Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/702

392 recorded in Aran, and we found knowledge and belief in it up the Mayo coast to account for childless families.

Blacksmiths (against whose spells "St. Patrick's Breastplate" prays) have a fatal power of cursing by turning their anvil or by making a hole in a coin laid upon it. After several days' fast the coin is pierced in the name of the Devil and the person cursed against whom it is to be used. The people of Inishturk look upon these ceremonies with horror as an act of the blackest wickedness. Near Carna there is an uneasy fear of the smiths' magic, no one dare take any object from a forge without the blacksmith's consent.

It is hardly credible that malignant spells are believed to be worked in at least one case by a holy stone. "Cursing stones" are recorded at Louisburg, Mayo, near Killeries, Omey Island Renoyle, and perhaps on Inishmaan (Aran Isles), but, as we noted in Co. Clare, these are common places of ill-intentioned magic. We reserve these notes to the section on Rocks and Stones, XIX. below.

As distinct from using plants for poison, we have their usage for malignant charms. A sick man named Flanagan at Oghil in the centre of Aranmore before 1892 determined to consult a hag. She, by gettatura or evil eye and plant spells, pulling up an herb and looking at some one passing by, transferred the disease to a certain O'Flaherty, the result being that the scapegoat sickened and died in twenty-four hours, and the unscrupulous Flanagan recovered. Mr. Nathaniel Colgan adds that a grave elderly man warned him when botanizing against plucking up the milk vetch (Astragalus hypoglottis) peculiar to Aran, adding, "I've known a man killed that way." He explained that it was not poison but witchcraft that was to be feared, and told the above story, its hero and heroine having at that time gone to their account.