“He hates those things,” she muttered to me, her eyes wet with pain, and with something of shame, too, for admitting that she believed in incantations. And why not, poor old woman? Sure there are stranger things than sian or rosad, charm or spell; and who can say that the secret old wisdom is mere foam o’ thought. “He hates those things, but I am for saving my poor lass if I can. I will be saying that old ancient eolas, that is called the Eolas an t-Snaithnean.”
“What is that, Aunt Elspeth? What are the three threads?”
“That eolas killed the mother of my mother, dearie; she that was a woman out of the isle of Benbecula.”
“Killed her!” I repeated, awe-struck.
“Ay; ’tis a charm for the doing away of bewitchment, and sure it is my poor Muireall who has been bewitched. But my mother’s mother used the eolas for the taking away of a curse upon a cow that would not give milk. She was saying the incantation for the third time, and winding the triple thread round the beast’s tail, when in a moment all the ill that was in the cow came forth and settled upon her, so that she went back to her house quaking and sick with the blight, and died of it next day, because there was no one to take it from her in turn by that or any other eolas.”
I listened in silence. The thing seemed terrible to me then; no, no, not then only, but now, too, whenever I think of it.
“Say it then, Aunt Elspeth,” I whispered; “say it, in the name of the Holy Three.”
With that she went on her knees, and leaned against her chair, though with her face towards her husband, because of the fear that was ever in her. Then in a low voice, choked with sobs, she said this old eolas, after she had first uttered the holy words of the “Pater Noster”:
“Chi suil thu,
Labhraidh bial thu;