THE EVIL EYE.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLVIII, Issue 238, 5 September 1928, Page 11

THE EVIL EYE.

A special correspondent to tli© Sydney Sun writing from Duncannon, Co. Tyrone, says: In that strange fairy land among the mountains and the farms there are people to-day who really believe in witchcraft, evil spells, magic potions and even fairies that vanish into whitethorn hushes. A person possessed of tho evil eye are believed to bo able to turn it on somebody elso’s cattle with the result that -they aro deprived of their milk (and the consequent butter), the milk being transferred to the cows of the possessor of the evil eye. When cattle aro under this spell Mr Robert McKittrick is called into to banish tho spell. In the last fifteen years lie lias cured over one hundred cattle in the district and people oomo to him from all over the country. Mr McKittrick, who is an "octogenarian is said to have a magic potion, which will make a bewitched cow quite herself again in a short time. “In a caso in, Dungannon a publican had two cows affected. They would eat nothing and would roar inside and outside the house. One of them was very bad, and the salt was not in her _ mouth a minute when she rose and joined her hay,” said Mr McKittrick:. He also said that lie had seen a fairy about foity years ago at Demassar. .He had been out with his father helping him to dig the potatoes and as they were coming homo at midnight in the clear moonlight they _ passed a field where they saw a fairy. It ran up the field before them ill’to a whitethorn liedge. Mr McKitterick asked his father if he had seen it too, hut lie had not and. looking in the roots of the whitethorn, they could see nothing. “It was like a new horn baby withe clothes on, and I didn’t offer to speak to it as it made up the field,” he said. “I knew a woman who was believed to have the power to ‘blink,’ and although she had only one cow she coulcl bring jnorc butter I to the market than I could with four cows, and hi addition she always supplied two shops with all they required.” “A woman with the power to ‘blink’ would lie an asset to a creamery?” asked the correspondent. “Could she bring the butter to the creamery from tho cows against the wishes of the farmers?” “She could unless the farmers had tho cure,” explained the old man, “and many n farmer has churned for weeks without, getting any blitter until the ‘blinking’ was banished.” • .