Kitabı oku: «Notes and Queries, Number 27, May 4, 1850», sayfa 2

FOLK LORE

Charm for the Toothache.—A reverend friend, very conversant in the popular customs and superstitions of Ireland, and who has seen the charm mentioned in pp. 293, 349, and 397, given by a Roman Catholic priest in the north-west of Ireland, has kindly furnished me with the genuine version, and the form in which it was written, which are as follows:—

 
"As Peter sat on a marble stone,
The Lord came to him all alone;
'Peter, what makes thee sit there?'
'My Lord, I am troubled with the toothache.'
'Peter arise, and go home;
And you, and whosoever for my sake
Shall keep these words in memory,
Shall never be troubled with the toothache.'"
 

T.J.

Charms.—The Evil Eye.—Going one day into a cottage in the village of Catterick, in Yorkshire, I observed hung up behind the door a ponderous necklace of "lucky stones," i.e. stones with a hole through them. On hinting an inquiry as to their use, I found the good lady of the house disposed to shuffle off any explanation; but by a little importunity I discovered that they had the credit of being able to preserve the house and its inhabitants from the baneful influence of the "evil eye." "Why, Nanny," said I, "you surely don't believe in witches now-a-days?" "No! I don't say 'at I do; but certainly i' former times there was wizzards an' buzzards, and them sort o' things." "Well," said I, laughing, "but you surely don't think there are any now?" "No! I don't say at ther' are; but I do believe in a yevil eye." After a little time I extracted from poor Nanny more particulars on the subject, as viz.:—how that there was a woman in the village whom she strongly suspected of being able to look with an evil eye; how, further, a neighbour's daughter, against whom the old lady in question had a grudge owing to some love affair, had suddenly fallen into a sort of pining sickness, of which the doctors could make nothing at all; and how the poor thing fell away without any accountable cause, and finally died, nobody knew why; but how it was her (Nanny's) strong belief that she had pined away in consequence of a glance from the evil eye. Finally, I got from her an account of how any one who chose could themselves obtain the power of the evil eye, and the receipt was, as nearly as I can recollect, as follows:—

"Ye gang out ov' a night—ivery night, while ye find nine toads—an' when ye've gitten t' nine toads, ye hang 'em up ov' a string, an' ye make a hole and buries t' toads i't hole—and as 't toads pines away, so 't person pines away 'at you've looked upon wiv a yevil eye, an' they pine and pine away while they die, without ony disease at all!"

I do not know if this is the orthodox creed respecting the mode of gaining the power of the evil eye, but it is at all events a genuine piece of Folk Lore.

The above will corroborate an old story rife in Yorkshire, of an ignorant person, who, being asked if he ever said his prayers, repeated as follows:—

 
"From witches and wizards and long-tail'd buzzards,
And creeping things that run in hedge-bottoms,
Good lord, deliver us."
 

MARGARET GATTY.

Ecclesfield, April 24. 1850.

Charms.—I beg to represent to the correspondents of the "NOTES AND QUERIES," especially to the clergy and medical men resident in the country, that notices of the superstitious practices still prevalent, or recently prevalent, in different parts of the kingdom, for the cure of diseases, are highly instructive and even valuable, on many accounts. Independently of their archæological interest as illustrations of the mode of thinking and acting of past times, they become really valuable to the philosophical physician, as throwing light on the natural history of diseases. The prescribers and practisers of such "charms," as well as the lookers-on, have all unquestionable evidence of the efficacy of the prescriptions, in a great many cases: that is to say, the diseases for which the charms are prescribed are cured; and, according to the mode of reasoning prevalent with prescribers, orthodox and heterodox, they must be cured by them,—post hoc ergo propter hoc. Unhappily for the scientific study of diseases, the universal interference of ART in an active form renders it difficult to meet with pure specimens of corporeal maladies; and, consequently, it is often difficult to say whether it is nature or art that must be credited for the event. This is a positive misfortune, in a scientific point of view. Now, as there can be no question as to the non-efficiency of charms in a material or physical point of view (their action through the imagination is a distinct and important subject of inquiry), it follows that every disease getting well in the practice of the charmer, is curable and cured by Nature. A faithful list of such cases could not fail to be most useful to the scientific inquirer, and to the progress of truth; and it is therefore that I am desirous of calling the attention of your correspondents to the subject. As a general rule, it will be found that the diseases in which charms have obtained most fame as curative are those of long duration, not dangerous, yet not at all, or very slightly, benefited by ordinary medicines. In such cases, of course, there is not room for the display of an imaginary agency:—"For," as Crabbe says,—and I hope your medical readers will pardon the irreverence—

 
"For NATURE then has time to work her way;
And doing nothing often has prevailed,
When ten physicians have prescribed, and failed."
 

The notice in your last Number respecting the cure of hooping-cough, is a capital example of what has just been stated; and I doubt not but many of your correspondents could supply numerous prescriptions equally scientific and equally effective. On a future occasion, I will myself furnish you with some; but as I have already trespassed so far on your space, I will conclude by naming a few diseases in which the charmers may be expected to charm most wisely and well. They will all be found to come within the category of the diseases characterised above:—Epilepsy, St. Vitus's Dance (Chorea), Hysteria, Toothache, Warts, Ague, Mild Skin-diseases, Tic Douloureux, Jaundice, Asthma, Bleeding from the Nose, St. Anthony's Fire or The Rose (Erysipelas), King's Evil (Scrofula), Mumps, Rheutmatic Pains, &c., &c.

EMDEE.

April 25. 1850.

Roasted Mouse.—I have often heard my father say, that when he had the measles, his nurse gave him a roasted mouse to cure him.

SCOTUS.

THE ANGLO-SAXON WORD "UNLAED."

A long etymological disquisition may seem a trifling matter; but what a clear insight into historic truth, into the manners, the customs, and the possessions of people of former ages, is sometimes obtained by the accurate definition of even a single word. A pertinent instance will be found in the true etymon of Brytenwealda, given by Mr. Kemble in his chapter "On the Growth of the kingly Power." (Saxons in Engl. B. II. c. 1.) Upon this consideration I must rest for this somewhat lengthy investigation.

The word UNLAED, as far as we at present know, occurs only five times in Anglo-Saxon; three of which are in the legend of Andreas in the Vercelli MS., which legend was first printed, under the auspices of the Record Commission, by Mr. Thorpe; but the Report to which the poetry of the Vercelli MS. was attached has, for reasons with which I am unacquainted, never been made public. In 1840, James Grimm, "feeling (as Mr. Kemble says) that this was a wrong done to the world of letters at large," published it at Cassell, together with the Legend of Elene, or the Finding of the Cross, with an Introduction and very copious notes. In 1844, it was printed for the Aelfric Society by Mr. Kemble, accompanied by a translation, in which the passages are thus given.—

 
"Such was the people's
peaceless token,
the suffering of the wretched."
 

l. 57-9.

 
"When they of savage spirits
believed in the might,"
 

l. 283-4.

 
"Ye are rude,
of poor thoughts."
 

The fifth instance of the occurrence of the word is in a passage cited by Wanley, Catal. p. 134., from a homily occurring in a MS. in Corpus Christi College, s. 14.:—

"Men ða leoçes can hep re3þ se hal3a se[~s] Io[~hs] þaep re Hael. eode ofen þone bupnan the Ledpoc hatte, on in[=e]n aenne p[.y]ptun. Tha piste se unlaesde iudas se þe hune to deaþe beleaped haefde."

In Grimm's Elucidations to Andreas he thus notices it:—

"Unlaed, miser, improbus, infelix. (A. 142. 744. Judith, 134, 43.). A rare adjective never occurring in Beowulf, Coedmon, or the Cod. Exon., and belonging to those which only appear in conjunction with un. Thus, also, the Goth. unleds, pauper, miser; and the O.H.G. unlât (Graff, 2. 166.); we nowhere find a lêds, laed, lât, as an antithesis. It must have signified dives, felix; and its root is wholly obscure."

In all the Anglo-Saxon examples of unlaed, the sense appears to be wretched, miserable; in the Gothic it is uniformly poor¹: but poverty and wretchedness are nearly allied. Lêd, or laed, would evidently therefore signify rich, and by inference happy. Now we have abundant examples of the use of the word ledes in old English; not only for people, but for riches, goods, movable property. Lond and lede, or ledes, or lith, frequently occur unequivocally in this latter sense, thus:—

 
"He was the first of Inglond that gaf God his tithe
Of isshue of bestes, of londes, or of lithe."
 

P. Plouhm.

 
"I bed hem bothe lond and lede,
To have his douhter in worthlie wede,
And spouse here with my ring."
 

K. of Tars, 124.

 
"For to have lond or lede,
Or other riches, so God me spede!
Yt ys to muche for me."
 

Sir Cleges, 409.

 
"Who schall us now geve londes or lythe,
Hawkys, or houndes, or stedys stithe,
As he was wont to do."
 

Le B. Florence of Rome, 841.

 
"No asked he lond or lithe,
Bot that maiden bright."
Sir Tristrem, xlviii.
 

In "William and the Werwolf" the cowherd and his wife resolve to leave William

 
"Al here godis
Londes and ludes as ether after her lif dawes."
p. 4
 

In this poem, ludes and ledes are used indiscriminately, but most frequently in the sense of men, people. Sir Frederick Madden has shown, from the equivalent words in the French original of Robert of Brunne, "that he always uses the word in the meaning of possessions, whether consisting of tenements, rents, fees, &c.;" in short, wealth.

If, therefore, the word has this sense in old English, we might expect to find it in Anglo-Saxon, and I think it is quite clear that we have it at least in one instance. In the Ancient Laws and Institutes of England, vol. i. p. 184., an oath is given, in which the following passage occurs:

 
"Do spa to lane
beo þé he þinum
I leat me be minum
ne 3ypne le þines
ne laedes ne landes
ne sac ne socne
ne þu mines ne þeapst
ne mint ic þe nan þio3."
 

Mr. Thorpe has not translated the word, nor is it noticed in his Glossary; but I think there can be no doubt that it should be rendered by goods, chattels, or wealth, i.e., movable property.

This will be even more obvious from an extract given by Bishop Nicholson, in the preface to Wilkin's Leges Saxonicæ p. vii. It is part of the oath of a Scotish baron of much later date, and the sense here is unequivocal:—

"I becom zour man my liege king in land, lith², life and lim, warldly honour, homage, fealty, and leawty, against all that live and die."

Numerous examples are to be found in the M.H. German, of which I will cite a few:

 
"Ir habt doch zu iuwere hant
Beidin liute unde lant."
 

Tristr. 13934.

 
"Und bevelhet ir liute unde lant."
 

Iwein. 2889.

 
"Ich teile ir liute unde lant."
 

Id. 7714.

And in the old translation of the Liber Dialogorum of St. Gregory, printed in the cloister of S. Ulrich at Augspurg in 1473:—

"In der Statt waren hoch Türen und schöne Heüser von Silber und Gold, und aller Hand leüt, und die Frawen und Man naÿgten im alle."

Lastly, Jo. Morsheim in his Untreuer Frawen:—

 
"Das was mein Herr gar gerne hört,
Und ob es Leut und Land bethort."
 

Now, when we recollect the state of the people in those times, the serf-like vassalage, the Hörigkeit or Leibeigenthum, which prevailed, we cannot be surprised that a word which signified possessions should designate also the people. It must still, however, be quite uncertain which is the secondary sense.

The root of the word, as Grimm justly remarks, is very obscure; and yet it seems to me that he himself has indirectly pointed it out:—

"Goth. liudan³ (crescere); O.H.G. liotan (sometimes unorganic, hliotan); O.H.G. liut (populus); A.-S. lëóð; O.N. lióð: Goth. lauths -is (homo), ju33alauths -dis (adolescens); O.H.G. sumar -lota (virgulta palmitis, i.e. qui una æstate creverunt, Gl. Rhb. 926'b, Jun. 242.); M.H.G. corrupted into sumer -late (M.S. i. 124'b. 2. 161'a. virga herba). It is doubtful whether ludja (facies), O.H.G. andlutti, is to be reckoned among them."—Deutsche Gram. ii. 21. For this last see Diefenbach, Vergl. Gram. der Goth. Spr. i. 242.

In his Erlauterungen zu Elene, p. 166., Grimm further remarks:—

"The verb is leoðan, leað, luðon (crescere), O.S. lioðan, lôð, luðun. Leluðon (Cædm. 93. 28.) is creverunt, pullulant; and 3eloðen (ap. Hickes, p. 135. note) onustus, but rather cretus. Elene, 1227. 3eloðen unðep leápum (cretus sub foliis)."

It has been surmised that LEDE was connected with the O.N. hlÿt⁴—which not only signified sors, portio, but res consistentia—and the A.-S. hlet, hlyt, lot, portion, inheritance: thus, in the A.-S. Psal. xxx. 18., on hanðum ðinum hlÿt mín, my heritage is in thy hands. Notker's version is: Mín lôz ist in dínen handen. I have since found that Kindlinger (Geschichte der Deutchen Hörigkeit) has made an attempt to derive it from Lied, Lit, which in Dutch, Flemish, and Low German, still signify a limb; I think, unsuccessfully.

Ray, in his Gloss. Northanymbr., has "unlead, nomen opprobrii;" but he gives a false derivation: Grose, in his Provincial Glossary, "unleed or unlead, a general name for any crawling venomous creature, as a toad, &c. It is sometimes ascribed to a man, and then it denotes a sly wicked fellow, that in a manner creeps to do mischief. See Mr. Nicholson's Catalogue."

In the 2d edition of Mr. Brockett's Glossary, we have: "Unletes, displacers or destroyers of the farmer's produce."

This provincial preservation of a word of such rare occurrence in Anglo-Saxon, and of which no example has yet been found in old English, is a remarkable circumstance. The word has evidently signified, like the Gothic, in the first place poor; then wretched, miserable; and hence, perhaps, its opprobrious sense of mischievous or wicked.

"In those rude times when wealth or movable property consisted almost entirely of living money, in which debts were contracted and paid, and for which land was given in mortgage or sold; it is quite certain that the serfs were transferred with the land, the lord considering them as so much live-stock, or part of his chattels."

A vestige of this feeling with regard to dependants remains in the use of the word Man (which formerly had the same sense as lede). We still speak of "a general and his men," and use the expression "our men." But, happily for the masses of mankind, few vestiges of serfdom and slavery, and those in a mitigated form, now virtually exist.

S.W. SINGER.

April 16. 1850.