Craig Evil Eye in the Western Highlands

1. Auflage 2023
ISBN: 978-3-98826-299-8
Verlag: OTB eBook publishing
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 230 Seiten

Reihe: Classics To Go

Excerpt: ?Anybody may have the Evil Eye, but that certain people suggest the Evil Eye to others from their appearance must be admitted. A minister, himself a son of the manse, who has had Highland surroundings all his early life, bears witness, ?The possession was more frequently ascribed to females than to males, and for the most part to elderly women.? Another minister, an older man than the former, says of the Evil Eye: ?They were chiefly women that were suspected, and were generally much disliked in the communities.? These two reciters were as far apart as Arran and Ross-shire.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Craig, Robert

Leseproben

INTRODUCTION
The Evil Eye is a superstition arising not from local circumstances, or peculiarity of a great or small division of the human family, but is a result of an original tendency of the human mind. The natural irritation felt at the hostile look of a neighbour, still more of an enemy, is implanted in the breast of all, however much they may be influenced by moral teaching. When we add to this the feeling that some valued possession has attracted the coveteous desire of another, the fear of loss is added to the irritation of mere anger. To some such natural feeling we must ascribe the belief in an Evil Eye. Theories of an origin more restricted, founded on the fear of loss or damage to particular possessions of individuals guaranteed them by the custom of law, developed in the community of which they form part, scarcely satisfy after inquiry. Where a subsistence can be easily procured the Evil Eye would be little regarded in connection with food, but might naturally develop itself in connection with the relations of the sexes. No doubt the latter, the most interesting to individuals of all passions, causes feelings of hostility between rivals universally, but where the food supply is difficult to procure one would naturally expect that damage from the covetous desires of others, where they seemed to affect the life-preserving store, would become equally important. In the following study of the belief of an Evil Eye among the Gaelic-speaking peoples of Scotland at the present day, an attempt is made neither to disguise nor to improve upon what those in contact with believers have learned from their mouths. The writer is a believer in the Evil Eye only in so far as it may be a term for the natural selfishness of the human being, as a “tender heart” is a recognised way of speaking of a nature apt to sympathy. Selfishness, natural to all of us, is apt to find expression in our habits, however much we may disguise it by religious or charitable profession. Were it a part of our nature to have for our neighbour the same affection that we have for ourselves, no such superstition as that of the Evil Eye could have arisen. But we are not made that way, and so reformers, in endeavouring to cure this sin, as they consider it, have preached and tried to practise such ordinances as “Thou shalt not covet,” and “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” Truly hard sayings, and in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out of a thousand with difficulty getting beyond the status of a pious opinion. Not that that teaching has been without effect; and we may hope that with the extension of communications and the progress gradually being made to that condition of things where “Man to man the world o’er Shall brithers be for a’ that,” the bad e’e may some day in these isles be merely a study for folklorists as Totemism is, and as difficult to find as an auk’s egg. Right or wrong, the theory here advanced accounts, satisfactorily, as far as the writer can judge, for the present-day widespread belief in Scotland of the power for evil of the glance of the human eye. As will be seen afterwards, there are those who theorise on the bad heart influencing the eye, the ill effect of the Evil Eye only arising from the glance of the covetous; but this is probably the result of preconceived religious ideas, and of the moral teaching to which its believers have been accustomed. It is not to be wondered at; it would be impossible indeed, but that the teaching of Christianity should have affected and given a direction to this ancient superstition. Thus we find it Christianised to a marked degree, its origin is conceived of as a breaking of the commandment “Thou shalt not covet,” and its cures are mostly connected with a reference to the Deity, and to the Trinity of the Christian. The magic thread with the three knots on it, though heathen in its origin, has surely some connection with the rosary, the aspersion with water, with baptism, and the holy water of the Roman Church. But it is not a superstition introduced with Christianity, it is as native as the heather of our hills, or the sandstone rock of the Coronation Stone. This statement might be safely enough advanced upon general principles, but we are not without satisfactory literary evidence of what we advance. In the Ossianic “Acallam na Senorach” (The Colloquy with the Ancient Men), the second longest prose composition of the mediæval Irish, a collection (probably made in the late twelfth or thirteenth century) of separate stories united together in one framework, we find the following as related in MSS. of the fifteenth century and later. The Fiann are on a visit to the King of Munster. The son of the King of Ulster marries the daughter of the King of Munster. “The damsel bore him a famous and beautiful son named Fer Oc (‘young man’), and in all Ireland there were scarcely one whose shape and vigour and spear-casting were as good as his.” 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. Apart from the doing of evil, and causing sickness and death without immediate increase to the possessions of the witch, the effect of the Evil Eye centres round the natural covetousness of the greedy person. Where the owner of an evil eye gets no benefit himself, the effect ascribed is always to diminish what he might envy in the possession of another. It is always the young and toradh of cattle (milk and butter), or the fruits of the labour of the owner that is lessened or destroyed. Whatever the philological root of this word toradh, it must surely be allied with the irregular verb thoir (give); and though there seems at first sight no close relationship between personal beauty and a good churning, yet both of them are highly prized gifts. Toradh means fruit produce; thus Cain’s offering was the toradh of the earth. The expression used in Kintyre for the power of taking away produce is pisreag. In Arran the word applied to the curative measures is pisearachd. Piseach means increase; thus in Proverbs xviii. 20, where it is said that a man shall be filled with the “increase of his lips,” the Gaelic word used is piseach, and so it comes to mean progeny and good fortune. Piseach ort (Good fortune be yours). Irish Gaelic gives piseog (witchcraft). Surely this is a secondary meaning from the idea of increase and good fortune being in certain cases brought about by charms and witchery. And thus we have found pisearachd explained as the Arran and Kintyre equivalent for geasarachd, of which all the evidence seems to favour its primary signification being connected with spells and charms. Another word which has been used to collectors for eolas (science of its own magical sort) is fiosachd, which the dictionaries give as meaning “foretelling,” “augury.” This seems to be a secondary and limited application of a term meaning possession of fios (knowledge, information). The popular mixing up of legitimate curative measures, such as come from the administration of drugs, with what undoubtedly is considered illegitimate, namely, the use of charms and...