The Power of Words: Studies on Charms and Charming in Europe

Chapter II The Making of a Charm Collector.Alexander Carmichael in Uist, From 1864 To 1882

Chapter II The Making of a Charm Collector. Alexander Carmichael in Uist, From 1864 To 1882 Domhnall Uilleam Stiùbhart Introduction Contemporary scholarship on charms tends towards the analytic and synchronic, focusing upon the creation and refinement of universal typologies. Given the exceptionally multilingual and disparate nature of this particular branch of folklore scholarship, and indeed the lack of crucial contextual information in many older folklore archives, it could hardly be otherwise: a necessary search for cross-border commonalities and common origins, culminating, it is to be hoped, in an international charms database, which promises to revolutionise the field. Nevertheless , on the rare occasions when sufficient contextual information is available, when, assisted by the in-depth knowledge of local historians and genealogists, we can attempt to situate and interpret original performances and investigate the actors involved, there admits the possibility of an alternative approach. Such an approach might allow us not only to observe and investigate the process of gathering charm texts, but also to glean crucial details about the personae of the charmers themselves, their attitudes towards their charms, and indeed the wider functions of charms within particular communities. Alexander Carmichael ’s labyrinthine manuscript collection, the fruits of over fifty years of tireless recording now preserved in Edinburgh University Library, offers such an opportunity. * 28 THE POWER OF WORDS Despite the rich harvest of vernacular charms gathered throughout the Gaelic-speaking areas of northern and western Scotland by the subject of this article, the folklorist and antiquary Alexander Carmichael (1832–1912), himself a Gael from the Isle of Lismore, only a handful had been written down before intensive folklore collecting began there in the second half of the nineteenth century. A small number survive in legal and ecclesiastical documents from the later seventeenth century, recorded as evidence against charmers, possibly also due to the belief that writing out verbal incantations deprived them of power.1 Although various amulets and other periapts were collected in the region during the eighteenth century, only four manuscript Gaelic charm texts date from this period: one (doubtless intended for thieves or wooers) to prevent a dog barking; two against evil eye, both accompanied by the derisive marginalia of the minister who recorded them, the Rev. James MacLagan (1728–1805), chaplain to the Black Watch regiment; finally, one protective charm from the western region of North Carolina settled by Gaelic emigrants.2 A mere three Gaelic charms had been published, originally almost concurrently, in the 1840s: a protective charm (a seun or sian) from the Isle of Mull, probably obtained from an army veteran, and a cure for worms and a charm against evil eye printed as an illustrative footnote to a charm reference in John Mackenzie’s anthology Sàr-Obair nam Bàrd Gaelach: or, The Beauties of Gaelic Poetry, with a commentary beginning thus: “An incantation of great antiquity, handed down to us from the classic era of Homer. It has still its class of sturdy believers in many remote and pastoral districts of the Highlands…” (MacLeod 1867, 342–3). For most literate Scottish Gaels of the nineteenth century, charms were at best simple curiosities remembered from childhood, a province of the old and credulous. At worst, summoning up images of evil eye and the irrational superstition of a more primitive age, charms were far from welcome in the modern Gaelic canon. A striking expression 1 Balfour and Mackenzie 1914, 295; Carmichael 1900–1971 [henceforth CG], IV, 167; MacPhail 1920, 5, 6, 9 and 19; Paton 1932, 10, 12, 13, 15–20 and 22. See also Martin 1703, 120–22; Campbell and Thomson 1963, 58 and 69; Hunter 2001, 17, 67–8, 76, 81, 99, 107–11 and 196. 2 Glasgow University Library, MS Gen 1042/64/3 and 1042/244; Black 2007, 39–58. 29 The Making of a Charm Collector of the latter perspective comes from the entrepreneurial collector par excellence John Dewar (1802–1872). Dewar was possessed of a rather caustic opinion of charms, ascribing their invention to “Druids” who duped the people with tales: That the fairies had the power of being either visible or invisible , as they thought proper, and that they had the power of enchanting people, and of taking them away and make fairies of them; and that the Druids had charms which would prevent that… The Druidical priests pretended that they had charms that would prevent the witches from doing aney harm...