Charm against rats

'I comawnde alle þe ratones þat are here abowte' is a charm from Bodleian MS Rawlinson C. 288, f. 113, in what Sisam describes as "15th-century writing, blurred". The text is from Fourteenth Century Verse & Prose, ed. Kenneth Sisam (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955, repr. 1962), 170; an earlier printed version appears in Political, Religious, and Love Poems edited by E. D. J Funnivall (Early English Text Society, 1866, repr. 1903), 43.

Text

I comawnde alle þe ratones þat are here abowte,

þat non dwelle in þis place, withinne ne withowte,

Thorgh þe vertu of Iesu Crist, þat Mary bare abowte

þat alle creatures owyn for to lowte,

And thorgh þe vertu of Mark, Mathew, Luke, and Ion, -

Alle foure Awangelys corden corden into on, -

Thorgh þe vertu of Sent Geretrude, þat mayde clene,

God graunte þat grace

þat <non> raton dwelle in þe place

þat here namis were nemeled in;

And thorgh þe vertu of Sent Kasi.

þat holy man, þat prayed to God Almyty

For skathes þat þei deden

Hys medyn

Be dayes and be nyȝt,

God bad hem flen and gon out of euery manesse syȝt.

Dominus Deus Saboat! Emanuel, þe gret Godes name!

I betweche þes place from ratones and from alle oþer schame.

God saue þis place fro all oþer wykked wytes,

Boþe be dayes and be nytes! et in nomine Patris et Filii, &c.

Notes

skathes] t altered from f (?) in the MS [Sisam]

St. Gertrude of Nivelles, like St. Kakukilla, was invoked against rats.

St Kasi; does not appear elsewhere in Middle English texts; since St. Nicasius of Rheims is invokeds against rats and mice elsewhere in Europe, this saint has been suggested. See Bruce Dickens and R. M. Wilson, 'Sent Kasi', Leeds Studies in English and Kindred Languages 6 (1937): 67-73.