There is, I imagine, some obscure connection between the Fairies and the Evil Eye. There was “an old Cronachaun of a fellow,” who lived in the parish of Myross, who was said to be “away with the Fairies” a great deal, and, whether as a resulting privilege or not I cannot say, he also had the Bad Eye. It was asserted that he could go to the top of Mount Gabriel, which is a good twenty miles away, in five minutes. It seems a harmless feat, but it must be said that Mount Gabriel, in spite of its name, is not altogether to be trusted. It is the sort of place where the “Fodheen Mara” might come on at any moment. The Fodheen Mara is a sudden loss of your bearings, and a bewilderment as to where you are, that prevails, like a miasma, in certain spots; but, Rickeen has told me, “if a person ’d have as much sense as to turn anything he’d have on him inside out, he’d know the way again in the minute.” Or the “Fare Gurtha” might assail you, and it is even more awful than the Fodheen Mara, being a sudden starvation that doubles you up and kills you, unless you can instantly get food. Also, on Mount Gabriel’s summit there is a lake, and it is well known that a heifer that ran into the lake came back to her owner out of the sea, “below in Schull harbour,” which implies something wrong, somewhere.

A neighbour of the old Cronachaun (which means a dwarfish cripple), and presumably a rival in the Black Arts, was accused by the Cronachaun’s wife of being “an owld wicked divil of a witch-woman, who is up to ninety years, but she can’t die because she’s that bad the Lord won’t take her! Sure didn’t she look out of her door and see meself going by, and says she ‘Miggera Murth’! (and that means ‘misfortune to ye’) and the owld daughther she has, she looked out too, and she says, three times over, ‘Amin-a-heerna!’ and after that what did I do but to fall off the laddher and break me leg!”

“Amin-a-heerna” is a reiterated amen. No wonder the curse operated.

I have myself, when pursuing the harmless trade of painter, been credited with the possession of the Evil Eye. In the Isle of Aran, Martin has told how “at the first sight of the sketch book the village street becomes a desert; the mothers, spitting to avert the Bad Eye, snatch their children into their houses, and bang their doors. The old women vanish from the door-steps, the boys take to the rocks.” We are too civilised now in West Carbery to hold these opinions, but I can recollect the speed with which an old man, a dweller in an unfashionable part of Castle Townshend, known as Dirty Lane, fled before me down that thoroughfare, declaring that the Lord should take him, and no one else (a jeu d’esprit which I cannot but think was unintentional).

Probably

all illness was attributed to ill-wishers. It is certain that charms and remedies, all more or less disgusting, are still relied on, and are exhibited with a faith that is denied to the doctor’s remedies, and that wins half the battle in advance.

“Ha, thim docthors!” said a dissatisfied patient on hearing of the death of his medical adviser. “They can let themselves die too!”

I think it advisable, for many reasons, to withhold such recipes as I can now recall, but I may offer a couple of samples that will possibly check any desire for more.

In typhoid fever: “close out” all the windows, and anoint the patient from head to foot with sheep’s butter.

In whooping-cough: the patient should be put “under an ass, and over an ass”; but a better method is to induce a gander to spit down the sufferer’s throat.

“A lucky hand” in doctor or nurse is of more value than many diplomas. There is an old woman whose practice has been untrammelled by the fetters or follies of science.

“The cratures!” she says of her clients. “They sends for me, and I goes to them, and I gives them the best help I can. And sure the Lord Almighty’s very thankful to me; He’d be glad of a help too.”

She is now “pushing ninety,” but she is still helping.

If a quack is not procurable, a doctor with a hot temper is generally well thought of. Martin made some notes of a conversation that she had with a countryman in West Carbery, which exemplified this fact. The “Old Doctor” referred to was noted for his potency in language as in physic, and it was valued.

“Lave him curse, Ma’am!” whispered a patient to the doctor’s expostulating wife, “For God’s sake, lave him curse!”

“I had to wait in a hayfield at the top of the Glen,” Martin’s notes record, “while E. was haranguing at a cottage about a litter of cubs, whose Mamma considered that chicken, now and then, was good for them. There was a man making the hay into small cocks, with much the same delicate languor with which an invalid arranges an offering of flowers. Glandore Harbour was spread forth below me, a lovely space of glittering water, and the music of invisible larks drifted down in silver shreds through air that trembled with heat. This, I thought, is a good place in which to be, and I selected a haycock capable of supporting me, and the haymaker and I presently fell into converse. The talk, I now forget why, turned to the medical profession.

“‘Thim Cork docthors was very nice,’ said the man, pausing from his labours, and seating himself upon a neighbouring haycock, ‘but sure docthors won’t do much for the likes of us, only for ladies and gentlemen. Ye should be the Pink of Fashion for them!’

“He surveyed me narrowly; apparently the thickness of the soles of my boots inspired him with confidence.

“‘Ye’re a counthry lady, and ye have understanding of poor people. Some o’ thim docthors would be sevare on poor people if their houses wouldn’t be—’ he considered, and decided that the expression was good enough to bear repetition, ‘—wouldn’t be the Pink of Fashion. Well, the Owld Docthor was good, but he was very cross. But the people that isn’t cross is the worst. There’s no good in anny woman that isn’t cross. Sure, you know yourself, my lady, the gerr’l that’s cross, she’s the good servant!’

“He looked to me, with his head on one side for assent. I assented.

“‘Well, as for the Owld Docthor,’ he resumed, ‘he was very cross, but afther he put that blast out of him he’d be very good. My own brother was goin’ into th’ Excise, and he went to the Owld Docthor for a certifi-cat. Sure, didn’t the Docthor give him back the sovereign! “You’ll want it,” says he, “for yer journey.” There was an old lady here, and she was as cross as a diggle.’ (‘A diggle,’ it may be noted, is a euphuism by which, to ears polite, the Prince of Darkness is indicated.) ‘She’d go out to where the men ’d be working, and if she’d be displeased, she’d go round them with a stick. Faith she would. She’d put them in with a stick! But afther five minutes she’d be all right; afther she had that blast put out of her.’

“It gives a comfortable feeling that ‘crossness’ is of the nature of a gas-shell, and can be eliminated from the system in a single explosion.”

Unfortunately the interview was interrupted here.

Dean Swift says somewhere that “Good manners is the art of making those people easy with whom we converse.” Martin had a very special gift of encouraging people to talk to her. There was something magnetic about her, some power of sympathy and extraction combined. Together with this she had a singular gift of toleration for stupid people, even of enjoyment of stupidity, if sincerity, and a certain virtuous anxiety, accompanied it. She was wont to declare that the personal offices of a good and dull person were pleasing to her. The fumbling efforts, the laboured breathing of one endeavouring—let us say—to untie her veil; a man, for choice, frightened, but thoroughly well-intentioned and humble. This she enjoyed, repudiating the reproach of effeteness, which, in this connection, I have many times laid to her charge.

In dealing with Rickeen, however, allowances for stupidity (she called it simplicity) had not to be taken into consideration. I have a letter from her, recounting another of her conversations with Rick, in which he discussed a “village tragedy” that occurred at Christmas time, a few years after she had returned to Ross. (The reference at the beginning of the letter is to the sudden death of an acquaintance.)

Rickeen’s discussion of the matter with Martin and one of the “Nursies” is interesting in showing the point of view of an intelligent peasant, a man who had been to America, and who was, though illiterate, of exceptionally sound and subtle judgment. I copy it from the notes that Martin sent to me.

“Rickeen and Nurse Davin and I were talking about the poor boy who is believed to have drowned himself. Rick took up his parable.

“‘Sure you remember of him? Red Mike’s son, back in Brahalish? Him that used to be minding the hins for the Misthress?

“‘Always and ever he was the same; not a word o’ talk out of him the longest year that ever came, only talkin’ about God, and goin’ to Mass, and very fond of the work. Sure they say the mother wouldn’t let him to Mass this while back to Father X.’ (N.B. This is the lawful priest. Father Z., his predecessor, was suspended by the Church, but many of the parish still side with him.) ‘And Mortheen, the brother that’s in Galway, got an account he was frettin’ like, and he hired a car and took him to Galway to go to Mass there, and tellin’ him no one ’d be denyin’ him there. Faith, sorra Mass he’d go to in it! They say before he left home, a whileen back, himself was back in the room, and the people was outside, talkin’, and sayin’ he should be sent to Ballinasloe’ (the Lunatic Asylum) ‘and sorra bit but when they looked round, himself was there, leshnin’ to them! “What did I ever do to ye?” says he, “And aren’t ye damned fools,” says he, walkin’ over to them this way, “to think ye’ll put me in it!” says he. And sorra word more he spoke.

“‘The Lord save us! They’re lookin’ for him now since Stephenses Day, and I’m sure ’tis in Poulleen-a-fÉrla he is. He was down lookin’ at it a while ago, and Stephenses Day they seen him runnin’ down through Bullywawneen, and they’re afther findin’ his Scafflin and his Agnus Di[11] on a flagstone that’s on the brink. Sure he took thim off him the ways he’d be dhrowned. No one could be dhrowned that had thim on him. Faith, he could not.

“‘Didn’t ye hear talk of the man back in Malrour, that wint down to the lake last Sunday, and jumped into it to dhrown himself? The people that seen him they ran, and they dhragged him out, an’ he lyin’ on his back, and the scafflin he got from the priest round his neck; and it dhry! God help the crature!’

“(Nurse Davin, weeping, ‘Amin! Amin!’)

“‘But sure what way can they find him in Poulleen-a-fÉrla? I know well there’s thirty feet o’ wather in it. Maybe they’d see him down through the wather to-day, it’s that clear. God knows ’tis quare weather. The air’s like it ’d be comin’ up out o’ the ground, and no breeze in it at all! I’m thinkin’ it’s the weather as well as another that’s puttin’ the people asthray in their heads.’

“Rick paused here to take breath, and turned to Nurse Davin, who was peeling potatoes, and groaning at suitable intervals.

“‘Nurse, did ye ever hear tell o’ puttin’ a shave (sheaf) o’ oats on the wather where ye’d think a pairson ’d be dhrowned, an’ it ’ll stand up whin it ’d be over the place where he’s lyin’? They have a shave beyant, but it’s lyin’ on the wather always. I wouldn’t believe that at all.’

“Nurse Davin uttered a non-committal invocation of her favourite saint, but offered no opinion.

“‘Sure it was that that they coaxed him to do at the chapel that preyed on him entirely.’

“‘Lord ha’ mercy on him!’ said Nurse, wiping her eyes.

“‘When he knew then what he done,’ Rick resumed, turning to me again, ‘sorra Mass he’d ever go to again, and they knew by him he was watchin’ his shance to make off. They follied him a few days back, when they seen him sneakin’ off down through the wood, but sorra bit but he felt them afther him and he turned back.

“‘’Twas on Stephenses Day he wint cuttin’ a rope o’ ferns with his brother, and faith when the brother was talkin’ to a man that was in it, he shlipped away. The brother thought it was home he wint, till he got the rope o’ ferns threwn afther him on the ground.

“‘An’ that, now, was the time he got the shance.’

“Nurse Davin, who is the very salt of the earth, has felt it all very deeply. I cheered her by giving her your Christmas messages. She was overwhelmed with gratitude. ‘And would ye be pleased to wish her every sort of good luck and happiness, and the blessing o’ God on her! The crature! Indeed she was good, and clane, and quiet, and sensible! And her little dog—so nice and so clever!’” (This was the Puppet.) “‘She cried afther him, the crature! She could do no more.’”

I trust I may be pardoned for quoting this encomium. The virtues enumerated by Nurse Davin have not often been ascribed to me.