The rapidity of the action is sometimes expressed thus:—A healer called in, said in one case: “_Teum do bho, a bhean_,” equivalent to saying, “Your cow is bitten or stung,” the word _teum_ being also applied to something snatched. The operation of the Evil Eye in Uist is described by a parallel phrase, _air a ghonadh_ (stabbed), an expression which has been used in Kintyre as synonymous with _cronachadh_, though there it generally expresses pain felt either bodily or mentally. An elderly woman, a native of Duthill, Inverness-shire, while stating that there were “plenty of people round about us here who have got the Evil Eye and hurt both cattle and people with it,” gave the following as the expressions used when mentioning it:— _Thuit droch shuil air_ (An evil eye fell on him). _Ghabh an droch shuil e_ (The evil eye took him). _Laidh droch shuil air_ (An evil eye settled on him). _Bhuail droch shuil e_ (An evil eye struck him). In the part of Ireland nearest to Scotland at any rate, and so far as the writer knows also in other places, the expression used in English is “blinked.” The readiest conclusion come to as to what is wrong with a sick cow is that “she has been blinked.” Blinked milk, therefore, is milk which yields no butter. Blinked beer, beer which has become sour. All these expressions, then, of the action of _an suil dona_, the common expression in part of Inverness-shire, which, seeing “Donas” is the Devil, we might translate the “diabolical eye,” evidently point to the fact that a mere look will do the damage; so the remark of the Islay man, “_Ni an fheadhainn aig am bheil an t-suil so cron air beathach neo duine ged nach dean iad ach amhairc orra_” (“Those who have this eye will do injury to beast or person, though they do nothing but look on them”), expresses clearly what seems to have been the original notion conveyed in the expressions used. A strange charm for the closure of the eye was expressed in Arran by the following saying: “_Cronachadh air do shuil, cac eun air muin sin_” (“Ill on your eye, birds’ excrement on the back of that”). This was an old practice, according to the reciter, who is a woman of about eighty. The account she gave was as follows:—Her father had bought some cattle at the market. “They were fine beasts, and the servantman and I, then a young girl, were driving them home. When we were passing King’s Cross a man stood and looked keenly at them. The servantman did not like this, and turning towards him said the words recited.” They were avowedly used to save the cattle from being hurt by the man’s eye, and as the old lady said, “Whether that saved them or no I could not tell, but in any case we reached home safely and no harm came to the cows.”