Project Gutenberg's The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector, by William Carleton

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

Title: The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector
The Works of William Carleton, Volume One

Author: William Carleton

Illustrator: M. L. Flanery

Release Date: June 7, 2005 [EBook #16004]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE EVIL EYE ***

Produced by David Widger

THE EVIL EYE;

OR, THE BLACK SPECTOR

By William Carleton

PREFACE.

There is very little to be said about this book in the shape of a
preface. The superstition of the Evil Eye is, and has been, one of the
most general that ever existed among men. It may puzzle philosophers to
ask why it prevails wherever mankind exists. There is not a country on
the face of the earth where a belief in the influence of the Evil Eye
does not prevail. In my own young days it was a settled dogma of belief.
I have reason to know, however, that, like other superstitions, it is
fast fading out of the public mind. Education and knowledge will soon
banish those idle and senseless superstitions: indeed, it is a very
difficult thing to account for their existence at all. I think some of
them have come down to us from the times of the Druids,--a class of men
whom, excepting what is called their human sacrifices, I respect. My
own opinion is, that what we term human sacrifices was nothing but their
habitual mode of executing criminals. Toland has written on the subject
and left us very little the wiser. Who could, after all, give us
information upon a subject which to us is only like a dream?

What first suggested the story of the Evil Eye to me was this: A man
named Case, who lives within a distance of about three or four hundred
yards of my residence, keeps a large dairy; he is the possessor of five
or six and twenty of the finest cows I ever saw, and he told me that
a man who was an enemy of his killed three of them by his overlooking
them,--that is to say, by the influence of the Evil Eye.

The opinion in Ireland of the Evil Eye is this: that a man or woman
possessing it may hold it harmless, unless there is some selfish design
or some spirit of vengeance t