle she wore. Her lower hair used to reach as far as her knee. Her lips were on one side of her head. She came and put one of her shoulders against the door-post of the house, casting the Evil Eye on the King and the youths who surrounded him in the hostel.”[5]