Charms, Charmers and Charming in Ireland: From the Medieval to the Modern

By John Carey

This is the first book to examine the full range of the evidence for Irish charms, from medieval to modern times. As Ireland has one of the oldest literatures in Europe, and also one of the most comprehensively recorded folklore traditions, it affords a uniquely rich body of evidence for such an investigation. The collection includes surveys of broad aspects of the subject (charm scholarship, charms in medieval tales, modern narrative charms, nineteenth-century charm documentation); dossiers of the evidence for specific charms (a headache charm, a nightmare charm, charms against bleeding); a study comparing the curses of saints with those of poets; and an account of a newly discovered manuscript of a toothache charm. The practices of a contemporary healer are described on the basis of recent fieldwork, and the connection between charms and storytelling is foregrounded in chapters on the textual amulet known as the Leabhar Eoin, on the belief that witches steal butter, and on the nature of the belief that effects supernatural cures.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of Wales Press
• Release date: Oct 15, 2019
• ISBN: 9781786834942

Book preview

NEW APPROACHES TO CELTIC RELIGION AND MYTHOLOGY

CHARMS, CHARMERS AND CHARMING IN IRELAND

NEW APPROACHES TO CELTIC RELIGION AND MYTHOLOGY

Series Editor

Jonathan Wooding, University of Sydney

Editorial Board

Jacqueline Borsje, University of Amsterdam

John Carey, University College Cork

Joseph F. Nagy, University of California, Los Angeles

Thomas O’Loughlin, University of Nottingham

Katja Ritari, University of Helsinki

NEW APPROACHES TO CELTIC RELIGION AND MYTHOLOGY

CHARMS, CHARMERS AND CHARMING IN IRELAND

FROM THE MEDIEVAL TO THE MODERN

EDITED BY

ILONA TUOMI, JOHN CAREY, BARBARA HILLERS AND CIARÁN Ó GEALBHÁIN

© The Contributors, 2019

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any material form (including photocopying or storing it in any medium by electronic means and whether or not transiently or incidentally to some other use of this publication) without the written permission of the copyright owner. Applications for the copyright owner’s written permission to reproduce any part of this publication should be addressed to the University of Wales Press, University Registry, King Edward VII Avenue, Cardiff CF10 3NS.

www.uwp.co.uk

British Library CIP Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-1-78683-492-8

eISBN: 978-1-78683-494-2

The right of the Contributors to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 79 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Cover image: John Lysaght MS fragment, a toothache charm (main image); Add. MS 30512 (folio 72), the ‘Caput Christi’ charm (background image) © The British Library Board.

Cover design: Olwen Fowler

CONTENTS

Preface

Table, Illustration and Maps

List of Abbreviations

Notes on Contributors

Introduction

1European and American Scholarship and the Study of Medieval Irish ‘Magic’ (1846–1960)

Jacqueline Borsje

2Charms in Medieval Irish Tales: Tradition, Adaptation, Invention

John Carey

3The Religious Significance of the sén 7 soladh in Altram Tige Dá Medar

Cathinka Dahl Hambro

4Nine Hundred Years of the Caput Christi Charm: Scribal

Strategies and Textual Transmission Ilona Tuomi

5In Defence of the Irish Saints who ‘Loved Malediction’

Ksenia Kudenko

6Towards a Typology of European Narrative Charms in Irish Oral Tradition

Barbara Hillers

7Nineteenth-Century Charm Texts: Scope and Context

Nicholas M. Wolf

8A Toothache Charm in a Manuscript Fragment of John Lysaght

Joseph J. Flahive

9‘The Cure for Bleeding’: Charms and Other Cures for Blood-stopping in Irish Tradition

Bairbre Ní Fhloinn

10 ‘Cahill’s Blood’: Mr Cahill Makes the Cure

Deirdre Nuttall

11 Aisling na Maighdine : ‘The Virgin’s Dream’ in Irish Oral Tradition

Denis McArdle

12 An Leabhar Eoin : The In Principio Charm in Oral and Literary Tradition

Gearóid Ó Crualaoich

13 The Cailleach and the Cosmic Hare

Shane Lehane

14 ‘We’ll talk now about charms’: Knowledge as Folklore 205 and Folklore as Knowledge

Stiofán Ó Cadhla

Bibliography

PREFACE

The study of charms is now again a burgeoning field, with research networks exploring the transnational phenomenon of charms and words of power across Europe and beyond. The richness of Celtic tradition is a byword, so many people would see Irish Studies as a natural participant in these networks. Access to the Irish sources is challenging even for specialists, however, and Celtic Studies has moreover only recently emerged from a period of fraught reflection on the nature – even the validity – of oral tradition, as well as upon the diversity, or otherwise, of early Irish religious culture. The contributions in this volume, however, demonstrate the great strength of work now being done on Irish charms, as well as the energy that Irish studies of religion have recently derived from collaborations with Europe. Many of the contributions in this volume also bear witness to the advances that have been made in cataloguing the material collected by our predecessors. Jacqueline’s Borsje’s further proposal, in her opening contribution, that we should now seek to reassess the theorising of religion by the pioneering scholars who gathered so much of our primary data is a timely one. I hope prospective contributors to this series will rise to her challenge, which chimes strongly with our manifesto.

An especially attractive aspect of the study of charms is the unarguably performative character of the genre. As performative texts, whilst often found in a literary context, charms remind us that much of what comes down to us on the page cannot be solely confined to it – which is a salutary reminder in the context of some recent approaches to Celtic Studies. In the context of the editors’ stated aim to ‘encompass the medieval and modern traditions equally’, we should also celebrate the diachronic richness of this collection. Charms, being formulaic and conservative in form, offer something for those who still wish to reach beyond the present text into the mentalities of the past. They are a data-set over which medieval philologists can meet with folklorists, to their mutual benefit. All the studies in this collection, by an international selection of scholars of Irish culture, folklore and literature, offer both a vision of the potential of this data set, as well as excellent models for the approaches required to it.

Jonathan M. Wooding, Series Editor

TABLE, ILLUSTRATION AND MAPS

7.1 Medical-theme charms found in nineteenth-century texts, arranged by function

8.1 The manuscript fragment, containing a toothache charm, in the hand of John Lysaght

11.1 Aisling na Maighdine : Distribution of both redactions throughout Ireland

11.2 Aisling na Maighdine : Distribution of both redactions in Clare, Galway and Mayo

11.3 Aisling na Maighdine : Gender of informants

11.4 ‘Google My Maps’ interface for Aisling na Maighdine

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Jacqueline Borsje is Senior Lecturer in Religious Studies at the University of Amsterdam.

John Carey is Professor of Early and Medieval Irish at University College Cork.

Joseph J. Flahive is Project Assistant to the Dictionary of Medieval Latin from Celtic Sources at the Royal Irish Academy.

Cathinka Dahl Hambro is Associate Professor of English at UiT the Arctic University of Norway.

Barbara Hillers is Associate Professor of Folklore in the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology in Bloomington, Indiana. From 2013 to 2018 she taught in the Delargy Centre for Irish Folklore and the National Folklore Collection at University College Dublin.

Ksenia Kudenko holds a PhD in Irish and Celtic Studies from Ulster University.

Shane Lehane lectures in Folklore, Archaeology and History in CSN College of Further Education, Cork.

Denis McArdle is the recipient of the Máire MacNeill Scholarship in Irish Folklore, 2016, with a Higher Diploma in Irish Folklore, from University College Dublin.

Bairbre Ní Fhloinn lectures in Irish Folklore and Ethnology at University College Dublin, where she is Head of Subject.

Deirdre Nuttall is an independent researcher based in Dublin.

Stiofán Ó Cadhla is Head of Roinn an Bhéaloidis: Department of Folklore and Ethnology, University College Cork.

Gearóid Ó Crualaoich is Professor Emeritus of Folklore and Ethnology at University College Cork.

Ciarán Ó Gealbháin lectures in Béaloideas/Folklore and Ethnology at University College Cork.

Ilona Tuomi is a doctoral candidate in Early and Medieval Irish at University College Cork.

Nicholas M. Wolf is an assistant curator, New York University Library, and affiliated faculty, Glucksman Ireland House.

INTRODUCTION

The study of Irish charms has received attention from both medievalists and folklorists since the nineteenth century. Jacqueline Borsje’s contribution to the present volume traces scholarly investigation of the medieval evidence from John O’Donovan’s edition of a lorica or protective prayer in 1846, and the first general surveys of the material by Heinrich Zimmer (1895) and Louis Gougaud (1911–12), down to the collection of charms published by James and Maura Carney in 1960. As Nicholas M. Wolf notes in another of the chapters in this book, the popular use of charms in rural Ireland was already being documented in the 1820s, and specimens collected from oral tradition made their way into printed journals, as they did into the paper manuscripts of nineteenth-century Gaelic scribes. The first substantial collections appeared towards the turn of the century, in such works as Lady Wilde’s Ancient Legends, Mystic Charms and Superstitions of Ireland (1888) and particularly her Ancient Cures, Charms and Usages of Ireland (1890). Two important works were based on Irish-speaking areas: the second volume of Douglas Hyde’s Abhráin Diadha Chúige Connacht (1906), which contained several dozen charms, and Lady Gregory’s Visions and Beliefs in the West of Ireland (1920). The abundant material amassed by the Irish Folklore Commission (1935–70), now curated by the National Folklore Collection (NFC), University College Dublin, is an invaluable resource that continues to yield rich fruits to researchers.

The subject has experienced a resurgence in the course of the last two decades. Two important indexes/catalogues, as yet unpublished, have made archival manuscript material available to scholarship: Maebhe Ní Bhroin’s 1999 ‘Orthaí Leighis na hÉireann’ (‘Irish Healing Charms’) comprehensively indexes over a thousand charm texts from the NFC, as well as several hundred more from printed sources; and Kelly Champagne’s ‘Catalogue of Charms in the RIA Manuscripts’ (2001) has brought to light as many as a hundred charms from nineteenth-century manuscripts.

The publication in 2000 of John Carey’s article ‘Téacsanna Draíochta in Éirinn sa Mheánaois Luath’ (‘Magical Texts in Early Medieval Ireland’),¹ with its call for more attention especially to the medieval material, found a response in the establishment by Jacqueline Borsje and Tatyana Mikhailova of the international research network, ‘The Power of Words in Traditional European Cultures’ (2007; with Dr Borsje directing the ancillary project, ‘The Power of Words in Medieval Ireland’); and in the organising by Professor David Stifter of two successful conferences on ‘Charms and Magic in Medieval and Modern Ireland’ at Maynooth University in 2013 and 2014. The 2016 conference of the International Society for Folk Narrative Research – Committee on Charms, Charmers and Charming, held at University College Cork, accorded particular attention to Irish material, giving equal weight to the medieval and modern traditions. Papers presented at this conference have provided the basis for this collection of essays. Many other scholars, such as Phillip Bernhardt-House, Tatyana Mikhailova and David Stifter, have made important contributions in recent years to scholarly activity in this area.²

Despite the recent increase in attention to the subject, this will be the first collection of scholarly essays ever to have been devoted to Irish charms, and the first to encompass the medieval and modern traditions equally.³ As such, we hope that it will be useful to medievalists and folklorists within Ireland as well as to international charm specialists (whose interest in the material is indicated by the success of the Cork conference). It should also serve as a benchmark and reference point for those who continue such studies in future.

The conference’s theme was ‘Tradition and Innovation’, and the collection takes full advantage of the remarkable temporal sweep of Irish tradition, extending from texts of the Old Irish period (c. 650–900) down to popular practices that are still current today. The essays call attention to some of the continuities which link the ancient with the contemporary; but also to ways in which Irish tradition – like all vital traditions – constantly transforms the materials which it preserves, giving them fresh relevance to each new generation. By design, the volume’s contents are highly diverse: only such diversity can afford a true sense of the scope of this protean phenomenon.

The book begins with essays dealing with medieval sources. Jacqueline Borsje, as noted above, provides a comprehensive survey of over a century of research, showing how both access to the sources and understanding of their significance have developed over time. John Carey’s contribution examines a selection of charms that appear in works of narrative, exploring the theme of ‘Tradition and Innovation’ to show how such charms exhibit appropriation, reinterpretation and fabrication. Cathinka Dahl Hambro considers the role of charms assigned both to the old gods and to Saint Patrick himself in a tale from the later Middle Ages; while Ilona Tuomi examines the various attestations of a charm against headache which is known both in Ireland and in England, and is found in Ireland in manuscripts of greatly varying dates. An aspect of the transition from paganism to Christianity is investigated by Ksenia Kudenko, who looks at links between the curses of Irish saints and those of poets whose authority was rooted in the indigenous past.

The second section of the book deals with the modern tradition, from the early nineteenth century right up to the twenty-first. Barbara Hillers’s chapter offers an overview of those Irish narrative charms that have clear analogues elsewhere in Europe, placing some of the most widely attested types in an international context; while Nicholas M. Wolf provides a comprehensive picture of the nineteenth-century corpus and its sociohistorical setting. That Ireland’s scribal culture was still flourishing in the nineteenth century is, indeed, one of the distinctive factors in the tradition; and the charm discussed by Joseph J. Flahive is found on a recently discovered scrap of manuscript from that period. Further essays draw upon contemporary tradition in ways both various and overlapping: the association of charms with blood (Bairbre Ní Fhloinn on blood-staunching charms attested in modern Ireland, Deirdre Nuttall on the use of his own blood as a cure for shingles by a still-living healer); and the patterns of variation and attestation in the case of the singularly popular charm The Virgin’s Dream (Denis McArdle on Aisling na Maighdine). The last three chapters deal with charms as they figure in stories: Gearóid Ó Crualaoich on the perils attendant on the textual amulet known as the Leabhar Eoin; Shane Lehane on the butter-stealing charms attributed to transformed witches; and in conclusion an essay by Stiofán Ó Cadhla, in which a narrative concerning the nature of belief furnishes the basis for reflections on the cultural conditioning which all too often shapes our apprehension of the thought-worlds of traditional communities.

Our debts of gratitude go well beyond our ability to do them justice. In particular, we wish to convey thanks to our contributors, both for the scholarship that they have shared with us, and for the good humour with which they have endured our editorial chivvying; to James Kapaló and Jenny Butler, for their central roles in organising the original conference, and for their encouragement to us to undertake this volume; to Jonathan Wooding, for accepting the book as part of the distinguished series of which he is editor; to the University of Wales Press for the patience, energy and expertise devoted to the final product; and to the referees and external readers, whose guidance at various stages in our labours has been of invaluable assistance to us.

Writing in 1825 concerning traditions in the region around Lough Neagh, an anonymous antiquary described a healing ritual that was accompanied by the repetition of ‘some words in an inaudible tone’, adding ‘What those mystical words are, I have not been able to ascertain.’⁴

Many such mystical words have been collected and analysed in the nearly two centuries that have elapsed since then: a formidable and fascinating body of material, some aspects of which are considered in the essays below. We hope that this book may itself serve as an inspiration, encouragement and aid to further study.

ILONA TUOMI, JOHN CAREY, BARBARA HILLERS, CIARÁN Ó GEALBHÁIN

1

EUROPEAN AND AMERICAN SCHOLARSHIP AND THE STUDY OF MEDIEVAL IRISH ‘MAGIC’ (1846–1960)

Jacqueline Borsje

Introduction

Two millennia ago, the Roman intellectual Gaius Plinius Secundus (23–79 CE ), also known as Pliny the Elder, wrote about remedies and medicine. ¹ He formulates an ‘important’ and ‘never-settled’ question in his famous Natural History: ‘Have words and formulated incantations any effect?’ ² He begins by stating that the wisest men reject this belief, while the general public believes it unconsciously. Then, however, he gives many examples in which words (and rituals) have been effective.

What Pliny refers to are – what I call – ‘words of power’: words with which people believe themselves to be able to influence reality in a supernatural way. I use the term ‘supernatural’ as a descriptive tool for the non-empirical dimension of life, which is crucial to religious belief cultures. This neutral term can be applied to notions found in any religion. There are various verbal-power genres: curses, blessings, prayers, satire, spells and so on. All over the world, people use such utterances/texts as religious/linguistic proactive/reactive strategic devices in order to enhance their lives. The doubts that Pliny expressed about their efficacy have multiplied in secularised cultures, but the use of powerful words has never been abandoned.

‘Magical texts’, such as spells, charms and incantations, form one genre among these words of power. Recent developments in international scholarship have shown an increased interest in this genre: many publications on various magical texts, objects and rituals have seen the light in the past decades.³ In 2000, however, John Carey noted the virtual absence of medieval Irish magical texts in these studies and a predominant focus on the twelfth century and later.⁴ Irish culture is a crucial hinge between late-antique and medieval culture.⁵ As is reflected in the present volume, for instance, several Celticists are now researching this important field. It is worthwhile investigating what kind of attention Celticists paid to magical texts in the early decades of the discipline. We need to study which theoretical, and especially religious, concepts influenced them. If we do not position them within the mentality history of Europe and beyond,⁶ if we do not grasp which time- and place-bound concepts are implicit in their descriptions, our thinking is influenced by the biases inherent in them without our being aware of it. We need to study which historical, cultural, intellectual and religious factors were influential in the lives and output of these scholars. This brief chapter is a modest initiative for studying the following question: What scholarship was devoted to medieval Irish ‘magical texts’ from roughly the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century?

This chapter will give an introduction to the first century of research into verbal power by Celticists, focusing on the so-called magical texts – a term that I shall use to include charms, spells and incantations.⁷ I subscribe to the view that magical texts are characterised by a claim, sometimes implicit, that the words possess intrinsic power. They may contain foreign words and mysterious language that makes use of obscure, cryptic and highly symbolic utterances. Because this chapter is based on the views of our scholarly predecessors, I have included texts that fall under my umbrella term ‘words of power’ but that need not be magical texts in the strict sense. I will note when such sister genres occur and treat them as examples of the wealth of Irish forms of verbal power, without giving a full bibliography. I have divided the material under three headings: survey studies, clustered collections and studies of individual texts.

Survey Studies

Pioneering work was done by Heinrich Friedrich Zimmer (1851–1910) from Germany. In 1895, he published an article on the term éle, which he translated as Zauberspruch, Zaubergesang (spell, incantation/charm).⁸ His etymology of the term was disputed by the Irish Whitley Stokes (1830–1909)⁹ and Danish Holger Pedersen (1867–1953).¹⁰ Despite the debatability of the etymology, Zimmer’s methodological approach of how to study such a text and textual genre can nevertheless be called exemplary. He discovered a spell in a ninth/tenth-century Old-English collection of medical reference books known as Bald’s Leechbook (London, British Library, Royal 12 D xvii).¹¹ The editor could not recognise the language of the spell,¹² despite the fact that the manuscript itself identifies it as Irish; Zimmer confirmed this identification. He interpreted the words helæ and hæle from the Leechbook spell as Old-Irish (h)éle – the self-referential term of the spell. He compared the language and structure of this éle-spell with other medieval Irish verbal-power texts (especially those in the eighth/ninth-century Stowe Missal and Sankt Gallen manuscript leaf; see below) and with texts in other genres. He made a survey of instances of the term éle as it is found in medieval Irish literature, and mentioned other spells called éle, of which one exists outside a narrative context (the éle from An Leabhar Breac, ‘The Speckled Book’; see below). This methodology is still valid today: Irish magical texts need to be studied not only within the context of verbal power but also in relation to all Irish literary genres; moreover, they need to be compared with spells in different languages. The often bi- or multi-lingual character of verbal power pleads for this approach.

The Dictionary of the Irish Language translates éle not only as ‘charm, incantation’, but also as ‘prayer’.¹³ The overlapping of the textual genres spell and prayer is highly problematic to certain dominant Christian discourse models, according to which the former is ‘unorthodox’ and the latter ‘orthodox’; yet verbal-power material displays such overlapping. Using the umbrella term ‘words of power’ may broaden our view beyond such dominant discourse/terminology so that we study differentiated religious belief cultures in an open, non-normative way. Various sorts of religious belief cultures may coexist with dominant models and may even be adhered to by a majority of the population in certain places and periods of time. Numerically, supposedly ‘heterodox’ culture may be in the majority, while within the dominant religious power structure, it is judged as heretical, foolish or wrong.

The (Anglo-)Irish scholar Eleanor Hull (1860–1935) showed her awareness of this overlapping of genres when she published a survey article that emphasised the link between hymns and charms.¹⁴ She first described protective hymns from the eleventh-century Liber Hymnorum that were accredited with supernatural power,¹⁵ and then devoted her article to another protective genre called lorica (literally: ‘breastplate’). She compared the medieval texts with modern ones from Ireland and Scotland, and rounded off by referring to the presence of charms in the Middle-Irish metrical tracts and in liturgical manuscripts and prayerbooks, such as the Sankt Gallen leaf, the Stowe Missal, the Book of Nunnaminster (eighth/ninth century) and the Book of Cerne (eighth/ninth century). She divided her material into two groups: first, the hymns that were formed upon a foreign ecclesiastical model – even though ‘composed as charms or believed by later reciters to contain definite charm-power’ – and second, the lorica genre together with the similar ‘native charms’.¹⁶ Hull’s article leaves the reader with an impression of the interconnectedness of the material in content, use/function and manuscript context, despite her use of a twofold classification loosely based on a foreign/native contrast.

Further important survey studies followed. The years 1911 and 1912 saw the appearance of ground-breaking work by the Breton Louis Gougaud (1877–1941); Gougaud catalogued loricae, followed by hymns and prayers comparable to the lorica.¹⁷ He described the literary-cultural background and international comparanda of the lorica, listed its structural elements, and explained its use. He dedicated a separate section to a comparison with magical texts, noting a deeply rooted popular belief in ‘the sovereign force of mysterious formulae, the efficacy of powerful words’.¹⁸ The American Fred Norris Robinson (1871–1966) described the importance of satire and its connection with spells or incantations in 1912.¹⁹ His article contains a useful survey of relevant terminology and portrays the Irish material (narratives and law texts) in an international context. Another American, John Revell Reinhard (1893–1974), published his monograph on geis (prohibition, injunction, ‘tabu’, spell/incantation) in 1933; material of relevance to the present study plays an important role in this book, especially in the final chapter on ‘magic, spells and transformations’.²⁰ Zimmer’s wish that a Celticist should look at the Anglo-Saxon manuscript in which he found the Irish éle/spell was more than fulfilled in 1945, when another American, Howard Maxwell Meroney (1905–91), made a survey of Irish words and phrases in Old-English charms.²¹ Finally, the Irish scholar James Carney (1914–89) edited several healing spells from various medical manuscripts; his wife Maura (Morrissey) Carney (1915–75) translated and commented on them.²²

The survey studies discussed above cover three important areas of verbal power: healing, harming and protection. A somewhat different, although related, area is divination or prophecy, the art of finding out about things hidden. There are some medieval Irish descriptions of rituals for acquiring this hidden knowledge. Although these rituals may involve magical texts, this area differs from other forms of verbal power, because the perceived direct influence of the words on reality is lacking or of a different nature. The area of mantics and prophecy is beyond the scope of this chapter and deserves a study on its own. For this reason, the description of this research area is brief. People observe signs and hear sounds that they interpret; these interpretations lead to the taking of decisions about actions or refraining therefrom. Misunderstood signs or utterances, the manipulation of signs and words, different possible interpretations – these themes have been creatively employed in the literature. Survey studies into well-known divinatory practices such as imbas forosnai were published by the American Robert Douglas Scott (born 1878) and the English Nora Kershaw Chadwick (1891–1972).²³

Clustered Collections

Magical texts are sometimes clustered together in medieval and later manuscripts. Among the most renowned are the healing spells from the Stowe Missal and the Sankt Gallen manuscript leaf.²⁴ The Sankt Gallen incantations have received considerable scholarly attention. The earliest editions are by the German Johann Kaspar Zeuss (1806–56), who added brief, mainly grammatical annotations in Latin; and by Zimmer who reflected on Zeuss’s work and translated the ritual prescription of the third incantation, Caput Christi, ‘Head of Christ’, into Latin.²⁵ The German Rudolf Thomas Siegfried (1830–63) edited a variant version of Caput Christi from Dublin, TCD H 3.17, a manuscript best known for its important legal material; Stokes published Siegfried’s papers posthumously, noting that this version is ‘better’ than the version in the Sankt Gallen manuscript.²⁶ In 1890, the German Ernst Windisch (1844–1918) attempted to translate and make sense of the Sankt Gallen incantations.²⁷ The French scholar Henri d’Arbois de Jubainville (1827–1910) noted two emendations that had been proposed by the German Bruno Güterbock (1858–1940) and offered a French translation.²⁸ Henri Gaidoz (1842–1932), also from France, interpreted the third incantation – Caput Christi – as originally a general healing text. He contextualised this ‘enumerating/listing incantation’ as a kind of lorica and traced its conceptual framework of healing/protecting/exorcising back to ancient Egyptian religion. He disagreed with Windisch and Arbois de Jubainville concerning the interpretation of the Irish ritual prescription at the end of the Latin incantation.²⁹ This was followed in 1903 by the edition and translation of the four Sankt Gallen incantations that have become standard, in the second volume of the collection Thesaurus Palaeohibernicus by Whitley Stokes and the Scottish John Strachan (1862–1907).³⁰

In this collection of editions and translations of important medieval Irish texts, including hymns from the abovementioned Liber Hymnorum, we also find the spells from the Stowe Missal together with a first attempt to translate them.³¹ Before their inclusion in the Thesaurus, Stokes had transcribed them in 1883; while Zimmer published corrections of his readings and translated the second Segen, ‘blessing’, into