But when we come to symbols and metaphors we open a wide field which need not be restricted by what is within the domain of the Church. The fact stares us in the face that the _uisge a chronachaidh_ (the water of (against) injury) is more frequently prepared from one metal—silver—even than from three. It is in fact frequently called Silver Water. There can be here no traceable connection with a Trinity. The idea seems to be that the white metal represents an eye. Seeing that the principal medium of exchange among the people is silver, as things go, it is not very far fetched to make a silver coin stand for what is acknowledged to be hurtful from the point of view of covetousness, seeing that St. Paul tells us, 1 Timothy vi. 10, that “the love of money is the root of all evil.” Having this in mind, we can easily see how the adherence of a silver coin to the bottom of a wooden or other vessel comes to be relied on as settling the cause of an illness, whether it be the Evil Eye or something else. The round white coin staring at you, as it were, from the bottom of the cogue says “Eye” as distinctly as it is possible. If it does not adhere no suggestion of an eye is made, consequently the sickness in question arises from something else. We do not hear of a copper, and very rarely of a gold coin being used by itself. We hear of gold being used in the form of the marriage ring, but the symbolism here is the same as in the serpent stones and the honeycombed stones in Kintyre, it represents an eye by its form. A reciter from the Chanonry, Ross-shire, says he has frequently seen women take the ring off their finger, and hurriedly putting water on it in a dish, dash the water over their children if they saw a person coming to call about whom they had any suspicion. This was with a view to prevent _cronachadh_, either witchcraft or the Evil Eye. This connection with an eye explains also how the giving away of a darning needle means the giving away of one’s luck. This seems somewhat peculiar to the island of Arran. We give the following as a sample:— An Arran reciter said: “Bettie many a time tells me of a woman they have beside them who never darns stockings or anything else. One day this woman came in and asked Bettie for a darning needle. Bettie suspected it was for no good end she wanted it and would have refused it, but the woman having seen it went and took it with her. For some time thereafter Bettie was very unlucky. Things were going against her, and one night she dreamed that somebody came to her and said, ‘Why did you give away your darning needle? You have given away your luck with it.’ When she got up in the morning she just went into the woman’s house, and seeing the darning needle stuck in a pincushion, she went and took it with her.”