Charms, Charmers and Charming in Ireland

From the Medieval to the Modern

Edited by John Carey, Ciarán Ó Gealbháin, Ilona Tuomi, Barbara Hillers

Publication date:

15 October 2019

Length of book:

288 pages

Publisher

University of Wales Press

Dimensions:

216x138mm

ISBN-13: 9781786834928

BOOK DESCRIPTION
TABLE OF CONTENTS

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.

List of Illustrations and Maps List of Tables Abbreviations Notes on Contributors Introduction 1. Jacqueline Borsje – European and American Scholarship and the Study of Medieval Irish ‘Magic’ (1846–1960) 2. John Carey – Charms in Medieval Irish Tales: Tradition, Adaptation, Invention 3. Cathinka Dahl Hambro – The Religious Significance of the sén 7 soladh in Altram Tige Dá Medar 4. Ilona Tuomi – Nine Hundred Years of the Caput Christi Charm: Scribal Strategies and Textual Transmission 5. Ksenia Kudenko – In Defence of the Irish Saints who ‘Loved Malediction’ 6. Barbara Hillers – Towards a Typology of European Narrative Charms in Irish Oral Tradition 7. Nicholas M. Wolf – Nineteenth-Century Charm Texts: Scope and Context 8. Joseph J. Flahive – A Toothache Charm in a Manuscript Fragment of John Lysaght 9. Bairbre Ní Fhloinn – ‘The Cure for Bleeding’: Charms and Other Cures for Blood-stopping in Irish Tradition 10. Deirdre Nuttall – ‘Cahill’s Blood’: Mr Cahill Makes the Cure 11. Denis McArdle – Aisling na Maighdine: The Virgin’s Dream in Irish Oral Tradition 12. Gearóid Ó Crualaoich – An Leabhar Eoin: The ‘In Principio’ Charm in Oral and Literary Tradition 13. Shane Lehane – The Cailleach and the Cosmic Hare 14. Stiofán Ó Cadhla – ‘We’ll talk now about charms’: Knowledge as Folklore and Folklore as Knowledge Bibliography Index