



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 to call it into operation. I was aware of
this, and I accordingly constructed my story upon that principle. I have
nothing further to add: the story itself will detail the rest.




CHAPTER I. Short and Preliminary.


In a certain part of Ireland, inside the borders of the county of
Waterford, lived two respectable families, named Lindsay and Goodwin,
the former being of Scotch descent. Their respective residences were not
more than three miles distant; and the intimacy that subsisted between
them was founded, for many years, upon mutual good-will and esteem,
with two exceptions only in one of the families, which the reader will
understand in the course of our narrative. Each ranked in the class
known as that of the middle gentry. These two neighbors--one of whom,
Mr. Lindsay, was a magistrate--were contented with their lot in life,
which was sufficiently respectable and independent to secure to them
that true happiness which is most frequently annexed to the middle
station. Lindsay was a man of a kind and liberal heart, easy and passive
in his nature, but with a good deal of sarcastic humor, yet neither
severe nor prejudiced, and, consequently, a popular magistrate as
well as a popular man. Goodwin might be said to possess a similar
disposition; but he was of a more quiet and unobtrusive character than
his cheerful neighbor. His mood of mind was placid and serene, and his
heart as tender and affectionate as ever beat in a human bosom. His
principal enjoyment lay in domestic life--in the society, in fact, of
his wife and one beautiful daughter, his only child, a girl of nineteen
when our tale opens. Lindsay's family consisted of one son and two
daughters; but his wife, who was a widow when he married her, had
another son by her first husband, who had been abroad almost since his
childhood, with a grand-uncle, whose intention was to provide for him,
being a man of great wealth and a bachelor.

We have already said that the two families were upon the most intimate
and friendly terms; but to this there was one exception in the person of
Mrs. Lindsay, whose natural disposition was impetuous, implacable, and
overbearing; equally destitute of domestic tenderness and good temper.
She was, in fact, a woman whom not even her own children, gifted as they
were with the best and most affectionate dispositions, could love as
children ought to love a parent. Utterly devoid of charity, she was
never known to bestow a kind act upon the poor or distressed, or a
kind word upon the absent. Vituperation and calumny were her constant
weapons; and one would imagine, by the frequency and bitterness with
which she wielded them, that she was in a state of perpetual warfare
with society. Such, indeed, was the case; but the evils which resulted
from her wanton and indefensible aggressions upon private character
almost uniformly recoiled upon her own head;