thesis, adieu! also spancel and T.H. White
One way or another, good or bad or somewhere in between, the thesis is done. I turned it in for binding so at least for the time being, it’s off my desk. Sigh.
As I now have to catch up on about two weeks’ of grading, I am still swamped, but at least I get to write in pencil for a bit.
In unrelated news, I am curious about a passage in T.H. White and thought I’d air the question I had in reading recently, pasted from another source which shall remain unlinked (of my authorship and maintenance, though, of course):
I am absolutely certain that I have read this somewhere besides T.H. White, so I thought I’d tap the collective brain of my brilliant and well-read friends list.
That part where Morgause takes the “spancel” (the tape made from the skin of a dead man) and uses it to catch a sleeping Arthur around the neck and thus make him fall in love with her — does this have a source? I thought it did, but back when I first read this book, I didn’t realize that “contemporary witchcraft manuals” often had no problems with taking stuff out of fiction to weave the stuff of their spells and speculations, so I might have the cart before the horse, or however that metaphor would go. If the place I read it got it from White it annihilates my working thesis. But I’m still interested in discovering the origins of this bit.
Anybody know or know where to look?
ETA: I should have been more specific — I’m certain I read it in relation to using a gruesome sort of cord or tape or ligature made of skin in a love spell of the compelling type before. The source was something occult-related, probably some non-academic reporting of a supposed ancient witchy thing or other. That doesn’t mean I’m not interested in where *that* may have come from, but what I’m hoping is that there is a similar Gaelic spell or medieval grimoire thing that might speak of the uses of the flesh of the dead to compel love.
So. Clueless here, but flipping through some folklore in between ever so studiously researching and grading (ha!).
Bebopalula said,
June 14, 2008 at 4:04 pm
The spancel is noted in Piers Anthonys book, “Current Events”. However in this book the spancel was created by Morganna, and was taken from a Living man, who died as a result of bleeding to death from the spancel being taken from him. According to the book, Morganna was the first to use the spancel, created it for the purpose of making unsuspecting Arthur fall in love with her, so therefore it must have come from her teacher the sorcerer Merlin.
Eamonn P. Kelly said,
May 11, 2009 at 5:27 pm
This is an Irish folk custom referred to in Dinneen’s Irish-English dictionary under ‘Buarac”
‘Buarach bháis, an unbroken hoop of skin cut with incantation from a corpse across the entire body from shoulder to footsole and wrapped in silk of the colours of the rainbow and used as a spancel to tie the legs of a person to produce certain effects by witchcraft (Con. Folk tales).’ (P. S. Dinneen, Foclóir Gaedilge agus Béarla an Irish-English Dictionary (Dublin, 1927), 136).
Hope this is of use to you,
Regards,
Eamonn P. Kelly,
Keeper of Irish Antiquities.
National Museum of Ireland