by BritishFairies
January 2, 2022
[T]he oldest, and, nominally, the most weighty, authorities of the Brahmans, for their religion and institutions, are the Vedas, of which works four are usually enumerated: the Rich, or Rig-Veda; the Yajush, or Yajur-Veda; the Saman, or Sama-Veda; and the Atharvana, or Atharva-Veda. Many passages are to be found in Sanskrit writings, some in the Vedas themselves, which limit the number to three; and there is no doubt that the fourth, or Atharva-Veda, although it borrows freely from the Rich, has little in common with the others, in its general character, or in its style: the language clearly indicates a different and later era. It may, therefore, be allowably regarded rather as a supplement to three, than as one of the four, Vedas....
The Rig-Veda consists of metrical prayers, or hymns, termed Suktas, — addressed to different divinities, — each of which is ascribed to a Rishi, a holy or inspired author. These hymns are put together with little attempt at methodical arrangement, although such as are dedicated to the same deity sometimes follow in a consecutive series. There is not much connexion in the stanzas of which they are composed; and the same hymn is, sometimes, addressed to different divinities. There are, in the Veda itself, no directions for the use and application of the Suktas, no notices of the occasions on which they are to be employed, or of the ceremonies at which they are to be recited. These are pointed out, by subsequent writers, in Sutras, or precepts relating to the ritual; and, even for the reputed authors of the hymns, and for the deities in whose honour they are composed, we are, for the most part, indebted to independent authorities, especially to an Anukramanika, or index, accompanying each Veda. The Yajur-Veda ... when not borrowed from the Rich, are, mostly, brief, and in prose, and are applicable to the consecration of the utensils and materials of ceremonial worship ... The Sama-Veda is little else than a recast of the Rich, being made up, with very few exceptions, of the very same hymns, broken into parts, and arranged anew, for the purpose of being chanted on different ceremonial occasions. As far, also, as the Atharva-Veda is to be considered as a Veda, it will be found to comprise many of the hymns of the Rich.
From the extensive manner, then, in which the hymns of the Rig-Veda enter into the composition of the other three, we must, naturally, infer its priority to them ... In truth, it is to the Rig-Veda that we must have recourse, principally, if not exclusively, for correct notions of the oldest and most genuine forms of the institutions, religious or civil, of the Hindus....
Besides the Sanhitas, the designation Veda includes an extensive class of compositions, entitled, collectively, Brahmana, which all Brahmanical writers term an integral portion of the Veda....
Of the Brahmana portions of the Rig-Veda, the most interesting and important is the Aitareya Brahmana, in which a number of remarkable legends are detailed ... Connected with, and dependent upon, the Vedas generally, also are the treatises on grammar, astronomy, intonation, prosody, ritual, and the meaning of obsolete words, called the Vedangas. But these are not portions of the Veda itself, but supplementary to it, and, in the form in which we have them, are not, perhaps, altogether genuine, and, with a few exceptions, are not of much importance....
From a careful examination of the Aitareya Brahmana, with an excellent commentary by Sayana Acharya, it is sufficiently evident, that this work, at least, is of a totally distinct description from the collection of the Mantras, or the Sanhita, of the Rig-Veda.... it is, manifestly, of a date long subsequent to the original Suktas, or hymns, from the manner in which they are quoted, — not systematically, or continuously, or completely, but separately, unconnectedly, and partially; a few phrases only being given, forming the beginning, not even of an entire hymn, but of an isolated stanza, occurring in any part of the hymn, or in any part of the Sanhita.... Again, we find, in the Brahmana, the whole system of social organization developed, the distinction of caste fully established, and the Brahmana, Kshattrhja, Vaisya, and Sudra repeatedly named by their proper appellations, and discriminated by their peculiar offices and relative stations, as in the code of Manu. A cursory inspection of the Satapatha Brahmana, as far as published, and of some of its sections in manuscript, shows it to be of a character similar to the Aitareya; or it may be even, perhaps, of a later era: and we may venture to affirm, in opposition to the consentient assertions of Brahmanical scholars and critics, that neither of these works has the slightest claim to be regarded as the counterpart and contemporary of the Sanhita, or as an integral part of the Veda ...
[A]ccepting [the Brahmanas] as valuable illustrations of the application of the primitive hymns and texts of the Sanhita, we must look to the latter alone, as a safe guide, in our inquiries into the most ancient condition of the Hindus.... [T]he Veda which has been taken as the text of the following translation ... may be regarded as the source and model of the other works similarly named....
Each Sukta has, for its reputed author, a Rishi, or inspired teacher, by whom, in Brahmanical phraseology, it has been originally seen ... For the names of the Rishis, except when incidentally mentioned in the hymn, we are indebted, as above remarked, to an index of the contents of the Veda ... inasmuch as it is of later composition than the text, it may not, always, be regarded as of unquestionable correctness. Most of the Rishis are familiar to the legends of the Puranas, as Gotama, Kanwa, Bharadwaja, Vasishtha, Viswamitra, and others.... perhaps, only of imaginary existence ...
The absence of any obvious dependency of the Suktas upon one another is sufficiently indicative of their separate and unsystematic origin.... Besides the internal evidence afforded by difference of style, the hymns, not unfrequently, avow a difference of date; and we find some ascribed to ancient Rishis, while others admit their being of new or newest composition. The great variety of metres employed shows, also, a progressive development of the powers of the language, which could have been the effect only of long and diligent cultivation. There can be little doubt, therefore, that they range through a considerable interval.... [T]here can be little doubt that the hymns were taught, originally, orally, and that the knowledge of them was perpetuated by the same mode of tuition. This is sufficiently apparent from their construction: they abound with elliptical phrases; with general epithets, of which the application is far from obvious, until explained; with brief comparisons, which cannot be appreciated without such additional details as a living teacher might be expected to supply; and with all those blanks and deficiencies which render the written text of the Vedas still unintelligible, in many passages, without the assistance of the Scholiast, and which he is alone enabled to fill up by the greater or less fidelity with which the traditional explanations of the first viva voce interpreters, or, perhaps, of the authors of the hymns themselves, have come down to his time. The explanation of a living teacher, or of a commentator, must have been indispensable to a right understanding of the meaning of the Suktas, in many passages, from the moment of their first communication: and the probability is in favour of an oral instructor, as most in harmony with the unconnected and unsystematic currency of the hymns; with the restricted use of writing, — even if the art were known in those early times (a subject of considerable doubt), — and with the character of Sanskrit teaching, even in the present day, in which the study of books is subordinate to the personal and traditional expositions of the teacher, handed down to him through an indefinite series of preceding instructors.
At last, however, there arrived a period ... [which] suggested ... the expediency of rescuing the dispersed and obsolete Suktas from the risk of oblivion, and moulding them into some consistent and permanent shape. The accomplishment of this object is traditionally ascribed to the son of Parasara Rishi, Krishna Dwaipayana, thence surnamed Vyasa, the Arranger; a person of rather questionable chronology and existence.... [T]here were numerous Sakhas, or branches, of each Sanhita, studied in as many separate schools. The precise nature of these distinctions is not very satisfactorily known at present, as they have almost wholly disappeared; but they consisted, apparently, of varieties of form, (not of substance), containing the same hymns and formulae arranged in a different order, according to the conceptions of the teacher.... Of the Sanhitas of the Rig-Veda the only one now in use is that ascribed to a teacher named Vedamitra, or Sakalya. Whether the authorities which profess to detail the multiplicity of these compilations be entitled to entire confidence may be matter of question....
The foundation of the Vedanta philosophy, and the compilation of the Itihasas and Puranas, are, also, ascribed to Vyasa. It would be out of place to enter into any examination of the question here, beyond the remark, that there seems to be little satisfactory evidence for the tradition; several of the Puranas being, in fact, ascribed to other persons....
The interest evinced in the collection and preservation of their ancient hymns and formulae is the more remarkable from their having ... afforded little countenance to the religious and social institutions.... It is yet, perhaps, scarcely safe to hazard any positive assertion respecting the system of religious belief and practice taught in the Rig-Veda, or the state of society which prevailed when its hymns were composed.... In offering any opinion on these points, therefore, it must be understood that they are derived solely from what is actually before us, — the First Book of the Rig-Veda, now translated [by Max Muller],— and that they are subject to confirmation, or to contradiction, according to the further evidence that may be produced.... It will be sufficient, therefore, for the present, to confine ourselves to the evidence at hand, and deduce, from it, a few of the most important conclusions to which it appears to lead, regarding the religious and mythological belief of the people of India, — whose sentiments and notions the Suktas enunciate, — and the circumstances of their social condition, to which it occasionally, though briefly, adverts.
The worship which the Suktas describe comprehends offerings ... chiefly, oblations and libations: clarified butter poured on fire, and the expressed and fermented juice of the Soma plant, presented, in ladles, to the deities invoked, — in what manner does not exactly appear ... The ceremony takes place in the dwelling of the worshipper, in a chamber appropriated to the purpose, and, probably, to the maintenance of a perpetual fire; although the frequent allusions to the occasional kindling of the sacred flame are rather at variance with this practice....
There is no mention of any temple, nor any reference to a public place of worship; and it is clear that the worship was entirely domestic....
That animal victims were offered on particular occasions may be inferred from brief and obscure allusions in the hymns of the first book and it is inferrible, from some passages, that human sacrifices were not unknown, although infrequent, and, sometimes, typical.... The blessings prayed for are, for the most part, of a temporal and personal description, — wealth, food, life, posterity, cattle, cows, and horses, protection against enemies, victory over them, and, sometimes, their destruction, particularly when they are represented as inimical to the celebration of religious rites, or, in other words, people not professing the same religious faith.
There are a few indications of a hope of immortality and of future happiness; but they are neither frequent nor, in general, distinctly announced; although the immortality of the gods is recognized.... There is little demand for moral benefactions, although, in some few instances, hatred of untruth and abhorrence of sin are expressed, a hope is uttered that the latter may be repented of, or expiated; and the gods are, in one hymn, solicited to extricate the worshipper from sin of every kind. The main objects of the prayers, however, are benefits of a more worldly and physical character.... There is nothing, however, which denotes any particular potency in the prayer, or hymn, so as to compel the gods to comply with the desires of the worshipper; — nothing of that enforced necessity which makes so conspicuous and characteristic a figure in the Hindu mythology of a later date, by which the performance of austerities for a continued period constrains the gods to grant the desired boon, although fraught with peril, and even destruction, to themselves.
The next question is: Who are the gods to whom the praises and prayers are addressed? And here we find, also, a striking difference between the mythology of the Rig-Veda and that of the heroic poems and Puranas. The divinities worshipped are not unknown to later systems: but they there perform very subordinate parts; whilst those deities who are the great gods — the Dii majores — of the subsequent period are either wholly unnamed in the Veda, or are noticed in an inferior and different capacity. The names of SIVA, of MAHADEVA, of DURGA, of KALI, of RAMA, or KRISHNA, never occur, as far as we are yet aware. We have a RUDRA, who, in after times, is identified with SIVA, but who, even in the Puranas, is of very doubtful origin and identification, whilst, in the Veda, he is described as the father of the winds, and is, evidently, a form of either Agni or Indra. The epithet Kapardin, which is applied to him, appears, indeed, to have some relation to a characteristic attribute of Siva, — the wearing of his hair in a peculiar braid: but the term has, probably, in the Veda, a different signification, — one now forgotten.... At any rate, no other epithet applicable to SIVA, occurs; and there is not the slightest allusion to the form in which, for the last ten centuries, at least, he seems to have been almost exclusively worshipped in India, — that of the Linga or Phallus. Neither is there the slightest hint of another important feature of later Hinduism, the Trimurti, or triune combination of Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva, as typified by the mystical syllable Om; although, according to high authority on the religions of antiquity, the Trimurti was the first element in the faith of the Hindus, and the second was the Lingam....
[T]he sun does not hold that prominent place, in the Vaidik liturgy, which he seems to have done in that of the ancient Persians; and he is chiefly venerated as the celestial representative of Fire....
The Scholiast endeavours to connect the history of their origin with that narrated in the Puranas, but without success....
The Sabeism of the Hindus — if it may be so termed — differs entirely from that of the Chaldeans, in omitting the worship of the planets. The constellations are never named as objects of veneration or worship; and, although the moon appears to be occasionally intended under the name Soma, — particularly, when spoken of as scattering darkness, — yet the name and the adoration are, in a much less equivocal manner, applied to the Soma plant, the acid asclepias, actual or personified. The great importance attached to the juice of this plant is a singular part of the ancient Hindu ritual.... The only explanation of which it is susceptible is, the delight, as well as astonishment, which the discovery of the exhilarating, if not inebriating, properties of the fermented juice of the plant must have excited in simple minds, on first becoming acquainted with its effects. This, however, is, of course, wholly different from any adoration of the moon or planets, as celestial luminaries, in which they do not appear to have participated with the sun....
Female divinities make their appearance: but they are merely named, without anything being related of them; and we have, as yet, no sufficient materials on which to construct any theory of their attributes and character. The only exception is that of Ila, who is called the daughter of Manus, and his instructress in the performance of sacrifice; but what is meant by this requires further elucidation....
We thus find, that most, if not all, the deities named in the hymns of the Rich — as far as those of the first Ashtaka extend, — are resolvable into ... two, Agni and Indra.... There is nothing, however ... to warrant the other assertion of Yaska, that “all the gods are but parts of one atma, or soul, subservient to the diversification of his praises through the immensity and variety of his attributes.”...
The notion of a soul of the world belongs, no doubt, to a period long subsequent to the composition of the Suktas. Whether their authors entertained any belief in a creator and ruler of the universe certainly does not appear from any passage hitherto met with; but, at the same time, the objects of the early worship of the Hindus — fire, the sky, the Soma plant, even the sun, — are addressed in language so evidently dictated by palpable physical attributes, or by the most obvious allegorical personifications, that we can scarcely think they were inspired by any deep feeling of veneration or of faith ...
Leaving the question of the primary religion of the Hindus for further investigation, we may now consider what degree of light this portion of the Veda reflects upon their social and political condition. It has been a favourite notion, with some eminent scholars, that the Hindus, at the period of the composition of the hymns, were a nomadic and pastoral people. This opinion seems to rest solely upon the frequent solicitations for food, and for horses and cattle, which are found in the hymns, and is unsupported by any more positive statements. That the Hindus were not nomads is evident from the repeated allusions to fixed dwellings, and villages, and towns; and we can scarcely suppose them to have been, in this respect, behind their barbarian enemies, the overthrow of whose numerous cities is so often spoken of. A pastoral people they might have been, to some extent; but they were, also, and, perhaps, in a still greater degree, an agricultural people, as is evidenced by their supplications for abundant rain and for the fertility of the earth, and by the mention of agricultural products, particularly, barley. They were a manufacturing people; for the art of weaving, the labours of the carpenter, and the fabrication of golden and of iron mail, are alluded to: and, what is more remarkable, they were a maritime and mercantile people....
That they had extended themselves from a more northern site, or that they were a northern race, is rendered probable from the peculiar expression used, on more than one occasion, in soliciting long life, — when the worshipper asks for a hundred winters (himas); a boon not likely to have been desired by the natives of a warm climate. They appear, also, to have been a fair-complexioned people, at least, comparatively, and foreign invaders of India; as it is said that Indra divided the fields among his white-complexioned friends, after destroying the indigenous barbarian races: for such, there can be little doubt, we are to understand by the expression Dasyu, which so often recurs, and which is often defined to signify one who not only does not perform religious rites, but attempts to disturb them, and harass their performers: the latter are the Aryas, the Arya, or respectable, or Hindu, or Arian race. Dasyu, in later language, signifies a thief, a robber; and Arya, a wealthy or respectable man: but the two terms are constantly used, in the text of the Veda, as contrasted with each other, and as expressions of religious and political antagonists; requiring, therefore, no violence of conjecture to identify the Dasyus with the indigenous tribes of India, refusing to adopt the ceremonial of the Aryas, a more civilized, but intrusive, race, and availing themselves of every opportunity to assail them, to carry off their cattle, disturb their rites, and impede their progress, — to little purpose, it should seem, as the Aryas commanded the aid of Indra, before whose thunderbolt the numerous cities, or hamlets, of the Dasyus were swept away.
We have no particular intimation of the political condition of the Hindus, except the specification of a number of names of princes, many of which are peculiar to the Veda, and differ from those of the heroic poems and Puranas. A few are identical; but the nomenclature evidently belongs to a period anterior to the construction of the dynasties of the Sun and Moon, no allusion to which, thus far, occurs....
Upon a subject of primary importance in the history of Hindu society, the distinctions of caste, the language of the Suktas—of the first Ashtaka, at least, — is by no means explicit. Whenever collectively alluded to, mankind are said to be distinguished into five sorts, or classes, or, literally, five men, or beings([pancha kshitayah).... We do not meet with the denominations Kshattriya or Sudra in any text of the first book, nor with that of Vaisya; for Vis, which does occur, is, there, a synonym of man in general. Brahmana is met with, but in what sense is questionable. In the neuter form, Brahma, it usually implies prayer, or praise, or sacrificial food, or, in one place, preservation; in its masculine form, Brahma, it occurs as the praiser, or reciter, of the hymn, or as the particular priest, so denominated, who presides over the ceremonial of a sacrifice: and in neither case does it necessarily imply a Brahmana by caste; for, that the officiating priests might not be Brahmans appears from the part taken by Viswamitra at the sacrifice of Sunahsepa, who, although, according to tradition, by birth a Kshattriya, exercises the functions of the priesthood.... A hymn that occurs in a subsequent part of the Veda has, however, been translated by Mr. Colebrooke, in which the four castes are specified by name, and the usual fable of their origin from Brahma, alluded to. Further research is necessary, therefore, before a final sentence can be pronounced.
From this survey of the contents of the first book of the Rig-Veda, although some very important questions remain to be answered, it is indisputably evident that the hymns it comprises represent a form of religious worship, and a state of society, very dissimilar to those we meet with in all the other scriptural authorities of the Hindus, whether Brahmanas, Upanishads, Itihasas (or heroic poems), or Puranas.... [A]ll the most popular deities, possibly the principal laws and distinctions of society, and the whole body of the heroic and Pauranik dramatis personae, have no place, no part, in the Suktas of the Rig-Veda. That the latter preceded the former by a vast interval is, therefore, a necessary inference.... If the hymns of the Sanhita are genuine,... a thousand years would not be too long an interval for the altered conditions which are depictured in the older and in the more recent compositions.... The Suktas themselves are, confessedly, the compositions of various periods, — as we might conclude from internal evidence, — and were, probably, falling into forgetfulness, before they were collected into the Sanhitas....
After the Brahmanas come the Sutras ... the Vedanta Sutras being, also, posterior to the Upanishads. Now, all these writings are older than Manu, whose cosmogony is, evidently, a system of eclecticism compiled from the Upanishads, the Sankhya, and the Vedanta, and many of whose laws, I learn from Dr. Muller, are found in the liturgical Sutras. Yet Manu notices no Avataras, no Kama, no Krishna, and is, consequently, admitted to be long anterior to the growth of their worship as set forth in the Ramayana and Mahabharata.
There is, in Manu, a faint intimation that Buddhistical opinions were beginning to exert an influence over the minds of men, — in the admission that the greatest of virtues is abstinence from injury to living beings....
All this is, no doubt, to be received with very great reservation; for, in dealing with Hindu chronology, we have no trustworthy landmarks, no fixed eras, no comparative history, to guide us. In proposing the above dates, therefore, nothing more than conjecture is intended; and it may be wide of the truth....
The text which has served for the following translation comprises the Suktas of the Rig-Veda and the commentary of Sayana Acharya, printed, by Dr. Muller, from a collation of manuscripts, of which he has given an account in his Introduction.
Sayana Acharya was the brother of Madhava Acharya, the prime minister of Vira Bukka Raya, Raja of Vijayanagara in the fourteenth century [14th century], a munificent patron of Hindu literature. Both the brothers are celebrated as scholars; and many important works are attributed to them, — not only scholia on the Sanhitas and Brahmanas of the Vedas, but original works on grammar and law....
The scholia of Sayana on the text of the Rig-Veda comprise three distinct portions. The first interprets the original text, or, rather, translates it into more modern Sanskrit, fills up any ellipse, and, if any legend is briefly alluded to, narrates it in detail; the next portion of the commentary is a grammatical analysis of the text, agreeably to the system of Panini, whose aphorisms, or Sutras, are quoted; and the third portion is an explanation of the accentuation of the several words. These two last portions are purely technical, and are untranslateable. The first portion constitutes the basis of the English translation; for, although the interpretation of SAYANA may be, occasionally, questioned, he undoubtedly had a knowledge of his text far beyond the pretensions of any European scholar, and must have been in possession, either through his own learning, or that of his assistants, of all the interpretations which had been perpetuated, by traditional teaching, from the earliest times.
In addition to these divisions of his commentary, Sayana prefaces each Sukta by a specification of its author, or Rishi; of the deity, or deities, to whom it is addressed; of the rhythmical structure of the several Richas, or stanzas; and of the Vini-yoga, the application of the hymn, or of portions of it, to the religious rites at which they are to be repeated. I have been unable to make use of this latter part of the description; as the ceremonies are, chiefly, indicated by their titles alone, and their peculiar details are not to be determined without a more laborious investigation than the importance or interest of the subject appeared to me to demand.
-- RigVeda Sanhita. A Collection of Ancient Hindu Hymns, Constituting the First Ashtaka, or Book of the Rig-Veda: The Oldest Authority for the Religious and Social Institutions of the Hindus. Translated from the Original Sanskrita by H.H. Wilson, M.A., F.R.S., Member of the Royal Asiatic Society, of the Asiatic Societies of Calcutta and Paris, and of the Oriental Society of Germany; Foreign Member of the National Institute of France; Member of the Imperial Academies of Petersburgh and Vienna, and of the Royal Academies of Munich and Berlin; Ph.D., Breslau; M.D. Marburg, &c., and Boden Professor of Sanskrit in the University of Oxford. Published under the patronage of the Court of Directors of the East-India Company. 1866.
Charles Robinson, illustration for Evelyn Sharp, The Story of the Weathercock, Blackie & Son, [1907].
The faery power of conjuring delusion is usually termed ‘glamour.’ It’s worth knowing something about the origins and etymology of this word, because this tells us a good deal about our ancestors’ understanding of the nature and use of this form of magic.
The word is originally Scots and was introduced into the literary English by Sir Walter Scott. It’s a corrupt form of the word ‘grammar’ and is related to the noun ‘gramarye’ (which sometimes appears in texts as ‘glomery’) and thence to the French grimoire. The latter is a spell book, which clearly shows us that ‘glamour’ was originally conceived as being a form of verbal spell or charm.
Originally, glamour was not considered to be unique to faery kind. It could be cast by witches, wizards and, most intriguingly, by gypsies. One early example of its use is in the eighteenth-century ballad Johnny Faa (first printed by Ritson in Scottish Songs (1794) vol.2, 177): “As soon as they saw her well far’d face, They coost the glamer o’er her.” Johnny Faa is the king of gypsies who is best known today from the folk song the Raggle Taggle Gypsies. Other uses are found in works by Allan Ramsay, for instance the 1720 poem The Rise & Fall of Stocks:
“Like Belzie when he nicks a witch,
Wha sells her saul she may be rich;
He, finding this the bait to damn her,
Casts o’er her e’en his cheating glamour:”
In the 1721 Glossary to his poems, Ramsay gives this definition of the word: “When devils, wizards or jugglers deceive the sight, they are said to cast glamour o’er the eyes of the spectator.” At the end of the same century, Robert Burns confirmed the associations seen so far: “Ye gipsy-gang that deal in glamor, And you, deep-read in hell’s black grammar, Warlocks and witches.” (R. Burns Poems, 2nd edition, 1793, vol.2, 220)
The Paisley poet Ebenezer Picken used an interesting compound term in 1813, referring to a ‘glamour gift:’
“May be some wily lass has had the airt,
Wi’ spells, an’ charms, to win our Robin’s heart;
An’ hauds him, wi’ her Glaumour gift, sae fell.”
-- Picken, Misc. Poems, vol.1, 21
This would seem to imply an innate talent rather than something acquired, whether by learning or reading.
Despite these frequent Scots uses in published works, it was really Sir Walter Scott that popularised the term to the entire British reading public. In 1805, in the Lay of Last Minstrel (Canto 3, verse 9), he gave an extended illustration of the word in close association with an elf, thereby irrevocably linking the two:
“The iron band, the iron clasp,
Resisted long the elfin grasp:
For when the first he had undone
It closed as he the next begun.
Those iron clasps, that iron band,
Would not yield to unchristen’d hand
Till he smear’d the cover o’er
With the Borderer’s curdled gore;
A moment then the volume spread,
And one short spell therein he read:
It had much of glamour might;
Could make a ladye seem a knight;
The cobwebs on a dungeon wall
Seem tapestry in lordly hall;
A nut-shell seem a gilded barge,
A sheeling seem a palace large,
And youth seem age, and age seem youth:
All was delusion, nought was truth.”
Here, glamour is a ‘might,’ a power possessed by the character. Scott expanded upon the nature of glamour further in his Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft of 1830, when in letter three he wrote that “This species of Witchcraft is well known in Scotland as the glamour, or deceptio visus, and was supposed to be a special attribute of the race of Gipsies.”
Gladys Checkley, Fairies in the Orchard
The word was now established in the wider English tongue. In 1832, US author John Pendleton Kennedy used it in his novel, Swallow Barn (c.30): “It was like casting a spell of ‘gramarie’ over his opponents.” In 1859, Lord Tennyson took up the term in the poem Enid in Idylls of King, when making reference to Blodeuwedd in the Mabinogion: “That maiden in the tale, Whom Gwydion made by glamour out of flowers.”
The nature of glamour is to deceive or to defeat humans’ sense of vision. In the ballad Hind Etin, the eponymous faery hero abducts a woman using a spell: “He’s coosten a mist before them all/ And away this lady has ta’en.” However, although much of the evidence indicates that glamour is purely to do with visual illusions, there is one incident, recorded by Evans Wentz, which suggests that it is a more complete deception of human senses. The story was related to him one Christmas Day morning by a Mrs Dinah Moore of Glen Meay on the Isle of Man:
“I heard of a man and wife who had no children. One night the man was out on horseback and heard a little baby crying beside the road. He got off his horse to get the baby, and, taking it home, went to give it to his wife, and it was only a block of wood. And then the old fairies were outside yelling [in Manx] at the man: “Eash un oie, s’cheap t’ou mollit!” (Age one night, how easily thou art deceived!).”
-- Fairy Faith p. 127
Typical faery deployments of glamour are to make people believe that they are in grand homes or halls, that they’ve been offered delicate and delicious food or that they have been given faery gold. What they will have really experienced is, respectively, a cave, some dung or some dried leaves.
All their glamour was grammar.
The example given by Evans-Wentz would appear to imply that glamour is more than a superficial disguise but can alter the very fabric of an item so that it is no longer its natural self but takes on all the characteristics of whatever substance or object the faeries wish it to resemble.
Using their power of “mirage,” as Lewis Spence termed it, the fae seem to be able to transform the look and feel of physical items for as long as they wish. Very typically, though, the delusion will be withdrawn in an instant- the purported palace or fine feast vanishing suddenly. In Campbell’s Popular Tales of the West Highlands, he recounts the story of The Daughter of the King of Underwaves, in which the fairy woman conjured up a magnificent castle where she and Diarmuid, the mortal man who had fallen for her, lived contentedly for several days. He, however, began to pine for his friends and his hunting hounds, so she abandoned him, taking away the illusion in a moment. Diarmuid was left lying in a damp mossy hole on the moor, just as happens to Welsh men who have visit what I’ve called the ‘glamour houses’ of the tylwyth teg. (J. F. Campbell, Popular Tales, vol.3, 421)
Rene Cloke, Fairy Artists