In the 1981 movie Excalibur, where does the "charm of making" incantation used by Merlin come from?

Question

You probably know that spell, sound like "Anall nathrach, oorfas bethud, dorhiel dienvay"... I'd like to know if John Boorman found it somewhere and put it in the film, or if it was made up for the film.

Answers found from independent research and pointing to a text in "old Irish" seem contrived and wrong, not to mention that the pronunciation in the film is not compatible with the Irish language.

Oh, yeah, the Everson solution is what I meant when I said "contrived and wrong".

Answer 1

Charm Of Making

For those of you in the Know, (and you Know who you are) this is the definitive answer to that question that everyone who is a fan of John Boorman's "Excalibur" has always wanted to know.....

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 (1981):

/a'na:l na theta 'rax, u:r theta va:s be' theta ud, dox'je:l 'djenve:/

It's certainly 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. It is probably a defective reconstruction. 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. -ástem 'breath, breathing' nathair fem. -k stem 'snake, serpent' g. sg. nathrach ortha fem. -n stem 'prayer; Incantation, spell', from Latin oratio bás masc. -o stem ' death ' g. sg. báis ocus conj. ' and ' here shortened to 's betha masc. -t stem ' life ' g.sg. bethad do prn. ' thy ' Usually unstressed cél masc. -u stem ' omen, augury, portent ' dénumh masc. -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 would be interested 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.

(credit to Michael Everson for this masterful investigation!

Source: www.gingerbreadhouse.demon.co.uk/archive/2004_07_01_archive.htm

Answer 2

This Site Might Help You.

RE:
In the 1981 movie Excalibur, where does the "charm of making" incantation used by Merlin come from?
You probably know that spell, sound like "Anall nathrach, oorfas bethud, dorhiel dienvay"... I'd like to know if John Boorman found it somewhere and put it in the film, or if it was made up for the film.

Answers found from independent research and pointing to a text in "old...

Answer 3

I don't think anyone outside of those involved in the film production actually knows for sure, but my best guess is that Boorman wrote something in Old Irish and then changed it to sound better (or perhaps make it more pronounceable.)

The charm of making fits in perfectly with the motifs in the rest of the film. If he had just found it somewhere, then I would venture to guess the only way for it to fit so perfectly would be to change the story to suit it. Happening to find some obscure text that coincidentally fit so well seems unlikely. That would make the said text pretty much the basis for his unique take on the legend of Merlin, so I think the source would be more well-known if it existed.

Answer 4

Excalibur Movie

Answer 5

Charm Of Making

Answer 6

Tchlagta on Everything2.com states...

my translations: Anáil nathrach, ortha bhas betha, do cheol déanta.

* Breath of the serpent, spell of life, the song for the maker.
* Breath of serpent, spell of death and life, your song of making.

In his (incredably inaccurate) book The 21 Lessons of Merlyn, Douglas Monroe says that it is an ancient Welsh Druid spell. This is probably untrue.
It is Gaelic, for one (provided the hypothesis is correct); for another, it is from a film, not from any ancient druid text--mainly because the druids didn't have texts. Their religion forbid any transcription of its dogma.
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and the reason for the utterance/summoning...

MERLIN
Now look, I once stood exposed to the Dragon's Breath so that a man could lie one night with a woman. It took me nine moons to recover. And all for this lunacy called love, this mad distemper that strikes down both beggar and king! Never again! Never!

He got angry because Arthur asked him to make Guenevere love him. Merlin makes reference to the summoning of the Dragon for Uther who thereby took the shape of the Duke of Cornwall, his castle and his wife, Igrayne (He didn't even bothered taking off his 35kg full plate armour by the way). Cornwall died in the process and Arthur was conceived.
A legend is born.
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In Trivia section of IMDB for Excalibur...

The Charm of Making spoken by Merlin & Morgana is an attempt at Old Irish that translates to: "Serpent's breath, charm of death and life, thy omen of making." The phonetic rendering, as spoken in the movie, is: /ana:l nathrakh, u:rth va:s bethud, dokhje:l djenve:/. In Irish, the phrase is: 'An?il nathrach, ortha bh?is bheatha, do thuar dhéanamh', which is pronounced similarly but not exactly as in the movie.
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Nicol Williamson uttering the spell you will find on the last link

Answer 7

It is the Charm of making and it's in old Irish