Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 21, 1910.djvu/488

 446 The Ancient Hymn-Charms of Ireland.

personal or impersonal, mana or deity, outside the actual recitation of the words. In any case, the closeness of the resemblance was so universally recognised in the Middle Ages that we find in ancient service books, such as the Leofric Missal and the Stowe Missal^ the Book of Nunna Minster, and The Book of Came, — books which bear the marks of strong Celtic influence, — not only the Lorica of Gildas or Lodgen frequently taking its place among the hymns and collects, but charms for sore eyes, charms against the evil eye, charms to extract a thorn, and the enumeration of diseases and of parts of the body afflicted with them such as we find in the Loricas, with prayers for deliverance alike from the attacks of monsters and of powers of necromancy. Hence, to return to the original subject, we find hymns for charming away plague or peril among the canticles and hymns of the Irish Liber Hyimioriini. The step "from Charm to Prayer," as Mr. Marett might call it, is a short and easy one.

Eleanor Hull.