An inquiry such as this has to be conducted with care. The believer is sensitive to ridicule, and would take as a mortal offence being publicly gibbeted, so as to cause animadversion from others, even when he himself is convinced of the truth of his beliefs and sayings. For this reason we must be excused giving the name and residence of the various reciters. The information has to be drawn in general conversation and incidentally, but every care has been taken to avoid recounting anything in which _mala fides_ is suspected. We consider in many cases things told by a daughter of her mother, or a son of his father, as equally reliable as if detailed by himself when we know they have been recited originally for information of the juniors. Undoubtedly the younger generation are in many cases more critical than their forefathers; but we have no hesitation in maintaining that what will hereafter be set down allows of a fairly perfect appreciation of the belief of the great majority of the less educated class, and of many much above that in the West Highlands, up to the introduction of the School Board as a universal institution. Of course there always were doubters, and the tricks played to take a rise out of a believer by an unbeliever may sometimes figure as accepted evidence of the bad effects of the Evil Eye, when it was a trick played off merely for fun, though in other cases deliberately intended to mislead. Tricks, however, will not carry us back to an original cause, however much they may have helped the maintenance of the belief in superstitious minds. These fail entirely in power of appreciation of the jocular, when what is done is dangerous according to their ideas. A strong believer in the Evil Eye, and of course much afraid of it, in the island of Skye, was one day out among the cows. Two of his neighbours passing, one of them, a bit of a wag, said to his companion: “_Bheir mi da sgillinn duit ma theid thu agus do cheann a chuir fodh’n mhart sin agus glaodh ’nach mor an t-uth tha aig a bho_” (“I will give you twopence if you will go and put your head under that cow and cry, Hasn’t the cow the big udder?”) The fellow agreed, and went and bent his head under the cow and shouted out at the top of his voice, calling Rory’s attention to his supposititious admiration of the remarkable development of the cow in question. The man tempted to make the remark was “a little soft.” Rory at once thinking of the Evil Eye, seized his stick and rushed at him, threatening to break his head if he would not at once bless the cow. The suborned perpetrator of the joke, it need scarcely be said, at once took the method demanded to counteract his injudicious praise. How many of us are, not in the belief of the Evil Eye, but in other beliefs, just as touchy as our friend Rory. The stick may be good enough for a defence of superstition, but ridicule is the proper method of attack.