72 Mr. E. J. M'Kean on 



methods above-mentioned or by images of clay or wax or by 

 burning a lock of hair belonging to his victim. 



When the spell is done and the cattle are blinked they are 

 distressed and ill and yield no milk, or if they remain healthy and 

 yield milk, no butter comes in the churn. Then either proceed of 

 your own knowledge to cure them or consult a wise man who will 

 probably give you one of two kinds of cure or perhaps both. The 

 first is to watch the suspected person till you are sure of his guilt 

 and then to get him into your house and secretly to cut off apiece 

 of his clothing which is burnt before the cattle. This ends the 

 spell. The blinker is conscious of the burning and will rush out 

 of the house when it takes place. 



What has happened is this : — the blinker has something associated 

 with you through which he hurts you : you then get something of 

 his and hurt him through it and you are quits, or it may be you 

 gave his victims strength of the blinker's to make up for their 

 strength taken away. 



There is another counterspell which I have not yet met in Ulster 

 but which is so common elsewhere as to deserve mention. The 

 blinker is connected with the milk ; well and good ! the milk is 

 in connection with him and he shall know it. So take some of 

 the milk and boil it and, if you will, put pins and needles therein. 

 Then he will come bawling to your door and you may make your 

 own terms, for the boiling milk and the pins are causing him most 

 awful agonies. If the cattle yield no milk or have died ; burn 

 them or parts of them, and you will easily find and punish the 

 ill-wisher, as is shown in Patrick Kennedy's " Legendary Fictions 

 of the Irish Celts," page 135, and in Rhy's "Celtic Folklore," 

 vol. I., page 304. 



The other Ulster cure probably did not once apply to witchcraft 

 but has come from folk-medicine. It consists in transferring the 

 spell from the cattle to a bottle and then burying or hiding the 

 bottle, in one case under a fairy thorn, in another in the suspected 

 blinker's field. Now to get rid of a disease by transferring it to 

 someone or something else is well-known in early medicine, but I 

 never heard of such an idea in witchcraft. 



