The application of hot pitch to open wounds in ancient surgery is a well-known fact. It may have acted as an antiseptic, and like its congener tar applied for skin eruptions, may have so got into popular use as a preventative of evil. In the island of Islay tar was well known as an application against the Evil Eye, but its use seems to have been restricted to Beltane night, May Eve. One of our reciters, a man now of about fifty, when herding cattle as a boy remembers how all the time he was on the farm of C. at a fixed hour on _Oidhche Bhealtuinn_ he went to the byre with the farmer and his son. They took with them a small pot of tar and a bit of stick, little larger than an egg-spoon. Our reciter held the dish while the son took hold of the ears of each of the cattle in turn and the old man put a little tar into each ear with the stick. If any words were spoken the boy did not hear them. Another old man, a man of eighty, can neither read nor write, without any English, adds to the putting it in the ears that it was also put on the noses of the cattle for the purpose of “preventing injuries from the Evil Eye.” Another, a woman of about fifty-five, says her father was regular in the habit of putting tar on the horns of his cows on May Eve to protect the beasts from the Evil Eye. A fourth reciter says he has often seen it put on the horns and ears, and also rowan berries tied to the cows’ tails on the same occasion, and adds that this was usually accompanied with the repeating of some good words to protect the beasts from being hurt with the Evil Eye. The germicide powers of tar products seem to have been further reaching, and even more highly appreciated in those days than they are now. NICKING THE EAR The ears, we now see, played a prominent part in the treatment of _cronachadh_, and we learn on the authority of a minister how that in the case of a quey supposed to be affected by the Evil Eye, the owner loosed it from its stall, cut a slit in its ear, repeating some incantation the while. From a man of about fifty-five, a joiner, we have confirmation of this. He remembers of a beast dying where he lived when he was a boy, and of seeing the woman to whom the animal belonged and another _cailleach_ sitting over the dead beast cutting a piece out of its ear. They kept the piece they cut. On asking why the women were handling the dead animal, he was told that the piece cut from its ear would prevent an Evil Eye affecting the rest of the cattle. Weak or unhealthy eyes are in popular belief cured by piercing the ear (and wearing earrings). URINE AS PREVENTATIVE The detergent, and let us say with all gravity, the cleansing power of stale urine, is well known, and it is hardly to be wondered at when we find this used to clear away, as it were, evil influences.