On a subsequent visit, the three battalions of the Fiann are lost in admiration of the activity and skill of a young man who turns out to be this Fer Oc. “Then was a hunt and a battue held by the three battalions of the Fiann. Howbeit, on that day, owing to Fer Oc (and his superior skill) to none of the Fiann it fell to get first blood of pig or deer. Now when they came home, after finishing the hunt, a sore lung-disease attacked Fer Oc, through the (evil) eyes of the multitude and the envy of the great host, and it killed him, soulless, at the end of nine days.” “He was buried on yonder green-grassed hill,” says Cailte, “and the shining stone that he held when he was at games and diversion is that yonder rising out of his head.”[1] The Gaelic here simply says “_tre tsuilib na sochaide_” (through the eyes of the multitude), and it will be seen that modern reciters sometimes speak in exactly the same way of the “eye” unqualified, but meaning the Evil Eye. But there is more than this in the story; it is a young man who suffers, and the young are most easily affected. It is a remarkable and handsome youth that suffers, and what attracts the eye, especially beauty, is peculiarly liable to injury, and the statement is made that it was the envious glance which affected the victim. _Cormac’s Glossary_ (an Irish compilation begun in the tenth century, and added to throughout the Middle Ages), preserved in MSS. of the commencement of the fifteenth century, mentions the Evil Eye:— _Milled_ (spoiling, hurting, (_b_) _i.e._ _mi shilledh_, a mislook, _i.e._ an evil eye). _Millead i mi shillead i silled olc._ [Or as in another MS.] _Milliud quasi mishilliud i drochshilliud._ To this O’Clery adds “_no droch amharc_,” while O’Donovan’s note at (_b_) is “the evil eye,” “the injury done by the evil eye.”[2] [1] _Irische Texte._ Stokes and Windisch, fourth series, vol i. pp. 232, 234, 161. [2] _Cormac’s Glossary_, translated by O’Donovan, edited by Whitley Stokes, p. 107; and _Three Irish Glossaries_, by W. S., p. 28. Our business is with the so-called facts of the Evil Eye, and whether or not in this case the philology of the compiler of the _Glossary_ is right, there can be no sort of doubt of the allusion being to the present living belief in the Evil Eye.