Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/699

Rh (6) Once the Virgin and her Son, while still a young infant, took shelter in a certain house. During the night the mistress of the house took very ill. The husband accused his visitors of being powers of evil, who had caused this distress. The Virgin asked to be taken to the sick woman, and, though reluctantly, the man led her there. As they came to the sick woman's bed, the Child stretched his arms over the sufferer, and immediately she recovered.

I propose, if space permits, in a fourth short paper, to give an account of some customs and charms and omens.

In this section I propose dealing with the methods used to ward off evil, or to bring misfortune on an enemy, or even on an innocent person, whom one wishes to injure. Some charms are merely to foretell the future or to secure a good milking or fishing, others merely curative. I do not know whether I am "scientific" in including the evil eye among such charms, but the difference between employing an evil power already possessed or gaining an evil power to use it seems negligible.

The Cashlān Pleimhinin or "Cashlaun Flaineen," as it is still called by old people about Mace and Gorumna to the north of Galway Bay, was a broken circle, or heap of stones, constructed formally with charms, so far unrecorded. It has an entrance towards the point of the wind, and was used for very divergent purposes. It was formerly done for malignant ends to get plunder (as in Mayo), to raise a storm, or to sink a boat, but I learned no such case in my informant's own knowledge. In 1847 James Hardiman