Black’s the White of My Eye

Quarrelling women would cry that nobody could say black’s the white of their eye, meaning no one could justly speak ill of them, and Brand believed the saying came from the old fear of the evil eye. Reginald Scot had written of women whose angry looks bewitched and hurt. In the parish of Gargunnock in Stirlingshire, a parish report said, old women were still suspected of harming cattle with their eye. Anyone called in to see a cow suddenly taken ill who did not say I wish her luck was suspected of meaning it harm.