III
THE EVIL EYE—THE TOUCH—THE PENALTY
[III]
THE EVIL EYE—THE TOUCH—THE PENALTY
"Some friendly Teyâmena, sorry to see my suffering plight, said to me: 'This is because thou hast been eye-struck—what! you do not understand 'eye-struck'? Certainly they have looked in your eyes, Khalîl. We have lookers (God cut them off!) among us, that with their only (malignant) eye-glances may strike down a fowl flying; and you shall see the bird tumble in the air with loud shrieking kâk-kâ-kâ-kâ-kâ. Wellah their looking can blast a palm-tree so that you shall see it wither away. These are things well ascertained by many faithful witnesses."—Doughty's Travels in the Arabian Desert.
There is one visit I have always been a little remorseful about. It was in Mayo where I had gone to see the broken walls and grass-grown hearthstone that remain of the house where Raftery the poet was born. I was taken to see an old woman near, and the friend who was with me asked her about "Those." I could see she was unwilling to speak, and I would not press her, for there are some who fear to vex invisible hearers; so we talked of America where she had lived for a little while. But presently she said, "All I ever saw of them myself was one night when I was going home, and they were behind in the field watching me. I couldn't see them but I saw the lights they carried, two lights on the top of a sort of dark oak pole. So I watched them and they watched me, and when we were tired watching one another the lights all went into one blaze, and then they went away and it went out." She told also one or two of the traditional stories, of the man who had a hump put on him, and the woman "taken" and rescued by her husband, who she had directed to seize the horse she was riding with his left hand.