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We briefly touched on the word "spell" in the text above. As we are now finished with "rune," we are left to look further into "spell," which is another Germanic word that has become intimately tied into the concepts of magic and witchcraft. "Spell" is an Anglo-Saxon word. Its spelling has remained unchanged, but its meanings have taken many turns. "Spell" had many meanings in Anglo-Saxon. It could mean narrative, history, story, fable; speech, discourse, homily; message, news; statement or observation, all according to the Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary. Many etymologists hold that the modern meaning of "spell," relating to the proper order of letters in a word, is much more recent and seems to be a re-borrowing from French. The French "espeller" derived from the continental Germanic languages. We see it in the Old Saxon "spel" and even the Old Norse "spial," both meaning to spell. The intricacies of that meaning's derivation are trivial to us, however, as it is with the older meanings that we are interested here. The idea of casting a "spell" was almost certainly developed from the concept of speech and discourse rather than the arrangement of letters. A "spell" is generally recited, not written. The concept of speech associated with "spell" is almost certainly older. It is far more widespread and established, hence our lack of that meaning appearing in Anglo-Saxon. We see the speech oriented meaning well established in the Germanic tongues from the earliest days of their developed writing. The Old High German "spel" means a story, narrative or discourse. The Old Norse "spialla" means to talk. The Gothic "spill" means a fable, myth, narrative or tale. Gothic also had "spilla," meaning to speak or discourse and "spillon," meaning to relate or give report. One set of original meanings of "spell" survives in English as the substantif a discourse or sermon and the verb to discourse or sermonise. We also see it surviving in "gospel," which is a survival of the Anglo-Saxon "godspel," meaning the good word or more properly the good discourse. Interestingly, "spellboc," which looked a heck of a lot like our modern "spellbook," actually meant a book of sermons. Returning now to the modern idea of a "spell" as an enchantment, we see that these two words are connected not only in meaning but in formation. They both imply verbal speech. We will return to "enchantment" quite shortly, but for now it will suffice us to point out the "chant" component of the word. We can see clearly that a "spell" is a spoken (sung, intoned or chanted) formula with magical effect. What we cannot so clearly determine if this meaning was still primary in the formation of such words as "spellbind" and "spellcraft," but it hardly matters. Interestingly, the word "spellbinder" is often used to denote a speaker capable of holding an audiences attention. The word "bind" and its synonyms, such as "fascinate," also have a long standing position in magical terminology, but that is fodder for a whole different essay. The first recorded definition of "spell" as a magical enchantment occurs in 1579, in the Glossary to Spencer's Shepherd's Calendar, of which we only have the author's initials, E.K. This anonymous writer tells us that a "Spell is a kinde of verse or charme, that in eldre tymes they vsed often to say ouer evry thing that they would haue preserved, as the Nightspel for theeves, and the woodspell." It should be noted in this connection that a "charme," in this instance, could be translated as song, which leads us to our next chapter. |