A Journey Charm: Shades of Paganism A Journey Charm seems to be
a prayer that invokes God and various biblical figures to
protect the chanter on his or her journeys. Interesting in this
work is its origins: it would seem that scholars don’t regard
the poem on its own, but as a part of a group of twelve others
known as The Metrical Charms. The charms seem to serve very
functional purposes: to fertilize the land, and fend off bees,
among other things. It would be difficult for the reader in the
present to regard many of the Charms as Christian prayers, even
though most of them have very heavy and ostensible Christian
overtones, because some of them involve decidedly pagan elements
(especially Charms 3 and 7, which apparently ward off pagan
supernatural spirits such as dwarves and elves). On the whole,
there doesn’t seem to be much scholarship pertaining to the
Metrical Charms in general, let alone “A Journey Charm” (or
Metrical Charm 12) specifically, beyond the historical evidence
from the manuscript from whic