The Three Persons of the Most Holy Trinity,
The Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.
I call Mary to witness, and Brigid,
If it be a human thing that has done you harm
With wicked wish,
Or with wicked eye,
Or with wicked heart,
That you (name of person or animal) be well
From the time I place this about you.
In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost."
A very respectable widow related with great detail how she was once under the Evil Eye. She was going along the Machaire (the sandy, plain near the sea-shore) with two ponies, and she met a man with some grain on his back, going to the mill, and immediately she began to feel very weak. When she came to the nearest house, she found that she could not go any further, and felt a sort of retching, with cold shivers all over her. They brought butter and put it into warm milk to restore her, and a man, Angus M., who was present, felt sure that she had fallen under the Evil Eye, and they duly sent for a certain Ranald who knew how to make spells. He twisted some threads and passed them round the fire three times. (It must be remembered that the fire would be in the middle of the room.) Then he tied it on her hand, and she began to get better immediately. Ranald told her it was the Evil Eye of a man that had affected her, but she did not know how he made that out. It must certainly have been the man with the grain.
This woman's husband had knowledge of the snaithean as we discovered another time. Perhaps he was dead or away on the occasion when Ranald was sent for. A girl came to him one day and begged him for the love of goodness to make it for her sister, who was very ill. There were several men in the house at the time, and he said he would not do it, as Father Donald, the priest, had told him not to be doing it. But the girl got him outside and asked him for the pity of God to help her, and he then asked his wife (who
