Evil eye in the western HighlandsMaclagan, Robert Craig
Religion
Evil eye in the western Highlands
Maclagan, Robert Craig
Evil eye; Folklore; Superstition
A clergyman in one of the southern islands informs us: “It is said
that in cases where injury has been done by the Evil Eye, a remedy is
to charge the suspected party firmly and distinctly to his (or her)
face with having done it. When a little boy, a cow belonging to his
grandmother had lately calved, and a neighbour woman came one day and
went to see the cow. She was considered to be a respectable person,
even a good woman, but was believed to possess the Evil Eye. She was
no time away when the cow became very unwell, although there had been
nothing wrong with her up till then. There was considerable excitement,
and they were sure that the cow would die, and just as sure it was
the woman’s Evil Eye that had injured her. Another woman was sent
for, supposed to be knowing in these matters, and the case submitted
to her. She confirmed them in their suspicions, and advised, as the
best remedy, that she who had done the mischief should be confronted
and plainly told to her face that they believed her to be to blame.
This was agreed to and carried out at once, with the result, as it was
believed, that whatever power she had obtained over the cow to hurt her
was broken, and in a very short time the cow was as well as she had
ever been.”
An Arran woman tells us the same thing in some detail, but she says the
injury can only be repaired by the doer of the mischief taking upon
himself the evil done to the other, and illustrates it by the following
story:—A tramp who was supposed to have a bad eye, and even suspected
of witchcraft, made a request to Mrs. Mac—— which she refused. The
woman being angered, left in a rage. She was no time away when they
noticed that there was something wrong with the child, and when the
husband came from his work his wife told him of the woman having been
there, and her belief that she had injured their child. The man said
the woman was still in the neighbourhood, and he would bring her back.
He did so. They then charged her to her face with having hurt the
child, and said she must now heal her. The woman did not try to deny
this, but said: “_Tha e gle chruaidh gum feumainnsa an cron a rinn mi
air an leanabh agaibh a ghabhail orm fein, ach na’n d’thug sibhse bonn
airgeid dhomhsa an ait’ an olann a thug sibh dhomh, cha do thachair so
do’n leanabh_” (“It’s very hard that I should require to take on myself
the injury I have done your child, but if you had given me a silver
coin instead of the wool you gave me, this had not happened to the
child”).
She had to cure the child, however. What had happened to it was that
its mouth kept always open, and it could not catch the breast. The
reciter did not say that the malady of the open mouth stuck to the
woman, but being somewhat notorious, and a different incident being
told of her by another reciter, the latter remarked that “she had an
ungainly face, and that if ever there was a witch in Arran, he thought
that woman would pass for one.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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