The belief in the malific influence of the Evil Eye pervades all
the Greek islands, and the same preventive measures are used as in
Ireland. An old woman is employed to spit three times at the person
affected, if she is a person learned in the mysteries and accounted
wise. Salt and fire are also used as safeguards, precisely as the
Irish peasant employs them to guard his cattle and children from the
evil influence. But no superstition is more widely spread; it seems
to pervade all the world, and to be instinctive to humanity. The
educated are as susceptible to it as the illiterate, and no nerves
are strong enough, apparently, to resist the impression made by an
envious, malicious glance, for a poison that blights and withers seems
to emanate from it. Reason appeals in vain; the feelings cannot be
overcome that the presence and glance of some one person in a room can
chill all the natural flow of spirits, while the presence of another
seems to intensify all our mental powers, and transform us for the
moment into a higher being.
But a malific power, stronger even than the glance of the Evil Eye, was
exercised by the Bards of Erin: whom they would they blessed, but whom
they would they also banned; and the poet’s malison was more dreaded
and was more fatal than any other form of imprecation—for the bard had
the mystic prophet power: he could foresee, and he could denounce. And
no man could escape from the judgment pronounced by a poet over one he
desired to injure; for the poet had the knowledge of all mysteries and
was Lord over the secrets of life by the power of The Word. Therefore
poets were emphatically called the tribe of _Duars_, that is, THE MEN
OF THE WORD; for by a word the poets could produce deformities in those
they disliked, and make them objects of scorn and hateful in the sight
of other men.