![]() ![]() Lernzwecken würde man diese kostbare Arbeit auch wohl ebensowenig verwendet haben wie zu reiner Spielerei." 6 Similarly, I find it hard to consider the Kylver fuþark, for instance, in a purely secular light. Bæksted does not, to my mind, prove this satisfactorily by suggesting merely ornamental reasons in the case, for example, of the Thames scramasax, and one returns with more conviction to Krause's view: "Wahrscheinlich verfolgt auch das Futhark des Themsemessers magische Zwecke: Zu Lehr- bzw. P251 the appearance of complete fuþarks on finds widely separated in space and time can support arguments either way, but the burden of proving that such inscriptions are "purely practical" or simply ornamental rests with those who doubt magic import. When the Anglo-Saxon translator of Bede renders " litteras solutorias" as " alysendlecan rune" he does so because even in his century runes and magic were still instinctively associated. 5 Again, ![]() Some of Bæksted's own evidence can be adduced to illustrate this point. When runes were used for religious or ritualistic purposes, as in divination or casting of lots, on amulets or pagan tombstones, the primitive mind would not distinguish as readily between the magic import and efficacy of the inscription and the symbols employed as does the modern scholar in his study. afford evidence of having been conceived as possessing special magic properties." 3 How this came about in primitive communities is not difficult to conceive: even if the (still disputed) origin of the fuþark was wholly a secular and practical matter, the mere fact that runes "were employed for recording not only profane and secular utterances but also utterances of sacred and magic character" 4 is a sufficient starting point for popular ascription of magic qualities to the symbols themselves. Few will quarrel with the view that runes were certainly used for practical purposes, notably in the numerous Scandinavian memorial inscriptions of the Viking and Middle Ages but Bæksted himself allows that this was not always the case when he admits that runes, although "only in very few instances. Dividing his material into three sections - (1) "Den epigrafiske og litterære runetradition," (2) "Runerække og alfabetmagi," and (3) "Runetalmagi" - Bæksted proceeds to argue that there is no firm basis in any of these for assuming runes to have been considered primarily as instruments of magic. 2īæksted's basic contention is that runes were as secular, practical, and utilitarian a script as those of the classical world, and that any magic associations are later accretions due to the antiquarian or romanticising tendencies of subsequent generations no longer in touch with the living usage of the fuþark. A. Bæksted's recent challenge to this view, however, demands that it be vindicated at least for the purposes of the present study. The connection between Germanic runic writing - the fuþark as a script - and magical or ritualistic practices connected with runes has long been accepted as a commonplace. ![]() The two questions which this paper seeks to answer are (1) how runes and yew magic became associated, and (2) whether any elements of such association can be found to survive in later folklore and popular superstitions. The part played by the yew tree and its associated magic and superstitions in Germanic runic lore, readily acknowledged by some scholars, 1 has never to my knowledge been more fully investigated. This webpage reproduces an article in the ![]()
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