Читать книгу Notes and Queries, Number 15, February 9, 1850 - Various - Страница 6

FOLK LORE

Metrical Charms.—In the enumeration of the various branches of that interesting subject, the “FOLK LORE OF ENGLAND,” on which communications were invited in the last number of “NOTES AND QUERIES,” there is an omission which I beg to point out, as it refers to a subject which, I believe, deserves especial investigation, and would amply repay any trouble or attention that might be bestowed upon it. I allude to Metrical Charms, many of which are still preserved, and, in spite of the corruptions they have undergone in the course of centuries, would furnish curious and valuable illustrations of the Mythological System on which they are founded.

“Spirits of the flood and spirits of the hills found a place in the mythology of Saxon England,”

says an able reviewer of Mr. Kemble’s Saxons in England, in The Anthenæum (13th Jan. 1849); and he continues,

“The spells by which they were invoked, and the forms by which their aid was compelled, linger, however, still amongst us, although their names and powers have passed into oblivion. In one of the Saxon spells which Mr. Kemble has inserted in the Appendix, we at once recognised a rhyme which we had heard an old woman in our childhood use,—and in which many Saxon words unintelligible to her were probably retained.”

Who would not gladly recover this “old rhyme?”—I can say for myself, that if these lines should ever meet the eye of the writer of the passage I have quoted, I trust he will be induced to communicate, in however fragmentary a shape, this curious addition to our present scanty stories of mythological information.