<span style="font-family: arial,sans-serif;"> </span><br style="font-family: arial,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,sans-serif;">L O W L A N D S - L - 28 April 2007 - Volume 04</span><br style="font-family: arial,sans-serif;">
<br style="font-family: arial,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,sans-serif;">=========================================================================</span><br style="font-family: arial,sans-serif;"><br style="font-family: arial,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-family: arial,sans-serif;">From: </span><span id="_user_altkehdinger@freenet.de" style="color: rgb(121, 6, 25); font-family: arial,sans-serif;">Jonny Meibohm <<a href="mailto:altkehdinger@freenet.de">
altkehdinger@freenet.de</a>></span><br style="font-family: arial,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,sans-serif;">Subject: LL-L "Language maintenance" 2007.04.27 (08) [E]</span><br style="font-family: arial,sans-serif;">
<br style="font-family: arial,sans-serif;"><div style="font-family: arial,sans-serif;" id="mb_1">
<div>
<div><span>Beste
Margaret,</span></div>
<div><span></span> </div>
<div><span>Du
schreyvst:</span></div><span class="q">
<div><span></span> </div>
<div><span>> The verb in standard
English would be 'charm', I think, though there are several regional dialects in
</span></div>
<div><span>> which the verb 'hex'
would also be okay. Phrases would be 'she charmed off/away the wart', or
'she can </span></div>
<div><span>> hex away warts', and
sometimes 'she's a wart doctor' (an encoded way of saying she's a
witch/wise-woman).</span></div>
<div><span></span> </div></span>
<div><span>Thanks!</span></div>
<div><span></span> </div>
<div><span>On German TV we have a
U.S. series called <strong><em>Charmed</em></strong>, dealing with some witches
and their power. Nice girls, them ;-)! Could be interesting to find out if it
derives from the French word <strong>'charme' </strong>or if it is
connate with<strong> <em>'shamanism'</em>.</strong></span></div>
<div> </div>
<div align="left">Allerbest!</div>
<div align="left"> </div>
<div align="left">Jonny Meibohm<br><br>----------<br><br>From: <span id="_user_heatherrendall@tiscali.co.uk" style="color: rgb(0, 104, 28);">"<a href="mailto:heatherrendall@tiscali.co.uk">heatherrendall@tiscali.co.uk
</a>"</span><span style="font-weight: normal;" class="lg"> <<a href="mailto:heatherrendall@tiscali.co.uk">heatherrendall@tiscali.co.uk</a>></span><br>Subject: LL-L "History" 2007.04.27 (08) [E]<br><p>
As a child in Sussex, plagued by warts on my two hands, I was
advised by an old countryman (really!) to rub them with a halfpenny. It
had to be a halfpenny, not any other coin.</p>
<p>I did it and then forgot all about it, until some months later when
my mother noticed that they had disappeared!. So she tried it on one on
her thumb which had been there for decades and it too disappeared
within weeks!</p>
<p>I related this to someone with a scientific background many years
later and it was suggested that the copper content in the ha'penny
might have been the active ingredient!</p>
<p>It certainly doesn't work any more using a modern coin - apparently
the copper content nowadays is either non-existent or v v low.</p>
<p>On Anglesey in the village next to me was a 'wise woman' and people used to travel for miles to have her 'charm their warts'.</p>
<p>Another old remedy was to catch a large slug and spear it on a blackthorn thorn. As it died and shrivelled, so too the warts!</p>
<p>Does anyone have any old rhymes for charming? I used to love the one against worms in our AHD reader: </p>
<p>Gang uz, Nesso mit niun nessinchilinon etc</p>
Heather<br><br>----------<br><br>From: <span id="_user_mrdreyer@lantic.net" style="color: rgb(0, 104, 28);">Mark Dreyer <<a href="mailto:mrdreyer@lantic.net">mrdreyer@lantic.net</a>></span><span style="font-weight: normal;" class="lg">
</span><br>
Subject: LL-L "History" 2007.04.26 (05) [E]<br><br><div><span>Dear All:</span></div>
<div><span></span> </div>
<div><span>Subject: L-Lowlands History<br></span></div>
<div><span><font size="2">If I may stick my oar in here,
'Wicca' & all it is associated with owes more to A E Waite, Dion Fortune
& Stella Matutiana (need I add Alistair Crawley) than anything in what Ron
has elegantly defined as volksglauben. Some of my earliest reading included
Frazer's 'Golden Bough' (my grandmother was an anthropologist) & some of my
later adolescent reading, which, unhappily I had to collect myself at my own
expence, included The Golden Dawn & Western Mysticism.</font></span></div>
<div><span></span> </div>
<div><span><font size="2">Hear me: There is a chasm as wide as
Worlds between the old stuff & the new stuff, & the most significant
differencence between the two is that the Old stuff works. My satisfaction with
Judaism is magnified by their matter-of-fact acceptence of the phenomena. My
mentor Gidon Yavin wandered a bit in his youth too, & makes the point
that Israel is enjoined only NOT to Worship or venerate them as Powers, being
created even as we are, & fellows in our Creation. That we do not know
enough about the World for this knowledge to be part of our present scientific
canon shows a shortcoming in our understanding, not a break with science. The
germ theory of disease was once the same, & it took men like Pierre Curie to
fix that. Gidon also adds, by the way, that monotheism leads to the
essence rather than to these derivatives, which is what we aught to be
about.</font></span></div>
<div><span></span> </div>
<div><span><font size="2">But THIS is the actual
point of my letter. I go with Ron about the perversion of the modern psyche, but
truly, it goes back further than the twentieth century. Voltaire had a couple of
times to contend with it. Only slightly more than diligent reading of the times
makes it clear that the horrors of witch-hunting in the European context were
not a Medieval phenomenon: Nor did the institution come out of the Dark Ages,
raging & burning. No. Witch-hunting & witchcraft are phenomena of
the later Rennaisance. Literati & clerics of the Middle-Ages had a hearty
& healthy cynicism of it. & peasants, as we know, only concerned
themselves with whether it worked or not, & if it did, they remembered it
& preserved this cunning.</font></span></div>
<div><span></span> </div>
<div><span><font size="2">Many modern 'discoveries' go back to
traditional medicine, like salacylic acid from green willow bark for headaches,
foxglove for heart-pain, feverfew for migraine, hemp for glaucoma, mutterkorn to
hasten birth (or procure abortion), buchu for prostate problems, chincona for
malaria, the list is huge if not endless. Some things had to wait for
rediscovery by science, like Alexander Fleming's penicillin, but when I got a
veld-sore in my childhood, an infected scratch, the remedy was a bread paultice,
in which penicillin was encouraged to grow on the wet bread & applied
directly to the sore. Jenner's was only a rediscovery of the fact that a cow-pox
infection protected the patient from subsequent small-pox. The more subtle
psychological thrust of folk-healing I will not go into now, but to shake my
head at the modern medical acceptence of placebos, without exploring the
phenomenon to better purpose.</font></span></div>
<div><span></span> <br>----------<br><br>From: R. F. Hahn <<a href="mailto:sassisch@yahoo.com" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)">sassisch@yahoo.com
</a>><br>Subject: Beliefs<br><br>Heather, we were taught to wait until full moon, cut a small piece off a wart, bury it in a flower pot and then leave the pot on a window sill in view of the moon. Apparently, this was an adaptation from burying the tissue in the ground.
<br><br>Thanks for sharing your very interesting thoughts, Mark. I go along with you that the said "perversion" goes back to earlier times.<br><br>We shouldn't lose sight of the fact that in past times religions were
<span style="font-style: italic;">instituted</span>, besides inherited. The former has changed in a few countries that have separation of religion and state, and even in many countries in which they are not separated, individuals now have the freedom of spiritual exploration and choice. As for the latter, there appears to be a bit less rigidity now also, as fewer parents demand that their adult children stay with their religions.
<br></div><br></div></div>
</div><span style="font-family: arial,sans-serif;">In the past, if a king or whatever other type of ruler converted to a religion there was no question that all commoners convert to it also. At least this was so in Europe and in the Middle East. Since this was not a matter of choice, and since other beliefs tended to be outlawed, the previous beliefs went underground. Most of the time they'd gradually fade away, but not without having colored the new religion. The heritage and influences of Crypto-Pagans throughout Europe and of Crypto-Jews (
</span><span style="font-style: italic; font-family: arial,sans-serif;">marranos</span><span style="font-family: arial,sans-serif;">, </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-family: arial,sans-serif;">xuetes</span><span style="font-family: arial,sans-serif;">
) and Crypto-Muslims (</span><span style="font-style: italic; font-family: arial,sans-serif;">moriscos</span><span style="font-family: arial,sans-serif;">, </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-family: arial,sans-serif;">
mouriscos</span><span style="font-family: arial,sans-serif;">) of post-Inquisition Spain and Portugal, for instance, probably reinforced the retention of pre-Christian elements of belief and ritual.</span><br style="font-family: arial,sans-serif;">
<br style="font-family: arial,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,sans-serif;">Mark, I guess you'd agree that in various Jewish traditions there are what appear to be pre-Judaic elements, usually shrugged off as superstition. Off the top of my head, I can think of the "evil eye," a tradition that appears to cover most of Europe and the Middle East, Central Asia, up to Southern Asia (and in later times migrated to Jewish, Christian and Muslim enclaves elsewhere).
</span><br style="font-family: arial,sans-serif;"><br style="font-family: arial,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,sans-serif;">Hebrew: עין הרע </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-family: arial,sans-serif;">
`ayn hara`<br></span><span style="font-family: arial,sans-serif;">Yiddish: עין הרע </span><i style="font-family: arial,sans-serif;">aynore<br></i><span style="font-family: arial,sans-serif;">Ladino: עין הרע </span><font style="font-family: arial,sans-serif;" size="-1">
ainará</font><br style="font-family: arial,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,sans-serif;">Arabic: عين حسد </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-family: arial,sans-serif;">`ayin ħasad</span><br style="font-family: arial,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-family: arial,sans-serif;">Turkish: </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-family: arial,sans-serif;">nazar</span><span style="font-family: arial,sans-serif;">, </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-family: arial,sans-serif;">
kem göz<br></span><span style="font-family: arial,sans-serif;">Urdu: نظر) براﺋﻰ) ((burā'i) nazar)<br>Hindi: बुरि नज़र (buri nazar)<br>Romany: </span><font style="font-style: italic; font-family: arial,sans-serif;" size="-1">
jakhalo</font><br style="font-family: arial,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,sans-serif;">Tamil: (மெய்கந்dஅர) ணஅவுரு ((meykandar) ṇāvuru)</span><i style="font-family: arial,sans-serif;"><br>
</i><span style="font-family: arial,sans-serif;">Greek: </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-family: arial,sans-serif;">μάτιασμα </span><span style="font-family: arial,sans-serif;">(mátiasma), </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-family: arial,sans-serif;">
βασκανία </span><span style="font-family: arial,sans-serif;">(</span><span style="font-style: italic; font-family: arial,sans-serif;">baskanía</span><span style="font-family: arial,sans-serif;">)</span><br style="font-family: arial,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-family: arial,sans-serif;">Romanian: </span><i style="font-family: arial,sans-serif;">deochi</i><span style="font-family: arial,sans-serif;"> </span><br style="font-family: arial,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,sans-serif;">
Italian: </span><i style="font-family: arial,sans-serif;">malocchio</i><br style="font-family: arial,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,sans-serif;">Sicilian: </span><i style="font-family: arial,sans-serif;">jettatura
</i><span style="font-family: arial,sans-serif;">, </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-family: arial,sans-serif;">mal'uocchiu</span><font style="font-family: arial,sans-serif;" face="Verdana,Tahoma,Arial" size="-1">
</font><br style="font-family: arial,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,sans-serif;">Spanish: </span><i style="font-family: arial,sans-serif;">mal de ojo</i><br style="font-family: arial,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,sans-serif;">
Portuguese: </span><i style="font-family: arial,sans-serif;">olho gordo,</i><span style="font-family: arial,sans-serif;"> </span><i style="font-family: arial,sans-serif;">quebranto<br></i><span style="font-family: arial,sans-serif;">
French: </span><i style="font-family: arial,sans-serif;">mauvais œil<br></i><span style="font-family: arial,sans-serif;">Hungarian: </span><i style="font-family: arial,sans-serif;">szemmel verés<br></i><span style="font-family: arial,sans-serif;">
Finnish: </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-family: arial,sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: italic;">p</span>aha silmä</span><br style="font-family: arial,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,sans-serif;">
German: </span><i style="font-family: arial,sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: italic;">b</span>öser Blick<br></i><span style="font-family: arial,sans-serif;">Dutch: </span><i style="font-family: arial,sans-serif;">boze oog
<br></i><span style="font-family: arial,sans-serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Russian: </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-family: arial,sans-serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">сглаз </span>
<span style="font-family: arial,sans-serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">(</span><span style="font-style: italic; font-family: arial,sans-serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">sglaz</span><span style="font-family: arial,sans-serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
)</span><br style="font-family: arial,sans-serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="font-family: arial,sans-serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Sumerian: </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-family: arial,sans-serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
IG-HUL</span><span style="font-family: arial,sans-serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> ("eye-evil")</span><br style="font-family: arial,sans-serif;"><br style="font-family: arial,sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: italic; font-family: arial,sans-serif;">
Keyn aynore oyf aykh!</span><br style="font-family: arial,sans-serif;"><br style="font-family: arial,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,sans-serif;">Reinhard/Ron</span><span style="font-style: italic; font-family: arial,sans-serif;">
<br><br></span>