So far we seem to have seen that the damage done by the Evil Eye was a malign dispensation of Providence, for which the owner was only to blame to the same extent that one is to blame for a natural defect, but the processes of cure being the result of science, so to say, _eolas_, _fios_, are in reality magic processes. One of the most common of the preventive charms is something to be worn by the person to be protected, and one reciter, an elder in the church, assures us that he knows a family every member of which wears such a charm suspended round the neck. This must have been something of the nature of an _ubag_, a thing which takes the form generally of what, referring to American Indians, is spoken of as a “medicine bag,” but which the Dictionaries translate as a charm—an incantation. A much more common protective is the _sreang a chronachaidh_, or _snathainn cronachaidh_ (string or thread of hurting). The form that this took differed considerably. One reciter says it was made of different colours of yarn, an incantation was said over it while being made, and when finished it was tied round the child’s neck. She has often seen these in use, and did not think that it mattered anything what colours were used, provided that there were different colours in it. Another reciter says that the strings before being put on were soaked in something, but does not mention if they were coloured, while two others mention the fact, of their personal knowledge, that the threads they had seen worn were red. In one of the last cases the thread had been put on to cure a child supposed to be already suffering. In the other, while the thread was used as a protection, the reciter mentioned as a curative where something had gone wrong with the first child of a marriage, especially if there was any suspicion of _cronachadh_, that some article of clothing which had been worn by the mother on the first night of marriage, was put round the child three times, and “There are some,” said he, “who take the precaution to do this as a preventative even where no injury is suspected as having already taken place.” One of our reciters quotes the following verse of a song as an authority for the efficacy of the red thread:— “_Snathainn dearg, is snuim air, Bi sud air ceann a’ chrandachan; Ged thigeadh Buidseach Henderson, Cheannsaicheadh Ailean e._” (“A red thread, and a knot on it, That will be on the top of the churn staff, Though Henderson the _witch_ should come, Allan would subdue him.”) There can be no doubt that it is our old acquaintance the Witch of Endor who here again appears as Henderson.