Evil eye in the western HighlandsMaclagan, Robert Craig
Religion
Evil eye in the western Highlands
Maclagan, Robert Craig
Evil eye; Folklore; Superstition
The specified qualifications really cover all the usual sources from
which water can be drawn. From a native of Kintail, we hear of a case
which was considered the result of the Evil Eye, though she spoke of
the patient, a boy, having been “injured by some spell.” He was quickly
cured by the sprinkling of water from a “certain well.”
An Islay reciter was very clear upon the necessity of choosing “_uisge
fior_” (spring water).
From the same island, in a case where a cow was said to be suffering
from “_buidseachas_” (witchcraft), which in this case seems to mean
Evil Eye, the water was taken in a small tub from the Saligo River.
The cow recovered, so if there is any doubt in any one’s mind as to a
proper source of supply, he can always procure it in the river running
from Lochgorm to the west of Islay.
Another reciter said that water would be more efficacious if taken
from a point where three parishes touched each other, or failing that,
from a spot from which three parishes could be seen, and that he knew
of water being frequently taken from a spot which answered these
conditions for healing purposes of the sort we are considering. This is
again an invocation of the Trinity by suggestion.
A woman who herself practised _eolas_, when asked whether it mattered
what sort of water she used, said “Oh yes, it must be water from a
march over which the living and dead pass.” The use of this water need
not apparently be accompanied by incantations and other formulæ.
A reliable informant mentioned a case which came under her own notice
of a Skye woman living at Kenmore, who, having taken it into her
head that a passing tramp had injured her child with the Evil Eye,
“hurriedly bundling up her child, went with him to a little river near
her house, and washed the boy under the bridge which was on the main
road there, and the regular thoroughfare, alike for ordinary passengers
and funeral processions.” In fact, a running water over which the
living and the dead passed.
For dwellers in towns these instructions, if carried out, might mean
considerable trouble, but in one case at any rate, in Campbeltown,
Kintyre, a firm believer in the Evil Eye, with a view to her own
protection, “used to stand over the water tap in her own kitchen and
allow the water to run while she repeated some words over the running
water.”
The position of some wells undoubtedly makes them fashionable. One
of our informants who has lived at Crianlarich says that within the
last thirty years she has known people come considerable distances
to take water from a well between the old Priory and the Kirkton
burying-ground, over which the “living and the dead” were wont to pass.
It was taken for the purpose of curing cattle injured by an Evil Eye.
A silver coin was generally in the vessel in which they carried away
the water. The efficacy of this cure was commonly, if not universally,
believed in by the people of the place.
TABOO WHEN IN POSSESSION OF WATER
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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