Francis here. Yup, Martin is absolutely correct about the Charm of Making from the movie Excalibur. We can both recite that bad boy from memory.
It’s perhaps my second favorite line from the movie, the first being when Merlin attempts to destroy Morgana and shouts “Look into the eyes of the Dragon and despair! I destroy you, I consign you to oblivion!” (I’m still waiting for the right moment to use that one on someone somehow.)
Just to give a little background trivia – cause, hey, that’s what we do here, although Wikipedia is the source – the charm itself is an invention, meaning there’s no historical or literary source for it. However, linguist Michael Everson, proposed a semi-accurate Old Irish version of it (which appears to be darn close to the one heard on screen) as follows:
Anál nathrach,
orth’ bháis’s bethad,
do chél dénmha
In modern English, this can be translated as:
Serpent’s breath,
charm of death and life,
thy omen of making.
You can even get t-shirts with the translated version of the Charm. How cool is that?
The real coolness, however, can be found in John Boorman’s commentary on the movie on both the DVD and Blu-ray as I mentioned in our episode. It’s worth a listen, especially if you know the movie well like we do. Boorman indicated that he had a problem with both Nicole Williamson and Helen Mirren in that they both initially would pronounce the words of the charm differently, which he had to have them correct as the fact that Morgana learns the charm from Merlin would require them to say it exactly the same. Interesting stuff for sure.
Director Zack Snyder is a huge fan of the movie just like we are. If you were paying close attention, that is the movie named as ‘Coming Soon’ on the Theater Marquee when Thomas and Martha Wayne were killed in the early portion of Snyder’s ‘Batman V. Superman‘.
