Evil eye

It is still a common belief today, not only in the countryside but also in Funchal, that certain individuals are endowed with the power to cause illness through their eyes. If a child begins to lose weight for no known reason, or if the pig, the cow, the sheep or the goat falls ill with a disease that is not easy to identify, there is always someone who blames these ills on the evil eye (mau olhado), since it is not easy to find a better explanation for them. A tree that bears good fruit may stop bearing it because of the evil eye, and even our food is not safe from the spells of those to whom the devil has granted the power to do harm, without the law being able to hold them to account.

According to believers, no one can escape the evil eye, but curing it is an easy matter, and the sick person need not even be present for the treatment to succeed. A single item of the afflicted person’s clothing, or any other object that has touched them, is enough for the folk healer (curandeira) to carry out the treatment with absolute certainty of success.

To find out whether a person is afflicted by the evil eye, a drop of olive oil is dropped into water. If the oil spreads, the evil eye is present; if it stays together, it is not.

Once the evil eye has been recognised, the test is repeated as many times as necessary until the oil no longer spreads when it falls into the water. As soon as this result is achieved, the patient is cured. The treatment can sometimes last eight days, and the water used on one day must not be used in the following tests.

Each time she carries out the treatment, the folk healer speaks the following words: I cure you in the name of God and of the Virgin Mary; if they gave it to you (the evil eye) in your eating, or in your drinking, or in your laughing, or in your mocking, or in your beauty, or in your walking, may whoever gave it to you never give it to you again, and may it leave this body and go into the sea.

The belief in the evil eye is one of the few superstitions that progress and civilisation have not yet managed to destroy here in Madeira. It is so deeply rooted in the minds of the simple people of our countryside that no advice or warning can make them see how ridiculous and absurd are the methods the women healers use to cancel out the supposed harm that certain people cause their fellow beings.

The horns so often seen over pigsties are placed there by the owners of the pigs to prevent the animals from being affected by the evil eye or by bad air (ar mau)! Fishing boats, too, sometimes carry a few ox horns so that the evil eye does not drive away the fish, especially tuna and related species.