Blinking or Ill-wishing. 71 



the lore of earlier days, of other nations, or of barbarians and 

 savages, to know fully its meaning. 



The blinker may be either a man or a woman and I have not 

 found how he gets his power. Some say he serves an apprentice- 

 ship. I have never found any certain way of recognising a blinker. 

 Position is, I regret to say, no security, for in one parish in Co. 

 Tyrone both the collectors in church are blinkers. Undue 

 prosperity is ground for suspicion and it is well to bless the churn 

 and take a ' brash ' at it if you happen on butter-making in a 

 house. It is suspicious to smoke when churning is proceeding 

 or to ask a piece of turf out of the fire on such occasions or even 

 to be about if you already have the repute of a ' blinker.' A blinker 

 has power to become a hare at times and this belief is very old and 

 widespread for it is akin to the changes of the werewolf and such 

 like men-beasts and to our enchanted white cats and fox-princes 

 of the nursery stories. Sometimes the blinker uses his powers 

 involuntarily and then we have the evil eye in its simplest and 

 most unmixed form and sometimes it is beyond the will of the 

 owner. So a pedlar assured me that once he saw healthy cattle 

 yield not a drop of blood when bled previous to going to grass, as 

 was the old custom, and this because a blinker was present. 



Yet though such is his power to hurt he must generally use 

 some ceremony to get control over his neighbour's kine and their 

 produce. Sometimes he goes to skim the dew of his neighbour's 

 grass, especially on May morning, that day so marked in the 

 Celtic calender when many uncanny things are active. Sometimes 

 he skims the froth off the stream from which the cows drink. 

 Sometimes he takes hairs from the tails of the neighbour's cows 

 and twists them into a rope which he trails over the dewy grass in 

 a neighbour's field. So it is unlucky to lend a blinker anything, 

 especially a piggin or a churnstaff. 



All these instances have one thing in common : the blinker 

 wants to establish a connection with his victim, but he is satisfied 

 if he gets something associated in idea with it, and this is the 

 root-fallacy in all witchcraft whether the ill-wisher assaults by the 



