Just by chance, this book review crossed my screen at the same time as Katherine Hindley's inquiry.  Looks like it should be very helpful!

Best,
Sabina

Sabina Magliocco, Ph.D.
Professor
Department of Anthropology
California State University - Northridge
18111 Nordhoff St.
Northridge, CA  91330-8244

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Sent: Wednesday, March 05, 2014 11:51 AM
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Subject: [JFRR] The Power of Words: Studies on Charms and Charming in Europe (ed. by Kapaló, James, Éva Pócs, and William Ryan)

The Power of Words: Studies on Charms and Charming in Europe. Edited by James Kapaló, Éva Pócs, and William Ryan. 2013. Budapest and New York: Central European University Press. 325 pages. ISBN:
978-615-5225-10-9 (hard cover). 

Reviewed by Ülo Valk, University of Tartu, Estonia

[Word count: 749 words]

As a minor genre of folklore, verbal charms have often been forgotten in scholarship. However, during the last decade both oral and written charms have become a lively field of interdisciplinary studies. The present volume can be considered as the third one in the series, started by Jonathan Roper, who has edited both Charms and Charming in Europe (2004) and Charms, Charmers and Charming: International Research on Verbal Magic (2009) both published by Palgrave Macmillan.
These three books show that with roots in ancient culture and medieval Latin literary traditions charms appear as pan-European heritage, which has blended the local traditions of verbal magic.

The common core of many European charms is clearly demonstrated by Edina Bozóky in her article on medieval narrative charms. Two essays in the book discuss the early history of scholarship, when national folklore studies were established in many countries. In Norway a monumental edition of verbal magic was published in 1901-1902 by Christian Bang, whose work is discussed in an article by Arne Bugge Amundsen. In Scotland a set of six volumes of Gaelic charms was published during the period 1900-1971, prepared by Alexander Carmichael (1832-1912), whose collecting and editorial practices (often including "improvements" of recorded texts) have been studied by Domhnall Uilleam Stiubhart. Several essays in the book address multiple functions of charms in different ethnic traditions. Thus, Maarit Viljakainen has studied the image of the Virgin Mary in Finnish and Karelian birth incantations. Francesco Vaz da Silva has analyzed Portuguese moon charms to protect small children and the roots of these charms in pre-Christian magic. Emanuela Timotin has discussed Romanian charms against headache, supposedly caused by a demon (najit), and studied their early history in Greek and Slavic manuscripts. Several authors address charms from comparative and typological perspectives. Daiva Vaitkeviciene has examined parallels between Lithuanian, Latvian, and East Slavic charms that represent a common, genetically related tradition. The essay by Tatiana Agapkina and Andrei Toporkov is a contribution towards building up regional and international indexes of charm motifs as basic tools for comparison. They develop the ideas of Jonathan Roper about charms classification, based on their research on East Slavic incantations.

A whole set of articles discusses the role of Christianity and clerical traditions in practices of verbal magic. Thus, Vilmos Voigt, who has studied the historical development of Hungarian charms and charm terminology in Hungarian, has shown that their roots are in European and Christian benedictions and maledictions. Éva Pócs has explored the Christianization of the practices of Hungarian village healers and magicians as they have made use of priestly rituals, benedictions, and exorcisms. Dániel Bárth in his article has studied the role of Franciscan, Jesuit, and Benedictine orders in eighteenth-century Hungary in spreading ecclesiastic benedictions among the people. Lea Olsan has offered an extensive and many-sided overview of charms in English manuscripts from the tenth to the sixteenth century. She has studied the relationship of charms to other expressive forms, such as prayers, medical recipes, and experimenta (defined as "specified operations to achieve predicted results"). Olsan also discusses the functions and marginalization of charms, as they shift to the periphery of ecclesiastic culture. In the concluding article of the volume, Gábor Klaniczay has explored the lay uses of "efficacious words" in relation to supernatural powers and their ritual dimension as they appear in the protocols of canonization processes in Central Europe and the documents of Hungarian witch trials.

Most authors in this volume rely on historical, comparative, and philological methods, and illustrate their articles with rich sets of examples. The book is focused on verbal charms but shows that they cannot be understood as isolated phenomena because of their close relationships with benedictions, prayers, religious legends, recipes, and other genres. Charms are also embedded in their historical and cultural contexts, dominant belief systems, and the social needs of the people who carry them. Many articles offer insights into connections between literary and oral traditions and the mutual interdependence of vernacular and institutional forms of Christianity. Charms in their regional diversity appear as an integral part of the common cultural heritage of Europe. The book also shows the historical continuity of magic in Europe from Hellenism and pre-Christian traditions through the Middle Ages to the early modern and contemporary period. As a substantial contribution to the scholarship on verbal charms, the book could be of great interest to folklorists, ethnologists, anthropologists, medievalists, historians of religion, scholars of cultural history, and anybody who would like to gain new knowledge about magic in Europe.

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