think anything can be made of it, or that it ever did mean anything. There are two or three like it in the Anglo-Saxon charms in Cockayne's Book of Leechdoms, iii., 290. Some of them, though much older, are quite as nonsensical. Here is a bit of one: 'Dev, ev, dev, deev, las, druel, bepax, box, nux, bu.' It ends: 'lera, lira, tota, tanta, uel, tellus, et, ade, uirescit.' It is quite certain that this never made sense. In the one you send Tetragrammaton is of course a real word. Aon no doubt meant æon, and ame is for Amē = Amen."
Tetragrammaton is a well-known conjuration, but some of the words appear to me mere gibberish. Unless, however, some clue to their meaning can be discovered it is useless to conjecture the intended purpose of the charm.
Epworth, Lincolnshire.
[Since the above was in type, some further particulars have reached us. We learn from the Bradford Daily Telegraph (15 February, 1902) that the "old hall" where the charm was found was High Fernley Farm, Wyke, near Bradford. The farmer, Mr. Josiah Lightowler, was whitewashing the "mistal" (translated to us as "the lathe," and further explained as "a place where cattle are kept "), when the fancy struck him to remove some square pieces of wood nailed to the rafters. Behind each of these, seven in number, he found a piece of parchment inscribed as above. The "mistal" was originally part of the dwelling-house. A stone over its doorway bears the date 1696 and the initials of the builders, William and Mary Richardson of North Bierley Hall; the parents, we are told, of Dr. Richard Richardson, F.R.S., a noted botanist and antiquary in the early eighteenth century (1663-1741), the friend of Sir Hans Sloane, of Boerhaave, of Ralph Thoresby of Leeds, and other notable men of his day (Dictionary of National Biography, s. v.[1]). The first idea of the finders was that the charms were written by him, a point which could easily be ascertained, were it worth while, as many of his letters remain among the Sloane MSS. in the British Museum.
But it appears that there is another old house on the wind-
- ↑ Dr. Richardson's mother's name is here given as Susanna. The discrepancy is unimportant for our present purpose.
