Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/318

278 If the person whose Evil Eye has taken away the produce be publicly rebuked, the milk or other produce affected will return.

If a person is very much afflicted in regard to the torradh, he is wise to adopt the following remedy: "Whenever" (anglicé=as soon as) one of his cows has a calf, to take it away before any milk is drawn. Then, taking a bottle, he is to draw milk from the four teats, kneeling. The bottle is then tightly corked; this is important, for carelessness in this respect might give access to the torradh and upset everything. Another method is for a man—a woman won't do—to go the house of the person suspected, and pull off from the roof as much thatch and divots as his two hands will hold, and over this to boil what little milk is left, until it dries up. Another informant advised burning the thatch under the churn, instead of under the milk.

Another means of removing the blight from one's cattle is to bury the carcase of one of the victims by a boundary stream. Similarly, you may transfer it to your neighbour by burying it on his land.

A man told my informant that one day when he was ploughing, one of his horses fell. He took the tail of the horse in his hand and put it to his mouth, while he repeated a charm, and the horse recovered.

Mary McM., of Eriskay, says that one day she was taking home a load of sea-ware in a cart, when a person who had the Evil Eye came by and the horse fell down and could not rise for a long time, and even then was quite weak and could not take food. When she got home, her neighbour filled a bowl with water taken from a boundary stream and put silver into it, and threw it over the horse's back, and it immediately got better. She had herself been once "overlooked," and was ill for many days in consequence, but I forget whether by this person or another.

If in such a case as this the silver remains at the bottom of the bowl, it is an indication that the snaithean must be