If something is to be caused to happen or prevented then the following
Charm of Making is intoned three times (this charm invokes the Powers of
Fire and Air):
Anál nathrach, orth' bháis's bethad, do chél dénmha
I sent this note out to a number of internet lists some years ago in response to a query I
received.
The mystery of Merlin's Charm of Making is, alas, no longer a mystery. Although Merlin and
Morgana both pronounce things differently from each other, and even
Merlin has two sounds which to me sound like phonemes but which must be allophonic, I get the
following from the Charm of Making in John Boorman's film
Excalibur:
/ana:l nathrakh, u:rth va:s bethud, dokhje:l djenve:/
It's not Welsh! It looks very much like an attempt at Old Irish. (One wonders where Boorman got
it.) Following is the best I can do at reconstructing reasonable Old
Irish from it. I have normalized to Modern Irish orthography to indicate lenition.
In Old Irish
Anál nathrach, orth' bháis's bethad, do chél dénmha
In Modern Irish:
Anáil nathrach, ortha bháis is beatha, do chéal déanaimh
In English: Serpent's breath, charm of death and life, thy omen of making.
anál nathrach = breath of serpent
orth' bháis 's bethad = spell of death and of life
do chél dénmha = thy omen of making
anál fem. -á stem 'breath, breathing'
nathair fem. -k stem 'snake, serpent' g. sg. nathrach
ortha fem. -n stem 'prayer; incantation, spell', from Latin oratio
bás mas. -o stem 'death' g. sg. báis
ocus conj. 'and' here shortened to 's
betha mas. -t stem 'life' g.sg. bethad
do prn. 'thy' Usually unstressed
cél mas. -u stem 'omen, augury, portent'
dénumh mas. -m stem 'making, doing.' g.sg. dénmha
Modern Irish would have the -is in bháis as a /sh/ sound, but it might not have been so palatalized
in the Old Irish period; and the nonpalatal 's of 'and' ought to
reinforce that. The third part of the charm could also be dochél dénmha 'an evil omen of making,'
but that suits the sense badly. The word do 'thy' is usually
unstressed in speech but what can you do...
Note that Merlin says dénmhe, which ought to be dénmha; perhaps there is some sort of
'incantation register' in which a final vowel can be altered in this way.... In
any case, I am less than happy with the third part of this. I'd like to have seen an imperative or
hortative, but verb-first syntax precludes even dénae, the imperative of
do-gní (from which the verbal noun dénumh is formed), which anyway doesn't have the nominal
formative -mh.
I forwarded this file to CELTIC-L, WELSH-L, GAELIC-L SF-LOVERS and LINGUIST as it is
of linguistic, cultural and cult-film interest. I would be interesed in
hearing from specialists in Old Irish as to their opinions of this. There are other possibilities for
the retro-translation, and indeed the use of a Latin loanword, given the
context, is problematic.
Michael Everson, [email protected], Baile Átha Cliath, 1997-03-20