Incantatio An International Journal on Charms, Charmers and Charming http://www.folklore.ee/incantatio Print version Issue 8 2019 ISNFR Committee on Charms, Charmers and Charming Incantatio An International Journal on Charms, Charmers and Charming Issue 8 Editor: Svetlana Tsonkova Tartu 2019 General Editor: Mare Kõiva Editors for this issue: Svetlana Tsonkova Managing editor: Jonathan Roper Copy editor: Liisa Vesik Language editor: Jonathan Roper Editorial board: Elenora Cianci, University of Chieti- Pescara, Italy James Kapalo, University College Cork, Ireland Alaric Hall, Leeds University, UK Claude Lecouteux, Paris-Sorbonne University, France Lea Olsan, University of Louisiana at Monroe, USA Éva Pócs, Janus Pannonius University, Pecs, Hungary Haralampos Passalis, Intercultural School-Evosmos-Thessaloniki, Greece Jonathan Roper, Tartu University, Estonia Will Ryan, The Folklore Society, London, UK. Emanuela Timotin, Institute of Linguistics, Bucharest, Romania Andrey Toporkov, Institute of World Literature, Moscow, Russia Daiva Vaitkevičiene, Lithuanian Institute of Literature and Folklore, Vilnius, Lihtuania Editorial contacts: https://ojs.folklore.ee/incantatio/ [email protected] Vanemuise 42, Tartu 51003, Estonia Supported by and affiliated to the Centre of Excellence in Estonian Studies( CEES, European Regional Development Fund) and is related to research projects IRG 22-5 (Estonian Research Council) and EKKM14-344 (Estonian Ministry of Education and Research). Indexed by the MLA Directory of Periodicals (EBSCO), Central and Eastern European Online Library (C.E.E.O.L.), Open Folklore Project. Copyright belongs to the authors and the ISFNR Committee on Charms, Charmers and Charming ISSN 2228-1355 https://doi.org/10.7592/Incantatio Contents https://doi.org/10.7592/Incantatio2019_8 Introduction Svetlana Tsonkova 7 https://doi.org/10.7592/Incantatio2019_8_Introduction “The Flying Charm: To Cologne in the Wine Cellar. On the History of a Scholarly Legend” 9 Willem de Blécourt https://doi.org/10.7592/Incantatio2019_8_Blecourt “Wicked Dreams, Teary Eyes, and Salty Noses: Elvish Pathologies and Folkloric Exorcisms from Medieval Germanic Europe” 29 Karel Fraaije https://doi.org/ 10.7592/Incantatio2019_8_Fraaije “Angels, Thieves and Narratives: A Case of Latvian Thief Binding Charms” 59 Toms Ķencis https://doi.org/ 10.7592/Incantatio2019_8_Kencis “Medicine and Magic During the English Witch-trials: Negotiating legality between religion and practice” 77 Annabel Macpherson https://doi.org/ 10.7592/Incantatio2019_8_Macpherson “Fear, Superstition and Bargaining: A Curse as a Threat in Old Norse Literature” 90 Anna Solovyeva https://doi.org/ 10.7592/Incantatio2019_8_Solovyeva Why Is It Essential to Study Verbal Magic from Witch Trials? 113 Emese Ilyefalvi https://doi.org/ 10.7592/Incantatio2019_8_Ilyefalvi BOOK REVIEWS 128 https://doi.org/ 10.7592/Incantatio2019_8_BookReviews Eleonora Cianci, The German Tradition of the Three Good Brothers Charm, Göppingen: Kümmerle Verlag, 2013 by Nicholas M. Wolf) Vilmos Keszeg, ed., Rontók, gyógyítók, áldozatok - Történetek és élettör- ténetek (Cursers, Healers, Victims – Tales and Life Stories), Kolozsvár: Erdélyi Múzeum-Egyesület, 2012 by Svetlana Tsonkova Sisinieva legenda v fol’klornyh i rukopisnyh tradizijah Blizhnego Vostoka, Balkan i Vostochnoj Evropy. Moskva: Indrik, 2017. // The Sissinius legend in the folklore and handwritten traditions of Near East, Balkans and Eastern Europe. Moscow: Indrik, 2017 by Anna Solovyeva CONFERENCE REPORT https://doi.org/ 10.7592/Incantatio2019_8_Report 140 by Svetlana Tsonkova https://doi.org/10.7592/Incantatio2019_8_Introduction INTRODUCTION It is an honor to welcome the readers to the eighth issue of Incantatio! This is not simply a scholarly journal, this is a scholarly institution, in the best sense of the word. First and foremost, Incantatio stands for academic authenticity, productivity and communication. It encourages vibrant research and establishes stable continuity in the field. The current issue fulfils this goals completely, providing a platform for presentation of both accomplished results and future projects. In line with the previous years’ tradition, this current issue of Incantatio is an outcome form the regular conference on verbal charms, which took place in Budapest, Hungary in December 8th-10th, 2017. It contains six articles, three book reviews, presentation of charms database and a report from the above-said conference. Unfortunately, the planned new section Interview with Charms Researcher turned out to be impossible to include, due to the responsible party’s sudden inability to prepare it. Hopefully, this section will find its place in some of the future issues of Incantatio. The articles discuss and analyze English, Dutch, Hungarian, Latvian, Me- dieval Germanic and Old Norse verbal magic. As a main common feature, all the studies examine the specific verbal charms as integral parts of a broader cultural context. The analyzed verbal magic texts and practices are linked to popular beliefs, everyday necessities, learned discourses, didactive and propa- ganda agendas, confessional backgrounds, institutional sanctions and individual opinions. Verbal charms, charmers and charming are studied as distinct cultural phenomena – a crossing-point between spirituality and practicality, a contact zone of belief, languages and emotions, a sphere of constant, contested and contesting interpretations and re-interpretations. The current issue’s contributors stand at various stages of their academic paths – from well-established names through accelerating careers to begin- ning studies. Regardless of age and rank, all the authors worked diligently and devotedly, and this is visible in their texts. I would like to cordially thank them all! Their contributions are all valuable pieces on their own accord. When collected together in Incantatio, they form an important corpus of secondary literature on verbal magic. I also very thankful to Jonathan Roper, who again was of big help with wise advises and suggestions, and the persons who prepared the volume 8. As the eighth issue of Incantatio heads to the press, I hope it is anticipated by the entire scholarly community. I believe this anticipation will be justified, that every colleague will find here a bright and relevant picture of the thriving scholarship on verbal magic. Svetlana Tsonkova, guest editor https://doi.org/10.7592/Incantatio2019_8_Blecourt THE FLYING CHARM: TO COLOGNE IN THE WINE CELLAR. ON THE HISTORY OF A SCHOLARLY LEGEND Willem de Blécourt Meertens Institute, Amsterdam [email protected] Abstract: The charm Over Hedges and Bushes (Dutch: Over heg en haag; Eng- lish: Over Thick and Over Thin; German: Oben aus und nirgend an) primarily occurs within the legend Following the Witch. It is impossible to study the one without the other. The crux of the legend consists of the pendant charm Through Thick and Through Thin and equivalents, which ridicules the original charm. In this contribution, both the modern European distribution of the legend and its earlier history are investigated from a Dutch perspective. It is argued that the pendant charm is the modern version of calling on God during a witches’ flight or a witches’ banquet. This change made the legend, previously used to underline the reality of the witches’ flight, into a joke. It transfigured the deadly fall from the air, which earlier was a warning against conversing with demons, into a hazardous undertaking which affected bodily apparel. It questioned the actions of men who tried to follow the superstitions of women. Yet the legend will not have been understood everywhere in the same way. Keywords: migratory legends, witches’ flight, charm, satire. The twentieth-century Dutch-language versions of the charm Over Hedges and Bushes to the Wine Cellar in Cologne are embedded in two stories. The first is an adapted version of the Migratory Legend Following the Witch. The second story is the one about the lover discovering that his girl-friend is a witch and ending the relationship (De Blécourt 2017). In contrast to elsewhere in Western Europe, in Dutch the charm is supplemented with a destination, to Cologne in the Wine Cellar, which adds a third story, The Ride With the Fairies. The following is an example of the legend: On the heath in Genk lived a woman with her daughter, but they were ill-famed. People told a lot of things about that woman. A boy courted the daughter, but a friend of him warned him that the woman was a witch. Incantatio 8 9 Willem de Blécourt The next time when he visited them the boy pretended to be drunk and saw that the woman took a jar out of the chimney. She put the ointment [out of the jar] on herself and then on her daughter and said: May the devil carry us over hedge and bush to Cologne in the wine cellar. Then they flew off, out of the fireplace. When they were gone the boy also wanted to go to the wine cellar. He copied everything he had seen and heard, but he made a mistake with the words and said: May the devil carry me through hedge and bush to Cologne in the wine cellar. The devil took him and carried him through hedges and bushes and thorns to Cologne. When he arrived he was not wearing anything anymore and bled everywhere. The woman was angry and to punish him she gave him two cow’s legs. The black Friars brought the boy back home for he could not do that on his own. But he kept the cow’s legs. This story, which I have slightly abridged, was told to the legend collector Fer- nand Beckers in 1947 by an eighty-one-years-old man at Sint-Huibrechts-Hern, a village in the Belgium province of Limburg, about twenty kilometers due west of Maastricht (Beckers 1947: 137-138). It was the first of over a hundred stories about the witches’ journey to the wine cellar which were collected by students in Flanders (Dutch-speaking Belgium) over the next fifty-five years (Van Effelterre 2005). For the most part these stories are indexed under nr. 511 (Sinninghe 1943: 84-85). They exhibit the usual variation; for instance, the devil is not mentioned everywhere as the actual carrier and the courtship occurs in only about one third of the stories.