“A man had a child suffering from water in the head, and carried him on his back in a blanket from Lochcarron to Lochbroom and back—over a hundred and twenty miles—to see a man who professed to cure such ailments. He got a bottle of water, a spoonful of which was to be given several times a day. The doctor found the water absolutely putrid.”[10] [10] “Memories Grave and Gay,” John Kerr, LLD., p. 323. Dr. Kerr having this from a medical man, one is inclined to fancy that the description of the dose is given in a method corresponding to an ordinary prescription; spoonful doses remind one of the regular practitioner. The diagnosis ‘hydrocephalus’ is the doctor’s; the man consulted was not a curer of water in the head, but of the results of witchcraft or the Evil Eye. This, there can scarcely be any doubt of, or that that also was the father’s idea of the cause of the child’s illness—it had been _air a chronachadh_. Here the important point is the putridity of the water. If it had been pure water it might have been vapid enough, but we may be certain that no licensed practitioner would have said that the fluid was absolutely putrid without sufficient cause. The diagnosis is that its putridity was occasioned by containing a greater or less quantity of stale urine. A BURNT OFFERING The following is vouched for by an intelligent and educated young lady resident in Orkney, though as it is from a non-Gaelic island it takes us to a different people from those we have been occupied with. In one of the islands there a farmer was losing his cattle one after another. The general opinion, in which the farmer himself concurred, was that the fatality arose from some person’s Evil Eye having lighted on the stock. It was also considered, as the best means of putting an end to this, to burn one of the remaining animals alive. This was done, and report has it that everything went well enough after that. This case seems sufficiently notorious, though no more exact information has been procured; but the Evil Eye is strongly believed in in Orkney, and our informant herself knew a man who, on finding things “going back” with him, as they say, confidently attributed his unprosperity to some one having put his Evil Eye in his effects. Many of his neighbours, knowing the circumstances, were of the same opinion as himself. CHARMS. (STRING) “No Christian shall attach short strings to the neck of women or of animals, even if you see this practised by churchmen, and they should tell you that this custom is a pious one.” Such was the pronouncement of St. Eloi of the Abbey of Luxeuil, in the seventh century, the successor of Columban, as reported by St. Ouen (Audoenus) in the “Nos Origines.”[11] [11] _Les Influences Celtiques_, by Charles Roessler, p. 59.