Mention has been made of the belief that the Evil Eye could split the rocks themselves. A traditional account of such an incident comes from the island of Coll. “One time a man was carrying a quern (hand corn-mill) on his back in a poke, and was met by a servant of St. Columba. Thinking the quern was a cheese, he coveted it, and when the man came to take it out of the bag he found it in two. Columba said of it, ‘_B’e farmad na suil a bhris a’ chlach_.’(‘It was the envy of the eye that broke the stone.’)” The same story reached us at the same time from a Breadalbane source. A local laird who hurt his own cattle, and whose dairymaid had to slam the byre door in his face, met a girl on her way home from the shieling. The girl had a quern (_muileann brath_) in a bag on her back. When she passed the laird looked after her, and supposing what she was carrying was a _ceapag caise_ (a small cheese), he put his eye in it. When the girl reached home the mill-stone was in halves, his Evil Eye had broken it. Some verses describing the powers of a certain Macandeoir, give us a lesson in popular comparative philology:— “_A Mhurach biorach lom na suil olc. Gonadh thu maigheach’s a fhiadh. Gonadh thu ’t-iasg a bhiodh ’san loch Nuair a shealladh thu orra gu dlu. Latha caogda thu d shuil a bha olc, Cha bhiodh luathas ’nan cleith ’S bhiodh gach creutair dhiudh na’n corp. A Mhurach Macandeoir Gonadh thu Para Caimbeal Gonadh thu’ shleisdean ‘sa chnamhan. ’S d’ fhag thu e bioradh fann._” (“Oh Murdoch, piercing, bare, of the bad eye, You would wound hare and the deer. You would wound the fish that would be in the loch When you looked closely at them. The day you cocked (winked) your wicked eye There would be no motion (quick movement) in their bosom And each creature of them a corpse. Murdoch Macandeoir You would pierce Para Campbell, You would pierce his thighs and his bones And you left him wounded, weak.”) The respected correspondent who sends this and the writer differed as to the word here translated “wound.” The original spelling suggested that _gonadh_ was the word, and it corresponds with the other information received in like cases, but the reciter explained, and sticks to it, that it means “to covet.” Now the word _gionach_ means “greedy” “gluttonous,” and _gonadh_ means “wounding” “bewitching,” thus, _gonadh ort_ is a form of imprecation. The philologist will tell us they have nothing to do with each other, and this may be admitted from his point of view, but not from the popular one.