English Charms of the Seventeenth Century.
In a Ms. (Cod. Gaster, No. 1562), written mostly by a certain Thomas Parker in the years 1693-5 and containing astrological horoscopes and nativities, there are towards the end also a few charms, written by the same hand. The Ms. has evidently passed from the first writer into the hands of others addicted like him to the study of astrology, and they have added between the two original sections a number of other nativities and sundry notes of a mixed character, among which is, for example, Lord Wharton's Satyr on ye Judge, 1726, which is the latest date mentioned in the Ms. But that part of it which is written by Parker is the most interesting. It includes a manual of leechcraft, or, better, of "astronomicall elections for physick and chyrurgery depending upon the place and course of the moone." He has compiled also a perpetual calendar for Easter and an "Almanack for 34 yeares," from 1696 to 1731; short chronologies and descriptions of natural phenomena, the number of parish churches in every shire and the number of shires in England and Wales; "Of the cause of severall things" in a poem, and 15 distiches on vapour, rain, hail, earthquakes; etc. He knows Latin and Greek, and writes the Greek words in Greek letters. He also gives us the names and the Seals of the seven Archangels, viz. Michael, Gabriel, Samael, Raphael, Sachiel, Anael, Asael, and Gapriel (?) and "five infernal kings":—Sitrael, Malanta, Thamaor, Falaur, and Sitrami; and on the last page but two (f. 157b) we find the following stanza:—
"Excess of wealth great pourful God,
I do not wish to see;
Extreame of want and poverty
Aflict not Lord on mee.
For since the one exalts too high,
The other brings too low;
A mean therefore for natures need,
Great God on me bestow."
Sufficient has now been said to characterise the writer of this Ms., who must have found the charms in the original from which he took most of the materials of his book.
I am reproducing them here exactly as they are in the Ms.
