"If there's anything you can do to cure him, have pity on me and on
my children, and I'll give you what you'll wish." But I said, "I'll
do what I can for you, but I'll take nothing from you except maybe
a grain of tea or a glass of porter, for I wouldn't take money for
this, and I refused £2 one time for a cure I did." So I went and I
brought back the cure, and I mixed it with flour and made it into
three little pills that it couldn't be lost, and gave them to him,
and from that time he got well.
There's a woman lived down the road there, and one day I went in to
the house, when she was after coming from Galway town, and I asked
charity of her. And it was in the month of August when the bream
fishing was going on, and she said, "There's no one need be in want
now, with fresh fish in the sea and potatoes in the gardens"; and
gave me nothing. But when I was out the door she said, "Well, come
back here." And I said, "If you were to offer me all you brought from
Galway, I wouldn't take it from you now."
And from that time she began to pine and to wear away and to lose her
health, and at the end of three years, she walked outside her house
one day, and when she was two yards from her own threshold she fell
on the ground, and the neighbours came and lifted her up on a door
and brought her into the house, and she died.
I think I could have saved her then--I think I could, when I saw her
lying there. But I remembered that day, and I didn't stretch out a
hand and I spoke no word.
* * * * *
I'm going to rise out of the cures and not to do much more of them,
for _they_ have given me a touch here in the right leg, so that it's
the same as dead. And a woman of my village that does cures, she is
after being struck with a pain in the hand.
Down by the path at the top of the slip from there to the hill,
that's the way they go most nights, hundreds and thousands of them.
There are two old men in the island got a beating from them; one of
them told me himself and brought me out on the ground, that I'd see
where it was. He was out in a small field, and was after binding up
the grass, and the sky got very black over him and very dark. And he
was thrown down on the ground, and got a great beating, but he could
see nothing at all. He had done nothing to vex them, just minding his
business in the field.
And the other was an old man too, and he was out on the roads, and
they threw him there and beat him that he was out of his mind for a
time.
One night sleeping in that little cabin of mine, I heard them ride
past, and I could hear by the feet of the horses that there was a
long line of them.
* * * * *
This is a story was going about twenty years ago. There was a curate
in the island, and one day he got a call to the other island for the
next day. And in the evening he told the servant maid that attended him
to clean his boots good and very good, for he'd be meeting good people
where he was going. And she said, "I will, Holy Father, and if you'll
give me your hand and word to marry me for nothing, I'll clean them
grand." And he said "I will; whenever you get a comrade I'll marry you
for nothing, I give you my hand and word." So she had the boots grand
for him in the morning. Well, she got a sickness after, and after seven
months going by, she was buried. And six months after that, the curate
was in his parlour one night and the moon shining, and he saw a boy and
a girl outside the house, and they came to the window, and he knew it
was the servant girl that was buried. And she said, "I have a comrade
now, and I came for you to marry us as you gave your word." And he
said, "I'll hold to my word since I gave it," and he married them then
and there, and they went away again. (_Note_ 36.)
III
THE EVIL EYE--THE TOUCH--THE
PENALTY
III
THE EVIL EYE--THE TOUCH--THE
PENALTY
_"Some friendly Teyâmena, sorry to see my suffering plight, said to
me: 'This is because thou hast been eye-struck--what! you do not
understand 'eye-struck'? Certainly they have looked in your eyes,
Khalîl. We have lookers_ (_God cut them off!_) _among us, that with
their only_ (_malignant_) _eye-glances may strike down a fowl flying;
and you shall see the bird tumble in the air with loud shrieking
kâk-kâ-kâ-kâ-kâ. Wellah their looking can blast a palm-tree so that
you shall see it wither away. These are things well ascertained by
many faithful witnesses."_--DOUGHTY'S _Travels in the Arabian Desert_.
* * * * *
_There is one visit I have always been a little remorseful about. It
was in Mayo where I had gone to see the broken walls and grass-grown
hearthstone that remain of the house where Raftery the poet was born.
I was taken to see an old woman near, and the friend who was with me
asked her about "Those." I could see she was unwilling to speak, and
I would not press her, for there are some who fear to vex invisible
hearers; so we talked of America where she had lived for a little
while. But presently she said, "All I ever saw of_ them _myself was one
night when I was going home, and they were behind in the field watching
me. I couldn't see them but I saw the lights they carried, two lights
on the top of a sort of dark oak pole. So I watched them and they
watched me, and when we were tired watching one another the lights all
went into one blaze, and then they went away and it went out." She told
also one or two of the traditional stories, of the man who had a hump
put on him, and the woman "taken" and rescued by her husband, who she
had directed to seize the horse she was riding with his left hand._
_Then she gave a cry and took up her walking stick from the hearth,
burned through, and in two pieces, though the fire had seemed to be but
a smouldering heap of ashes. We were very sorry, but she said "Don't be
sorry. It is well it was into it the harm went." I passed the house two
or three hours afterwards; shutters and door were closed, and I felt
that she was fretting for the stick that had been "to America and back
with me, and had walked every part of the world," and through the loss
of which, it may be, she had "paid the penalty."_
_I told a neighbour about the doctor having attended a man on the
mountains--and how after some time, he found that one of the children
was sick also, but this had been hidden from him, because if one had
to die they wanted it to be the child._
_"That's natural," he said. "Let the child pay the penalty if it has
to be paid. That's a thing that might happen easy enough."_
_I was told by M. McGarity:_
There was a boy of the Cloonans I knew was at Killinane thatching
Henniff's house. And a woman passed by, and she looked up at him, but
she never said, "God bless the work." And Cloonan's mother was in
the road to Gort and the woman met her and said, "Where did your son
learn thatching?" And that day he had a great fall and was brought
home hurt, and the mother went to Biddy Early. And she said, "Didn't
a red-haired woman meet you one day going into Gort and ask where
did your son learn thatching? And didn't she look up at him as she
passed? It was then it was done." And she gave a bottle and he got
well after a while. (_Note_ 37.)
* * * * *
Some say the evil eye is in those who were baptized wrong, but I
believe it's not that, but if, when a woman is carrying, some one
that meets her says, "So you're in that way," and she says, "The
devil a fear of me," as even a married woman might say for sport or
not to let on, the devil gets possession of the child at that moment,
and when it is born it has the evil eye.
_Margaret Bartly:_
There was a woman below in that village where I lived to my grief and
my sorrow, and she used to be throwing the evil eye, but she is in
the poor-house now--Mrs. Boylan her name is. Four she threw it on,
not children but big men, and they lost the walk and all, and died.
Maybe she didn't know she had it, but it is no load to any one to say
"God bless you." I faced her one time and told her it would be no
load to her when she would see the man in the field, and the horses
ploughing to say "God bless them," and she was vexed and she asked
did I think she had the evil eye, and I said I did. So she began
to scold and I left her. That was five years ago, and it is in the
poor-house in Ballyvaughan she is this two years; but she can do no
harm there because she has lost her sight.
_Mrs. Nelly of Knockmogue:_
There was a girl lived there near the gate got sick. And after
waiting a long time and she getting no better the mother brought in
a woman that lived in the bog beyond, that used to do cures. And
when she saw the girl, she knew what it was, and that she had been
overlooked. And she said, "Did you meet three men on the road one
day, and didn't one of them, a dark one, speak to you and give no
blessing?" And she said that was so. And she would have done a cure
on her, but we had a very good priest at that time, Father Hayden, a
curate, and he used to take a drop of liquor and so he had courage
to do cures. And he said this was a business for him, and he cured
her, and the mother gave him money for it.
It was by herbs that woman used to do cures, and whatever power she
got in the gathering of them, she was able to tell what would happen.
But she was in great danger all her life from gathering the herbs, for
_they_ don't like any one to be cured that they have put a touch on.
_Mrs. Clerey:_
I can tell you what happened to two sons of mine. A woman that passed
by them said, "You've often threatened me by night, and my curse is
on you now." And the one answered her back but the other didn't. And
after that they both took sick, but the one that didn't answer her
was the worst. And they pined a long time. And I brought the one
that was so bad over to Kilronan to the priest and he read over him.
It was a lump in his mouth he had, that you could hardly put down a
spoonful of milk, and there was a good doctor there and he sliced
it, and he got well. But the priest often told me that but for what
he did for him he would never have got well. For there's no doubt
there's _some_ in the world it's not well to talk with.
The time my son got the pain, he came in roaring and said he got
a stab in the knee. It was surely some evil thing that put it on
him. There are some that have the evil eye, and that don't know it
themselves. Father McEvilly told me that. He said a woman that was
carrying, and that was not married, but that got married while she
was carrying, she might put the evil eye on you, and not know it at
all. And he said anyway it would be no great load to say "God bless
you" to any one you might meet.
The priests can do cures if they like, but those that have stock
don't like to be doing it, Father Folan won't do it, but Father
McEvilly would.
One time my brother got a great pain, and my father sent me to Father
Gallagher, to ask could he cure and read the Mass of the Holy Ghost
over him. But when I asked him he called out, "I won't do that, I
won't read for any one." He was afraid to go as far as that for fear
it might fall on his stock, that he had a great deal of.
_James Fahey:_
Do you think the _drohuil_ is not in other places besides Aran? My
mother told me herself that she was out at a dance one evening, and
there was a fine young man there and he dancing till he had them all
tired; and a woman that was sitting there said "He can do what he
likes with his legs," and at that instant he fell dead. My mother
told me that herself, and she heard the woman say it, and so did many
others that were there.
_Frank McDaragh:_
There's none can do cures well in this island like Biddy Early used to
do. I want to know of some good man or woman in that line to go to, for
that little girl of my own got a touch last week. Coming home from Mass
she was, and she felt a pain in her knee, and it ran down to the foot
and up again, and since then the feet are swelled, you might see them.
_Mrs. Meade:_
And about here they all believe in the faeries--and I hear them
say--but I don't give much heed to it--that Mrs. Hehir the butcher's
sister that died last week--but I don't know much about it. But
anyhow she was married three years, and had a child every year, and
this time she died. And when the coffin was leaving the house, the
young baby began to scream, and to go into convulsions, for all the
world as if it was put on the fire.
_Another says about this same woman, Mrs. Hehir:_
It's overlooked she was when she went out for a walk with a scholar
from the seminary that is going to be a priest, and she without a shawl
over her head. It's then she was overlooked; they seeing what a fine
handsome woman she was, she was took away to be nurse to _themselves_.
_Mrs. Quade:_
A great pity it was about Mrs. Hehir and she leaving three young
orphans. But sure they do be saying a great big black bird flew into
the house and around about the kitchen--and it was the next day the
sickness took her.
_The Doctor:_
Mrs. Hehirs was a difficult case to diagnose, and I could not give it
a name. At the end she was flushed and delirious; and when one of the
women attending her said, "She looks so well you wouldn't think it
was herself that was in it at all," I knew what was in their minds.
Afterwards I was told that the day the illness began she had been
churning, and a strange woman came in and said, "Give me a hold of
the staff and I'll do a bit of the churning for you." But she refused
and the woman said, "It's the last time you'll have the chance of
refusing anyone that asks you" and went out, and she was not seen
again, then or afterwards.
_J. Madden:_
There's one thing should never be done, and that's to say "That's
a fine woman," or such a thing and not to say "God bless her." I
never believed that till a man that lives in the next holding to my
own told me what happened to a springer he had. She was as fine a
creature as ever you seen, and one day a friend of his came in to see
him, and when he was going away, "That's a grand cow," says he, but
he didn't say "God bless it." Well, the owner of the cow went into
the house and he sat down by the fire and lit a pipe, and when he
had the pipe smoked out he came out again, and there she was lying
down and not able to stir. So he remembered what happened and he
went after his friend, and found him in a neighbour's house. And he
brought him back with him, and made him go into the field and say,
"God bless it," and spit on the cow. And with that she got up and
walked away as well as before.
_John McManus:_
They can only take a child or a horse or such things through the eye
of a sinner. If his eye falls on it, and he speaks to praise it and
doesn't say "God bless it," they can bring it away then. But if you
say it yourself in your heart, it will do as well.
* * * * *
There was a man lived about a mile beyond Spiddal, and he was one day
at a play, and he was the best at the hurling and the throwing and
every game. And a woman of the crowd called out to him, "You're the
straightest man that's in it." And twice after that a man that was
beside him and that heard that said, saw him pass by with his coat on
before sunrise. And on the fifth day after that he was dead.
He left four or five sons and some of them went to America and the
eldest of them married and was living in the place with his wife.
And he was going to Galway for a fair, and his wife was away with
her father and mother on the road to Galway and she bid him to come
early, that she'd have some commands for him to do. So it was before
sunrise when he set out, and he was going over a little side road
through the fields, and he came on the biggest fair he ever saw, and
the most people in it. And they made a way for him to pass through
and a man with a big coat and a tall hat came out from them and
said, "Do you know me?" And he said, "Are you my father?" And the
man said, "I am, and but for me you'd be sorry for coming here, but
I saved you, but don't be coming out so early in the morning again."
And he said, "It was a year ago that Jimmy went to America. And that
was time enough." And then he said, "And it was you that drove your
sister away, and gave her no fortune." And that was true enough.
* * * * *
One time there was two brothers standing in a gap in that field
you're looking at. And a woman passed by, I wouldn't like to tell you
her name, for we should speak no evil of her and she's dead now,--the
Lord have mercy on her. And when she passed they heard her say in
Irish, "The devil take you," but whether she knew they were there or
not, I don't know. And the elder of the brothers called out, "The
devil take yourself as well." But the younger one said nothing. And
that night the younger one took sick, and through the night he was
calling out and talking as if to people in the room. And the next day
the mother went to a woman that gathered herbs, the mother of the
woman that does cures by them now, and told her all that happened.
And she took a rag of an old red coat, and went down to the last
village, and into the house of the woman that had put it, the evil
eye, on him. And she sat there and was talking with her, and watched
until she made a spit on the floor, and then she gathered it up on
the rag and came to the sick man in the bed and rubbed him with it,
and he got well on the minute.
It was hardly ever that woman would say "God bless the work" as she
passed, and there were some would leave the work and come out on the
road and hold her by the shoulder till she'd say it.
_A Man on the Boat:_
There are many can put on the _drohuil_. I knew a child in our
village and a neighbour came in and said, "That's a fine child"; and
no sooner was he gone than the child got a fit. So they brought him
back and made him spit on the child and it got well after. Those that
have that power, I believe it's born with them, and it's said they
can do it on their own children as well as on ours.
* * * * *
There was a boy called Faherty, nephew to Faherty that keeps the
licensed house, and he was a great one for all games, and at every
pattern, and whenever anything was going on. And one time he went
over to Kilronan where they had some sports, and it the 24th of June.
And they were throwing the weight, and he took it up and he threw it
farther than the police or any that were there; and the second time
he did the same thing. And when he was going to throw it the third
time, his uncle came to him and said "It's best for you to leave it
now; you have enough done." But he wouldn't mind him, and threw it
the third time, and farther than they all.
And the next year at that time on the 24th of June, he was stretched
on his bed, and he died. And some one was talking about the day he did
so much at Kilronan, and the father said: "I remember him coming into
the house after that, and he put up his arm on the dresser as if there
was something ailed him." And the boy spoke from his bed and said, "You
ought to have said 'God bless you' then. If my mother had been living
then she'd have said it, and I wouldn't be lying here now."
* * * * *
There were two other fine young men died in the same year, and one
night after, the three of them appeared to a sick man, Jamsie Power,
on the south island, and talked with him. But they didn't stay long
because, they said, they had to go on to the coast of Clare.
* * * * *
My own first-born child wasn't spared. He was born in February and
all the neighbours said they never saw so fine a child. And one night
towards the end of March, I was in the bed, and the child on my
arm between me and the wall, sleeping warm and well, and the wife
was settling things about the house. And when she got into bed, she
wanted to take the child, and I said, "Don't stir him, where he's
so warm and so well"; but she took him in her own arm. And in the
morning he was dead. And up to the time he was buried, you'd say he
wasn't dead at all, so fresh and so full in the face he looked.
There was a neighbour about the same time had a child and it was
in the bed with them, but it was sick. And one night he was sure
he heard some one say outside the house, "It's time he should be
stretched out to me." So he got up and opened the window, and he
threw a vessel of dirty water over whatever was outside, and he heard
no more, and his child got well and grew up strong.
_An Island Woman:_
And there's some people the fishermen wouldn't pass when they are
going to the boats, but would turn back again if they'd meet them.
One day two boys of mine, Michael and Danny, were down on the rocks,
bream-fishing with lines, and I had a job of washing with the wife of
the head coast-guard. But when it came to one o'clock something came
over me, and I thought the boys might have got the hunger, and I went
to Mrs. Patterson and said I must leave work for that day, and I went
and bought a three-halfpenny loaf and brought it down to where they
were fishing, and when I got there I saw that Michael the younger one
was limping, and I said, "It must be from the hunger you're not able
to walk." "Oh, no," he said, "but it's a pain I got in my heel, and I
can't put it to the ground." And when we got home he went into his bed,
and he didn't leave it for three months. And one day I said to him,
"What was it happened you, did you meet any one on the road that day
that said anything to you?" And he said, "I did, I met a woman of the
village and she said, 'It's good to be you and to have a fine basket of
bream,' and she said no more than that, and that very minute the pain
came on my heel. But I won't tell you her name, for fear there'd be a
row." But I made him tell me, and I promised never to say a word to her
and I never did; but he's not the first she did that to.
_An Old Man with a Basket:_
They can put the _drohuil_ here and I suppose in all parts, and you
should watch not to let any one meet you unless they would say, "God
bless you," and spit.
* * * * *
There was a woman in this island lost her walk for a year and a half,
till they went to Galway to a woman that throws the cups, and she bid
them go into the next house where there was a black man living, and
give him tobacco to be smoking, and take up the spit and rub his leg.
And she got well after that.
There was another man in that island besides that neighbour of mine
that would give the _drohuil_--the evil eye. Tom Griffith his name was.
There was one Flanagan came back from Clare one day with three bonifs
he bought there. And Griffith came out as he passed and said, "No
better bonifs than those ever came into the island." And when Flanagan
came home, there was a little hill in the front of his house and two of
them fell down against it on their side. And when Mrs. Flanagan came
out to see the bonifs, there was only one of them living before her.
* * * * *
There's a man in this island now puts the evil eye--the _drohuil_.
It's about four years since I heard of him doing it last. There was
a nice young woman he passed and he said, "You're the best walker in
Aran." And that day she got a pain in her leg and she took to her bed,
and there she lay for six months, and then she sent for him, and he was
made--with respects to you--to throw a spit on her. And after that she
got well and got up again. And there was a child died about the same
time, and the friends said it was he did it. Ned Buckley is his name.
Devil a foot he ever goes to a wedding or such like; they wouldn't ask
him, they'd be afraid of him. But he goes to Mass--at least he did in
his bloom--but he's an old man now. Does the priest know about him?
It's not likely he does. There's no one would like to go and make an
attack on him like that. And anyway the priests don't like any one to
speak to them of such things, they'd sooner not hear about them.
_Mrs. Folan:_
There was one of my brothers overlooked, no doubt at all about that.
He was the best rower of a canoe that ever was, and there was a match
at Kinvara today and he won it, and there was a match at Ballyvaughan
tomorrow and he was in it, and the foam was as high as mountains,
that the hooker could hardly stand, and he won there. And when he was
come to the pier and the people all running to carry him in their
arms, the way the jockey is carried after a race, he was ruz up his
own height off the ground, and no one could see what did it.
He was wrong in the head after that, and he would sit by the hearth
without speaking. My mother that would be out binding the wheat would
say to me now and again "There he is coming across to us," and she
put it on me to think it, but I could see nothing, for it is not
everyone can see those things. Then she would ask the father when we
went in, did he stir from the fireside, and when he said he never
stirred she knew it was his shadow she saw and that he had not long
to live, and it was not long till he was gone.
_Mr. Stephens:_
There was a man coming along the road from Gort to Garryland one
night, and he had a drop taken, and before him on the road he saw a
pig walking. And having a drop in, he gave a shout and made a kick at
it and bid it get out of that.
And from the time he got home, his arm had swelled from the shoulder
to be as big as a bag, and he couldn't use his hand with the pain in
it. And his wife brought him after a few days to a woman that used to
do cures at Rahasane.
And on the road all she could do would hardly keep him from lying
down to sleep on the grass. And when they got to the woman, she knew
all that happened, and says she: "It's well for you that your wife
didn't fall asleep on the grass, for if you had done that but for an
instant, you'd be a gone man."
_Mrs. Casey:_