The book Arran; - Cook Clan

292 THE BOOK OF ARRAN
the animal he said to the owner, ' You met ' (naming the in-
dividual), ' who wanted to buy the mare.' The reply was he had.
* Ha !
' ' said Hugh, many a race he has given my short legs.' Hugh
got some salt and soot ; to this he added some secret ingredients he
had brought with him, and rolled the mixture into a ball. He gave
a portion of it to the mare, and the balance on being thrown into the
fire by him exploded with a loud report. In a few minutes the beast
got all right.
The use of salt as a ' preservative ' is illustrated in the case of an
Arran woman who was a strong believer in and much afraid of the
effects of the evil-eye. She had one cow, and it gave her much
discomfort when she saw the cow grazing near the roadside, fearing
that some passer-by might ' put his eye in her.' To keep the milk
right, if she gave any to be carried away, or even ' to be drunk on
the premises,' she invariably put salt in it, and that sometimes to
excess. The reciter said, ' For a while we were getting milk from her
for a man staying with us who was seriously annoyed when the milk
was more than ordinarily salt, giving vent to his discontent by saying,
" Why the deuce does she not let us put saut in oor ain milk ? " ' i
In Arran, as elsewhere, cronachadh seems to be regarded as hereditary.
One reciter said of a man at Lochranza that it did not matter what he
would look at, his look would cronach it. A lad from another part
of the island went to ask a daughter of this man to marry him, and
when the nearest neighbour heard of his courtship she became exceedingly
angry, and protested against any of that man's daughters
being brought there ' to cronach everything about the place.' ^
An old lady in Arran remembers being told of an older generation
who, desiring not to injure their own or another's beast lest there
should be evil in their eye unknown to themselves, always took the
precaution of blessing the animal before looking at it. The words
they used were ' Gu'm beannaicheadh tHa am heathach ' (That God
may bless the beast), or ' Gu'm beannaicheadh Dia an ni air am
bheil mo shuil ag amharc' (May God bless the thing my eye is
regarding).'
' Evil-Eye in the Western Highlands, p. 83. ' Ibid., p. 103. ' Ibid., p. 116.