Cornwall: charms and prophetic powers part 2 – serpents

Hunt scatters them a little in this chapter, but there are enough serpent charms to make a decent blog post, so I’ll gather them here. In advance I’ll flag that if you have a serpent Bjornaer magus or a snake familiar: these may refer to your character or your companion.

Do charms scale?

Hunt notes that “The body of a dead serpent, bruised on the wound…is said to be an infallible remedy for its bite” My question is: does this scale? Can you mice up a dragon and turn it into poultices to cure the people made sick by its vapours? Similarly, he later says: “When an adder or snake is seen, a circle is to be rapidly drawn around it, and the sign of the cross made within it, while the two first verses of the 68th Psalm are repeated : “Let God arise, let his enemies be scattered; let them also that hate him flee before him.
” As smoke is driven away, so drive them away ; as wax melteth before the fire, so let the wicked perish at the presence of God.”

When a child, I well remember being shown a snake, not yet dead, within a circle of this kind ; the gardener who drew my attention to the reptile informing me that he had charmed it in the manner related. ” Likewise, does this work with dragons? Is it a faerie ward?

Milpreves

The downs of Cornwall, particularly near Land’s End, are thick with adders at certain times of year, and the best way to protect yourself is to carry an adder stone, or “milpreve”. These are created when many adders get together. Hunt, rational explanation at the ready, suggests these are madrepore corals which have washed up on the shore. Let us temporise by saying that milpreves look a lot like coralline limestone, even if they are made of young, petrified snakes. These are a vis source.

Time for a quote “Camden asserts that one of the prevailing superstitions concerning them was that, about midsummer-eve, they all met together in companies, and, joining their heads, began a general hiss, which they continued until a kind of bubble was formed, which immediately hardened, and gave to the finder prosperity in all his undertakings.” If it gives general luck, then the vis source’s secondary power seems to be that it grants a minor Virtue.  Perhaps it gives a reroll or a Confidence point?

Later, Hunt mentions a source which calls these stones a “milprer”, meaning “a thousand worms”. They find a sleeping snake, say a charm and “strike it with a hazel wand in the centre of its spirae.” which means “coils” but I’ve included it because Spira seems like a great maga name (it’s feminine) and I want to keep it for later.

Concerted action

Adders in Cornwall seem to come to each other’s aid, when one is trapped or attacked. Do they have a communication system, a group mind, or are they the servants of a faerie? In the story given by Hunt, a man traps an adder with a pail of milk, and then when thousands of others come to aid it, all of his neighbours get together to make a furze (bracken) pile over them and incinerate the lot.

Druid rings

Time for a direct quote/ This is Carew in Hunt.

“The country people retaine a conceite, that the snakes, by their breathing upon a hazel-wand, doe make a stone ring of blew colour, in which there appeareth the yellow figure of a snake, and that beasts which are stung, being given to drink of the water wherein this stone hath bene socked, will there-through recover.” This was clearly one of the so-called “Druidic rings,” examples of which may be seen in our museums, which have been found in England and in Ireland. It is curious that at the glassworks ot Murano, near Venice, they still make rings, or beads, precisely resembling he ancient ones, and these are used largely as money in Africa.” Again, a vis source, and one a familiar might make. Hunt notes the same things are called “Druid stones” or “Druid glass” in various other Celtic countries.

A childhood familiar?

SNAKES AVOID THE ASH-TREE.
IT is said that no kind of snake is ever found near the ” ashen- tree,” and that a branch of the ash-tree will prevent a snake from coming near a person. A child who was in the habit of receiving its portion of bread and milk at the cottage door, was found to be in the habit of sharing its food with one of the poisonous adders. The reptile came regularly every morning, and the child, pleased with the beauty of his companion, encouraged the visits. The babe and adder were close friends.

Eventually this became known to the mother, and, finding it to be a matter of difficulty to keep the snake from the child whenever it was left alone, and she was frequently, being a labourer in the fields, compelled to leave her child to shift for itself, she adopted the precaution of binding an ” ashen-twig ” about its body.

The adder no longer came near the child ; but from that day forward the child pined, and eventually died, as all around said, through grief at having lost the companion by whom it had been fascinated.

So, that’s an origin story for an apprentice.

Tomorrw: more of Hunt’s random stuff thrown together, and why goo in mineshafts might be animal vis, or from beyond the stars.