“Everything possible to be believ’d is an image of truth.”—William Blake.

There is a certain pathos attached to the fragments from any great wreck, and in studying the few Saxon manuscripts, treating of herbs, which have survived to our day, we find their primary fascination not so much in their beauty and interest as in the visions they conjure up of those still older manuscripts which perished during the terrible Danish invasions. That books on herbs were studied in England as early as the eighth century is certain, for we know that Boniface, “the Apostle of the Saxons,” received letters from England asking him for books on simples and complaining that it was difficult to obtain the foreign herbs mentioned in those we already possessed.[2] But of these manuscripts none have survived, the oldest we possess being of the tenth century, and for our knowledge of Anglo-Saxon plant lore we look chiefly to those four important manuscripts—the Leech Book of Bald, the Lacnunga and the Saxon translations of the Herbarium of Apuleius and the so-called ?e?? ??da????.

Apart from their intrinsic fascination, there are certain considerations which give these manuscripts a peculiar importance. Herb lore and folk medicine lag not years, but centuries, behind the knowledge of their own day. Within living memory our peasants were using, and in the most remote parts of these islands they use still, the herbal and other remedies of our Saxon ancestors. They even use curiously similar charms. The herb lore recorded in these manuscripts is the herb lore, not of the century in which they were written, but of the dim past ages pictured in the oldest parts of Widsith and Beowulf. To the student of English plant lore, the Herbarium of Apuleius and the ?e?? ??da???? are less interesting because they are translations, but the more one studies the original Saxon writings on herbs and their uses, the more one realises that, just as in Beowulf there are suggestions and traces of an age far older than that in which the poem was written, so in these manuscripts are embedded beliefs which carry us back to the dawn of history. It is this which gives this plant lore its supreme interest. It is almost overwhelming to recognise that possibly we have here fragments of the plant lore of our ancestors who lived when Attila’s hordes were devastating Europe, and that in the charms and ceremonies connected with the picking and administering of herbs we are carried back to forms of religion so ancient that, compared to it, the worship of Woden is modern. Further, it is only in these manuscripts that we find this herb lore, for in the whole range of Saxon literature outside them there is remarkably little mention of plant life. The great world of nature, it is true, is ever present; the ocean is the background of the action in both Beowulf and Cynewulf, and the sound of the wind and the sea is in every line. One is conscious of vast trackless wastes of heath and moor, of impenetrable forests and terror-infested bogs; but of the details of plant life there is scarcely a word. In these manuscripts alone do we find what plant life meant to our ancestors, and, as with all primitive nations, their belief in the mystery of herbs is almost past our civilised understanding. Their plant lore, hoary with age, is redolent of a time when the tribes were still wandering on the mainland of Europe, and in these first records of this plant lore there is the breath of mighty forests, of marsh lands and of Nature in her wildest. We are swept back to an epoch when man fought with Nature, wresting from her the land, and when the unseen powers of evil resented this conquest of their domains. To the early Saxons those unseen powers were an everyday reality. A supernatural terror brooded over the trackless heaths, the dark mere pools were inhabited by the water elves. In the wreathing mists and driving storms of snow and hail they saw the uncouth “moor gangers,” “the muckle mark steppers who hold the moors,” or the stalking fiends of the lonely places, creatures whose baleful eyes shone like flames through the mist. To this day some of our place names in the more remote parts of these islands recall the memory of those evil terrors. In these manuscripts we are again in an atmosphere of eotens and trolls, there are traces of even older terrors, when the first Teuton settlers in Europe struggled with the aborigines who lived in caves, hints as elusive as the phantom heroes in the Saxon poems, and as unforgettable.

Still more remarkable is the fact that beneath the superstructure of Christian rites to be used when the herbs were being picked or administered we find traces not merely of the ancient heathen religion, but of a religion older than that of Woden. It has been emphasised by our most eminent authorities that in very early times our ancestors had but few chief gods, and it is a remarkable fact that there is no mention whatever of Woden in the whole range of Saxon literature before the time of Alfred. In those earlier centuries they seem to have worshipped a personification of Heaven, and Earth, the wife of Heaven, and the Son, whom after ages called Thor. There were also Nature deities, Hrede, the personification of the brightness of Summer, and Eostra, the radiant creature of the Dawn. It will be remembered that it was the worship, not of Balder, but of Eostra, which the Christian missionaries found so deeply imbedded that they adopted her name and transferred it to Easter. For this we have the authority of Bede. Separate from these beneficent powers were the destroying and harmful powers of Nature—darkness, storm, frost and the deadly vapours of moorland and fen, personified in the giants, the ogres, the furious witches that rode the winds and waves; in fact, the whole horde of demons of sea and land and sky. It is the traces of these most ancient forms of religion which give to the manuscripts their strongest fascination.

Many of us miss all that is most worth learning in old books through regarding anything in them that is unfamiliar as merely quaint, if not ridiculous. This attitude seals a book as effectually and as permanently as it seals a sensitive human being. There is only one way of understanding these old writers, and that is to forget ourselves entirely and to try to look at the world of nature as they did. It is not “much learning” that is required, but sympathy and imagination. In the case of these Saxon manuscripts we are repaid a thousandfold; for they transport us to an age far older than our own, and yet in some ways so young that we have lost its magic key. For we learn not only of herbs and the endless uses our forefathers made of them, but, if we try to read them with understanding, these books open for us a magic casement through which we look upon the past bathed in a glamour of romance. Our Saxon ancestors may have been a rude and hardy race, but they did not live in an age of materialism as we do. In their writings on herbs and their uses we see “as through a glass darkly” a time when grown men believed in elves and goblins as naturally as they believed in trees, an age when it was the belief of everyday folk that the air was peopled with unseen powers of evil against whose machinations definite remedies must be applied. They believed, as indeed the people of all ancient civilisations have believed, that natural forces and natural objects were endued with mysterious powers whom it was necessary to propitiate by special prayers. Not only the stars of heaven, but springs of water and the simple wayside herbs, were to them directly associated with unseen beings. There are times when one is reminded forcibly of that worship of Demeter, “nearer to the Earth which some have thought they could discern behind the definitely national mythology of Homer.” They believed that the sick could be cured by conjurations and charms, as firmly as we believe to-day in curing them by suggestion—is there any real difference between these methods?—and when one reads the charms which they used in administering their herbs one cannot help wondering whether these were handed down traditionally from the Sumerians, those ancient inhabitants of Mesopotamia who five thousand years before Christ used charms for curing the sick which have now been partially deciphered from the cuneiform inscriptions. But before studying the plant lore therein contained, it may be as well to take a preliminary survey of the four most important manuscripts.

The oldest Saxon book dealing with the virtues of herbs which we possess is the Leech Book of Bald, dating from about A.D. 900-950. Unlike some other MS. herbals of which only a few tattered pages remain, this perfect specimen of Saxon work has nothing fragile about it. The vellum is as strong and in as good condition as when it first lay clean and untouched under the hand of the scribe—Cild by name—who penned it with such skill and loving care. One’s imagination runs riot when one handles this beautiful book, now over a thousand years old, and wonders who were its successive owners and how it has survived the wars and other destructive agencies through all these centuries. But we only know that, at least for a time, it was sheltered in that most romantic of all English monasteries, Glastonbury.[3] This Saxon manuscript has a dignity which is unique, for it is the oldest existing leech book written in the vernacular. In a lecture delivered before the Royal College of Physicians in 1903, Dr. J.F. Payne commented on the remarkable fact that the Anglo-Saxons had a much wider knowledge of herbs than the doctors of Salerno, the oldest school of medicine and oldest university in Europe. “No treatise,” he said, “of the School of Salerno contemporaneous with the Leech Book of Bald is known, so that the Anglo-Saxons had the credit of priority. Their Leech Book was the first medical treatise written in Western Europe which can be said to belong to modern history, that is, which was produced after the decadence and decline of the classical medicine, which belongs to ancient history.... It seems fair to regard it [the Leech Book], in a sense, as the embryo of modern English medicine, and at all events the earliest medical treatise produced by any of the modern nations of Europe.” The Anglo-Saxons created a vernacular literature to which the continental nations at that time could show no parallel, and in the branch of literature connected with medicine, in those days based on a knowledge of herbs (when it was not magic), their position was unique. Moreover, the fact that the Leech Book was written in the vernacular is in itself remarkable, for it points to the existence of a class of men who were not Latin scholars and yet were able and willing to read books. The Leech Book belongs to the literary period commonly known as the school of Alfred. It was probably written shortly after Alfred’s death, but it is more than probable that it is a copy of a much older manuscript, for what is known as the third book of the Leech Book is evidently a shorter and older work incorporated by the scribe when he had finished the Leech Book proper.

The book itself was written under the direction of one Bald, who, if he were not a personal friend of King Alfred’s, had at any rate access to the king’s correspondence; for one chapter consists of prescriptions sent by Helias, Patriarch of Jerusalem, to the king.[4] We learn the names of the first owner and scribe from lines in Latin verse at the end of the second part of the MS.

The book consists of 109 leaves and is written in a large, bold hand and one or two of the initial letters are very faintly illuminated. The writing is an exceptionally fine specimen of Saxon penmanship. On many of the pages there are mysterious marks, but it is impossible to conjecture their meaning. It has been suggested that they point to the sources from which the book was compiled and were inserted by the original owner.

The Leech Book of Bald was evidently the manual of a Saxon doctor, and he refers to two other doctors—Dun and Oxa by name—who had given him prescriptions. The position of the leech in those days must have been very trying, for he was subjected to the obviously unfair competition of the higher clergy, many of whom enjoyed a reputation for working miraculous cures.[5] The leech being so inferior in position, it is not surprising that his medical knowledge did not advance on scientific lines. He relied on the old heathen superstitions, probably from an instinctive feeling that in pagan religion, combined with the herb lore which had been handed down through the ages, the mass of the people had a deep-rooted faith. Nothing is more obvious in the Leech Book than the fact that the virtues ascribed to the different herbs are based not on the personal knowledge of the writer, but on the old herb lore. This gives the Leech Book its special fascination; for it is the oldest surviving manuscript in which we can learn the herb lore of our ancestors, handed down to them from what dim past ages we can only surmise. We have, therefore, to bear in mind that what may strike our modern minds as quaint, or even grotesque, is in the majority of instances a distorted form of lore which doubtless suffered many changes during the early centuries of our era. Nearly all that is most fascinating in the Leech Book is of very ancient Indo-Germanic or Eastern origin, but one cannot help wondering how much the Saxons incorporated of the herb lore of the ancient Britons. Does not Pliny tell us that the Britons gathered herbs with such striking ceremonies that it would seem as though the Britons had taught them to the Persians?

One cannot read Bald’s manuscript without being struck by his remarkable knowledge of native plants and garden herbs. We are inferior to our continental neighbours in so many arts that it is pleasant to find that in the ancient art of gardening and in their knowledge of herbs our Saxon forefathers excelled. It has been pointed out by eminent authorities that the Anglo-Saxons had names for, and used, a far larger number of plants than the continental nations. In the Herbarium of Apuleius, including the additions from Dioscorides, only 185 plants are mentioned, and this was one of the standard works of the early Middle Ages. In the Herbarius of 1484, the earliest herbal printed in Germany, only 150 plants are recorded, and in the German Herbarius of 1485 there are 380. But from various sources it has been computed that the Anglo-Saxons had names for, and used, at least 500 plants.[6] One feels instinctively that the love of flowers and gardens was as deep-rooted in our ancestors as it is in our nation to-day, and though we do not know exactly what they grew in their gardens—which they called wyrt?erd (literally, herb-yard)—we do know that the marigolds, sunflowers, peonies, violets and gilly-flowers which make the cottage gardens of England so gay and full of colour to-day were also the commonest plants in the Saxon gardens. Fashions in large gardens have changed throughout the centuries, and there are stately gardens in this country famed the world over. But in regard to our cottage gardens we are staunchly conservative, and it is assuredly the cottage garden which is characteristically English. Incidentally, one cannot help regretting that so many of our old Saxon plant names have fallen into disuse. “Waybroad,” for instance, is much more descriptive than “plantain,” which is misleading.[7] “Maythen” also is surely preferable to “camomile,” and “wergulu” is more characteristic of that fierce weed than “nettle.” Those of us who are gardeners will certainly agree that “unfortraedde” is the right name for knotweed. And is not “joy of the ground” a delightful name for periwinkle?

The oldest illustrated herbal which has come down to us from Saxon times is the translation of the Latin Herbarium Apuleii Platonici.[8] The original Latin work is believed to date from the fifth century, though no copy so ancient as this is in existence now. The name Apuleius Platonicus is possibly fictitious and nothing is known of the writer, who was, of course, distinct from Apuleius Madaurensis, the author of the Golden Ass. The Saxon translation of this herbal (now in the British Museum) is supposed to date from A.D. 1000-1050, and belongs to the school of Ælfric of Canterbury. The frontispiece is a coloured picture in which Plato is represented holding a large volume which is being given him by Æsculapius and the Centaur, and on the other side of the page is a blue circle spotted with white and red, within which is the name of the book: “Herbarium Apuleii Platonici quod accepit ab Escolapio et Chirone centauro magistro Achillis.” The book consists of 132 chapters, in each of which a herb is described, and there are accompanying illustrations of the herbs. Throughout the book there are also remarkable pictures of snakes, scorpions and unknown winged creatures. It has been pointed out that the figures of herbs are obviously not from the original plants, but are copied from older figures, and these from others older still, and one wonders what the original pictures were like. It is interesting to think that perhaps the illustrations in this Saxon herbal are directly descended, so to speak, from the drawings of Cratevas,[9] Dionysius or Metrodorus, of whom Pliny tells us “They drew the likeness of herbs and wrote under them their effects.” The picture of the lily is very attractive in spite of the fact that the flowers are painted pale blue. The stamens in the figure stand out beyond the petals and look like rays of light, with a general effect that is curiously pleasing. One of the most interesting figures is that of the mandrake (painted in a deep madder), which embodies the old legend that it was death to dig up the root, and that therefore a dog was tied to a rope and made to drag it up. It is the opinion of some authorities that these figures show the influence of the school represented by the two splendid Vienna manuscripts of Dioscorides dating from the fifth and seventh centuries. There is no definite evidence of this, and though the illustrations in the Saxon manuscript show the influence of the classical tradition, they are poor compared with those in the Vienna manuscript. To some extent at least the drawings in this herbal must necessarily have been copies, for many of the plants are species unknown in this country.

ÆSCULAPIUS PLATO AND A CENTAUR

From the Saxon translation of the Herbarium of Apuleius (Cott. Vit., C. 3, folio 19a)

The Saxon translation of the ?e?? ??da???? (Harl. 6258) is a thin volume badly mutilated in parts. Herr Max LÖwenbeck[10] has shown that this is in part translated from a treatise by an eleventh-century writer, Petrocellus or Petronius, of the School of Salerno—the original treatise being entitled Practica Petrocelli Salernitani.[11] As has been pointed out by many eminent authorities, the School of Salerno, being a survival of Greek medicine, was uncontaminated by superstitious medicine. Consequently there are striking differences between this and the other Saxon manuscripts. The large majority of the herbs mentioned are those of Southern Europe, and the pharmacy is very simple compared with the number of herbs in prescriptions of native origin. As Dr. J.F. Payne[12] has pointed out, Herr LÖwenbeck’s important discovery does not account for the whole of the English book. The order of the chapters differs from that of the Salernitan writer; there are passages not to be found in the Practica, and in some places the English text gives a fuller reading. It is fairly evident that the Saxon treatise is at least in part indebted to the Passionarius by Gariopontus, another Salernitan writer of the same period.

The Lacnunga (Harl. 585), an original work, and one of the oldest and most interesting manuscripts, is a small, thick volume without any illustrations. Some of the letters are illuminated and some are rudely ornamented. At the top of the first page there is the inscription “Liber Humfredi Wanley,” and it is interesting, therefore, to realise that the British Museum owes this treasure to the zealous antiquarian whose efforts during the closing years of the seventeenth and early years of the eighteenth century rescued so many valuable Saxon and other MSS. from oblivion.[13]

To the student of folk lore and folk custom these sources of herb lore are of remarkable interest for the light they throw on the beliefs and customs of humble everyday people in Anglo-Saxon times. Of kings and warriors, of bards and of great ladies we can read in other Saxon literature, and all so vividly that we see their halls, the long hearths on which the fires were piled, the openings in the roof through which the smoke passed. We see the men with their “byrnies” of ring mail, their crested helmets, their leather-covered shields and deadly short swords. We see them and their womenkind wearing golden ornaments at their feasts, the tables laden with boars’ flesh and venison and chased cups of ale and mead. We see these same halls at night with the men sleeping, their “byrnies” and helmets hanging near them, and in the dim light we can make out also the trophies of the chase hanging on the walls. We read of their mighty deeds, and we know at least something of the ideals and the thoughts of their great men and heroes. But what of that vast number of the human kind who were always in the background? What of the hewers of wood and drawers of water, the swineherds, the shepherds, the carpenters, the hedgers and cobblers? Is it not wonderful to think that in these manuscripts we can learn, at least to some extent, what plant life meant to these everyday folk? And even in these days to understand what plant life means to the true countryman is to get into very close touch with him. Not only has suburban life separated the great concentrated masses of our people from their birthright of meadows, fields and woods; of Nature, in her untamed splendour and mystery, most of them have never had so much as a momentary glimpse. But in Saxon times even the towns were not far from the unreclaimed marshes and forests, and to the peasant in those days they were full not only of seen, but also of unseen perils. There was probably not a Saxon child who did not know something of the awe of waste places and impenetrable forests. Even the hamlets lay on the very edge of forests and moors, and to the peasant these were haunted by giant, elf and monster, as in the more inaccessible parts of these islands they are haunted still to those who retain something of primitive imagination. And when we study the plant lore of these people we realise that prince and peasant alike used the simple but mysterious herbs not only to cure them of both physical and mental ills, but to guard them from these unseen monsters. Of the reverence they paid to herbs we begin to have some dim apprehension when we read of the ceremonies connected with the picking and administering of them.

But, first, what can we learn of the beliefs as to the origin of disease? Concerning this the great bulk of the folk lore in these manuscripts is apparently of native Teutonic origin, or rather it would be more correct to speak of its origin as Indo-Germanic; for the same doctrines are to be found among all Indo-Germanic peoples, and even in the Vedas, notably the Atharva Veda. Of these beliefs, the doctrine of the “elf-shot” occupies a large space, the longest chapter in the third book of the Leech Book of Bald being entirely “against elf-disease.” We know from their literature that to our Saxon ancestors waste places of moor and forest and marshes were the resort of a host of supernatural creatures at enmity with mankind. In the Leech Book of Bald disease is largely ascribed to these elves, whose shafts produced illness in their victims. We read of beorg-Ælfen, dun-Ælfen, muntÆlfen. But our modern word “elf” feebly represents these creatures, who were more akin to the “mark-stalkers,” to the creatures of darkness with loathsome eyes, rather than to the fairies with whom we now associate the name. For the most part these elves of ancient times were joyless impersonations and creatures not of sun but of darkness and winter. In the gloom and solitude of the forest, “where the bitter wormwood stood pale grey” and where “the hoar stones lay thick,” the black, giant elves had their dwelling. They claimed the forest for their own and hated man because bit by bit he was wresting the forest from them. Yet they made for man those mystic swords of superhuman workmanship engraved with magic runes and dipped when red hot in blood or in a broth of poisonous herbs and twigs. We do not understand, we can only ask, why did they make them? What is the meaning of the myth? The water elves recall the sea monsters who attended Grendel’s dam, impersonations of the fury of the waves, akin to Hnikarr, and again other water elves of the cavernous bed of ocean, primeval deadly creatures, inhabiting alike the sea and the desolate fens, “where the elk-sedge waxed in the water.” If some were akin to the Formori of the baleful fogs in Irish mythic history and the Mallt-y-nos, those she-demons of marshy lands immortalised by the Welsh bards, creatures huge and uncouth “with grey and glaring eyes,” there were others who exceeded in beauty anything human. When CÆdmon wrote of the beauty of Sarah, he described her as “sheen as an elf.” With the passing of the centuries we have well-nigh forgotten the black elves, though they are still realities to the Highlander and too real for him to speak of them. But have we not the descendants of the sheen bright elves in the works of Shakespeare, Milton and Shelley? One feels very sure that our Saxon ancestors would have understood that glittering elf Ariel as few of us are capable of understanding him. He is the old English bright elf. Did not Prospero subdue him with magic, as our ancestors used magic songs in administering herbs “to quell the elf”? Here is one such song from the Leech Book of Bald, and at the end a conjuration to bury the elf in the earth.

“Sing also this many times, ‘May earth bear on thee with all her might and main.’”—Leech Book of Bald, III. 63.

This was for one “in the water elf disease,” and we read that a person so afflicted would have livid nails and tearful eyes, and would look downwards. Amongst the herbs to be administered when the charm was sung over him were a yew-berry, lupin, helenium, marsh mallow, dock elder, wormwood and strawberry leaves.

Goblins and nightmare were regarded as at least akin to elves, and we find the same herbs were to be used against them, betony being of peculiar efficacy against “monstrous nocturnal visions and against frightful visions and dreams.”[14] The malicious elves did not confine their attacks to human beings; references to elf-shot cattle are numerous. I quote the following from the chapter “against elf disease.”

The instructions for a horse or cattle that are elf-shot runs thus:—

Another prescription for an elf-shot horse runs thus:—

Closely allied to the doctrine of the elf-shot is that of “flying venom.” It is, of course, possible to regard the phrase as the graphic Anglo-Saxon way of describing infectious diseases; but the various synonymous phrases, “the on-flying things,” “the loathed things that rove through the land,” suggest something of more malignant activity. As a recent leading article in The Times shows, we are as a matter of fact not much wiser than our Saxon ancestors as to the origin of an epidemic such as influenza.[16] Indeed, to talk of “catching” a cold or any infectious disease would have struck an Anglo-Saxon as ludicrous, mankind being rather the victims of “flying venom.” In the alliterative lay in the Lacnunga, part of which is given below, the wind is described as blowing these venoms, which produced disease in the bodies on which they lighted, their evil effects being subsequently blown away by the magician’s song and the efficacy of salt and water and herbs. This is generally supposed to be in its origin a heathen lay of great antiquity preserved down to Christian times, when allusions to the new religion were inserted. It is written in the Wessex dialect and is believed to be of the tenth century, but it is undoubtedly a reminiscence of some far older lay. The lay or charm is in praise of nine sacred herbs (one a tree)—mugwort, waybroad (plantain), stime (watercress), atterlothe (?), maythen (camomile), wergulu (nettle), crab apple, chervil and fennel.

In the chapter in the Leech Book of Bald[18] containing the prescriptions sent by the Patriarch of Jerusalem to King Alfred, we find among the virtues of the “white stone” that it is “powerful against flying venom and against all uncouth things,” and in another passage[19] that these venoms are particularly dangerous “fifteen nights ere Lammas and after it for five and thirty nights: leeches who were wisest have taught that in that month no man should anywhere weaken his body except there were a necessity for it.” In the most ancient source of Anglo-Saxon medicine—the Lacnunga—we find the following “salve” for flying venom:—

But it is in the doctrine of the worm as the ultimate source of disease that we are carried back to the most ancient of sagas. The dragon and the worm, the supreme enemy of man, which play so dominating a part in Saxon literature, are here set down as the source of all ill. In the alliterative lay in the Lacnunga the opening lines describe the war between Woden and the Serpent. Disease arose from the nine fragments into which he smote the serpent, and these diseases, blown by the wind, are counteracted by the nine magic twigs and salt water and herbs with which the disease is again blown away from the victim by the power of the magician’s song. This is the atmosphere of the great earth-worm Fafnir in the Volsunga Saga and the dragon in all folk tales, the great beast with whom the heroes of all nations have contended. Further, it is noteworthy that not only in Anglo-Saxon medicine, but for many centuries afterwards, even minor ailments were ascribed to the presence of a worm—notably toothache. In the Leech Book we find toothache ascribed to a worm in the tooth (see Leech Book, II. 121). It is impossible in a book of this size to deal with the comparative folk lore of this subject, but in passing it is interesting to recall an incantation for toothache from the Babylonian cuneiform texts[21] in which we find perhaps the oldest example of this belief.

Closely interwoven with these elements of Indo-Germanic origin we find the ancient Eastern doctrine which ascribes disease to demoniac possession. The exorcisms were originally heathen charms, and even in the Leech Book there are many interesting survivals of these, although Christian rites have to a large extent been substituted for them. Both mandrake and periwinkle were supposed to be endowed with mysterious powers against demoniacal possession. At the end of the description of the mandrake in the Herbarium of Apuleius there is this prescription:—

Of periwinkle we read:—

MANDRAKE FROM A SAXON HERBAL

(Sloane 1975, folio 49a)

In the treatment of disease we find that the material remedies, by which I mean remedies devoid of any mystic meaning, are with few exceptions entirely herbal. The herb drinks were made up with ale, milk or vinegar, many of the potions were made of herbs mixed with honey, and ointments were made of herbs worked up with butter. The most scientific prescription is that for a vapour bath,[22] and there are suggestions for what may become fashionable once more—herb baths. The majority of the prescriptions are for common ailments, and one cannot help being struck by the number there are for broken heads, bleeding noses and bites of mad dogs. However ignorant one may be of medicine, it is impossible to read these old prescriptions without realising that our ancestors were an uncommonly hardy race, for the majority of the remedies would kill any of us modern weaklings, even if in robust health when they were administered. At times one cannot help wondering whether in those days, as not infrequently happens now, the bulletin was issued that “the operation was quite successful, but the patient died of shock!” And, as further evidence of the old truth that there is nothing new under the sun, it is pleasant to find that doctors, even in Saxon days, prescribed “carriage exercise,” and moreover endeavoured to sweeten it by allowing the patient to “lap up honey” first. This prescription runs thus:—

In the later herbals, “beauty” recipes are, as is well known, a conspicuous feature, but they find a place also in these old manuscripts. In the third book (the oldest part) of the Leech Book there is a prescription for sunburn which runs thus:—

And in Leech Book II. we find this prescription:—

Prescriptions for hair falling off are fairly numerous, and there are even two—somewhat drastic—prescriptions for hair which is too thick. Sowbread and watercress were both used to make hair grow, and in Leech Book I. there is this prescription:—

The two prescriptions for hair which is too thick are in the same chapter:—

There are more provisions against diseases of the eye than against any other complaint, and it is probably because of the prevalence of these in olden days that we still have so many of the superstitions connected with springs of water. Both maythen (camomile) and wild lettuce were used for the eyes. In the following for mistiness of eyes there is a touch of pathos:—

One prescription is unique, for the “herb” which one is directed to use is not to be found in any other herbal in existence. This is “rind from Paradise.” There is a grim humour about the scribe’s comment, and one cannot help wondering what was the origin of the prescription:—

These manuscripts are so full of word pictures of the treatment of disease that one feels if one were transported back to those days it would in most cases be possible to tell at a glance the “cures” various people were undergoing. Let us visit a Saxon hamlet and go and see the sick folk in the cottages. On our way we meet a man with a fawn’s skin decorated with little bunches of herbs dangling from his shoulders, and we know that he is a sufferer from nightmare.[23] Another has a wreath of clove-wort tied with a red thread round his neck. He is a lunatic, but, as the moon is on the wane, his family hope that the wearing of these herbs will prove beneficial. We enter a dark one-roomed hut, the dwelling of one of the swineherds, but he is not at his work; for it seemed to him that his head turned about and that he was faring with turned brains. He had consulted the leech and, suggestion cures being then rather more common than now, the leech had advised him to sit calmly by his fireside with a linen cloth wrung out in spring water on his head and to wait till it was dry. He does so, and, to quote the words with which nearly all Saxon prescriptions end, we feel “it will soon be well with him.” Let us wend our way to the cobbler, a sullen, taciturn man who finds his lively young wife’s chatter unendurable. We find him looking more gloomy than usual, for he has eaten nothing all day and now sits moodily consuming a raw radish. But there is purpose in this. Does not the ancient leechdom say that, if a radish be eaten raw after fasting all day, no woman’s chatter the next day can annoy? In another cottage we find that a patient suffering from elf-shot is to be smoked with the fumes of herbs. A huge quern stone which has been in the fire on the hearth all day is dragged out, the prepared herbs—wallwort and mugwort—are scattered upon it and also underneath, then cold water is poured on and the patient is reeked with the steam “as hot as he can endure it.”[24] Smoking sick folk, especially for demoniac possession, is a world-wide practice and of very ancient origin. There is no space here to attempt to touch on the comparative folk lore of this subject. Moreover, fumigating the sick with herbs is closely akin to the burning of incense. Even in ancient Babylonian days fumigating with herbs was practised.[25] It was very common all through the Middle Ages in most parts of Europe, and that it has not even yet died out is shown by the extract from The Times given below.[26] I have purposely put in juxtaposition the translation of the ancient Babylonian tablet and the extract from The Times. It is noteworthy that not only human beings, but cattle and swine were smoked with the fumes of herbs. In the Lacnunga, for sick cattle we find—“Take the wort, put it upon gledes and fennel and hassuck and ‘cotton’ and incense. Burn all together on the side on which the wind is. Make it reek upon the cattle. Make five crosses of hassuck grass, set them on four sides of the cattle and one in the middle. Sing about the cattle the Benedicite and some litanies and the Pater Noster. Sprinkle holy water upon them, burn about them incense and cotton and let someone set a value on the cattle, let the owner give the tenth penny in the Church for God, after that leave them to amend; do this thrice.”—Lacnunga, 79.

“To preserve swine from sudden death sing over them four masses, drive the swine to the fold, hang the worts upon the four sides and upon the door, also burn them, adding incense and make the reek stream over the swine.”—Lacnunga, 82.

Herbs used as amulets have always played a conspicuous part in folk medicine, and our Saxon ancestors used them, as all ancient races have used them, not merely to cure definite diseases but also as protection against the unseen powers of evil,[27] to preserve the eyesight, to cure lunacy, against weariness when going on a journey, against being barked at by dogs, for safety from robbers, and in one prescription even to restore a woman stricken with speechlessness. The use of herbs as amulets to cure diseases has almost died out in this country, but the use of them as charms to ensure good luck survives to this day—notably in the case of white heather and four-leaved clover.

There is occasionally the instruction to bind on the herb with red wool. For instance, a prescription against headache in the third book of the Leech Book enjoins binding waybroad, which has been dug up without iron before sunrise, round the head “with a red fillet.” Binding on with red wool is a very ancient and widespread custom.[28] Red was the colour sacred to Thor and it was also the colour abhorred not only by witches in particular but by all the powers of darkness and evil. An ancient Assyrian eye charm prescribes binding “pure strands of red wool which have been brought by the pure hand of ... on the right hand,” and down to quite recent times even in these islands tying on with red wool was a common custom.

Besides their use as amulets, we also find instructions for hanging herbs up over doors, etc., for the benefit not only of human beings but of cattle also. Of mugwort we read in the Herbarium of Apuleius, “And if a root of this wort be hung over the door of any house then may not any man damage the house.”

The herbs in commonest use as amulets were betony, vervain, peony, yarrow, mugwort and waybroad (plantain). With the exception of vervain, no herb was more highly prized than betony. The treatise on it in the Herbarium of Apuleius is supposed to be an abridged copy of a treatise on the virtues of this plant written by Antonius Musa, physician to the Emperor Augustus. No fewer than twenty-nine uses of it are given, and in the Saxon translation this herb is described as being “good whether for a man’s soul or his body.” Vervain was one of the herbs held most sacred by the Druids and, as the herbals of Gerard and Parkinson testify, it was in high repute even as late as the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It has never been satisfactorily identified, though many authorities incline to the belief that it was verbena. In Druidical times libations of honey had to be offered to the earth from which it was dug, mystic ceremonies attended the digging of it and the plant was lifted out with the left hand. This uprooting had always to be performed at the rising of the dog star and when neither the sun nor the moon was shining. Why the humble waybroad should occupy so prominent a place in Saxon herb lore it is difficult to understand. It is one of the nine sacred herbs in the alliterative lay in the Lacnunga, and the epithets “mother of worts” and “open from eastwards” are applied to it. The latter curious epithet is also applied to it in Lacnunga 46,—“which spreadeth open towards the East.” Waybroad has certainly wonderfully curative powers, especially for bee-stings, but otherwise it has long since fallen from its high estate. Peony throughout the Middle Ages was held in high repute for its protective powers, and even during the closing years of the last century country folk hung beads made of its roots round children’s necks.[29] Yarrow is one of the aboriginal English plants, and from time immemorial it has been used in incantations and by witches. Country folk still regard it as one of our most valuable herbs, especially for rheumatism. Mugwort, which was held in repute throughout the Middle Ages for its efficacy against unseen powers of evil, is one of the nine sacred herbs in the alliterative lay in the Lacnunga, where it is described thus:—

(1) ARTEMISIA AND (2) BLACKBERRY, FROM A SAXON HERBAL

(Sloane 1975, folio 37a)

With the notable exception of vervain, it is curious how little prominence is given in Saxon plant lore to the herbs which were held most sacred by the Druids, and yet it is scarcely credible that some of their wonderful lore should not have been assimilated. But in these manuscripts little or no importance attaches to mistletoe, holly, birch or ivy. There is no mention of mistletoe as a sacred herb.[30] We find some mention of selago, generally identified with lycopodium selago, of which Pliny tells us vaguely that it was “like savin.” The gathering of it had to be accompanied in Druid days with mystic ceremonies. The Druid had his feet bare and was clad in white, and the plant could not be cut with iron, nor touched with the naked hand. So great were its powers that it was called “the gift of God.” Nor is there any mention in Saxon plant lore of the use of sorbus aucuparia, which the Druids planted near their monolithic circles as protection against unseen powers of darkness. There is, however, one prescription which may date back to the Roman occupation of Britain. It runs thus: “Take nettles, and seethe them in oil, smear and rub all thy body therewith; the cold will depart away.”[31] It has always been believed that one of the varieties of nettle (Urtica pilulifera) was introduced into England by the Roman soldiers, who brought the seed of it with them. According to the tradition, they were told that the cold in England was unendurable; so they brought these seeds in order to have a plentiful supply of nettles wherewith to rub their bodies and thereby keep themselves warm. Possibly this prescription dates back to that time.

From what hoary antiquity the charms and incantations which we find in these manuscripts have come down to us we cannot say. Their atmosphere is that of palÆolithic cave-drawings, for they are redolent of the craft of sorcerers and they suggest those strange cave markings which no one can decipher. Who can say what lost languages are embedded in these unintelligible words and single letters, or what is their meaning? To what ancient ceremonies do they pertain, and who were the initiated who alone understood them? At present it is all mysterious, though perhaps one day we shall discover both their sources and their meaning. They show no definite traces of the Scandinavian rune-lays concerning herbs, though one of the charms is in runic characters. It is noteworthy that in the third book, which is evidently much older than the first two parts of the Leech Book, the proportion of heathen charms is exceptionally large. In one prescription we find the names of two heathen idols, Tiecon and Leleloth, combined with a later Christian interpolation of the names of the four gospellers. The charm is in runic characters and is to be followed by a prayer. Many of the mystic sentences are wholly incomprehensible, in others we find heathen names such as Lilumenne, in others a string of words which may be a corrupt form of some very ancient language. Thus a lay to be sung in case a man or beast drinks an insect runs thus:—“Gonomil, orgomil, marbumil, marbsai, tofeth,” etc.[32]

If some of the charms have a malignant sound, others were probably as soothing in those days as those gems are still which have survived in our inimitable nursery rhymes.

For instance, the following has for us no meaning, but even in the translation it has something of the curious effect of the words in the original. A woman who cannot rear her child is instructed to say—“Everywhere I carried for me the famous kindred doughty one with this famous meat doughty one, so I will have it for me and go home.”

In the Lacnunga there is a counting-out charm which is a mixture of an ancient heathen charm combined with a Christian rite at the end.

One of the most remarkable narrative charms is that for warts copied below from the Lacnunga. It is to be sung first into the left ear, then into the right ear, then above the man’s poll, then “let one who is a maiden go to him and hang it upon his neck, do so for three days, it will soon be well with him.”

Of the world-wide custom of charming disease from the patient and transferring it to some inanimate object we find numerous examples. This custom is not only of very ancient origin, but persisted until recent times even in this country. As commonly practised in out-of-the-way parts of Great Britain it was believed that the disease transferred to an inanimate object would be contracted by the next person who picked it up, but in the Saxon herbals we find an apparently older custom of transferring the disease to “running water” (suggestive of the Israelitish scapegoat), and also that of throwing the blood from the wound across the wagon way. These charms for transferring disease seem originally to have been associated with a considerable amount of ceremonial. For instance, in those to cure the bite of a hunting spider we find that a certain number of scarifications are to be struck (and in both cases an odd number—three and five); in the case of the five scarifications, “one on the bite and four round about it,” the blood is to be caught in “a green spoon of hazel-wood,” and the blood is to be thrown “in silence” over a wagon way. In the Lacnunga there are traces of the actual ceremonial of transferring the disease, and the Christian prayer has obviously been substituted for an older heathen one. The charm is in unintelligible words and is followed by the instruction, “Sing this nine times and the Pater Noster nine times over a barley loaf and give it to the horse to eat.” In a “salve against the elfin race” it is noticeable that the herbs, after elaborate preparation, are not administered to the patient at all, but are thrown into running water.

One charm in the Lacnunga which is perhaps not too long to quote speaks of some long-lost tale. It appears to be a fragment of a popular lay, and one wonders how many countless generations of our ancestors sang it, and what it commemorates:—

Who were these six smiths and who were the witches? One thinks of that mighty Smith Weyland in the palace of Nidad king of the Niars, of the queen’s fear of his flashing eyes and the maiming of him by her cruel orders, and of the cups he made from the skulls of her sons and gems from their eyes. We think of these as old tales, but instinct tells us that they are horribly real. We may not know how that semi-divine smith made himself wings, but that he flew over the palace and never returned we do not doubt for an instant. To the fairy stories which embody such myths children of unnumbered generations have listened, and they demand them over and over again because they, too, are sure that they are real.

Nor is the mystery of numbers lacking in these herbal prescriptions, particularly the numbers three and nine. In the alliterative lay of the nine healing herbs this is very conspicuous. Woden, we are told, smote the serpent with nine magic twigs, the serpent was broken into nine parts, from which the wind blew the nine flying venoms. There are numerous instances of the patient being directed to take nine of each of the ingredients or to take the herb potion itself for three or nine days. Or it is directed that an incantation is to be said or sung three or nine times, or that three or nine masses are to be sung over the herbs. This mystic use of three and nine is conspicuous in the following prescription:—

The leechdom for the use of dwarf elder against a snake-bite runs thus:—[34]

Some of the most remarkable passages in the manuscripts are those concerning the ceremonies to be observed both in the picking and in the administering of herbs. What the mystery of plant life which has so deeply affected the minds of men in all ages and of all civilisations meant to our ancestors, we can but dimly apprehend as we study these ceremonies. They carry us back to that worship of earth and the forces of Nature which prevailed when Woden was yet unborn. That Woden was the chief god of the tribes on the mainland is indisputable, but even in the hierarchy of ancestors reverenced as semi-divine the Saxons themselves looked to Sceaf rather than to Woden, who himself was descended from Sceaf. There are few more haunting legends than that of our mystic forefather, the little boy asleep on a sheaf of corn who, in a richly adorned vessel which moved neither by sails nor oars, came to our people out of the great deep and was hailed by them as their king. Did not Alfred himself claim him as his primeval progenitor, the founder of our race? There is no tangible link between his descendant Woden and the worship of earth, but the sheaf of corn, the symbol of Sceaf, carries us straight back to Nature worship. Sceaf takes his fitting place as the semi-divine ancestor with the lesser divinities such as Hrede and Eostra, goddess of the radiant dawn. It is to this age that the ceremonies in the picking of the herbs transport us, to the mystery of the virtues of herbs, the fertility of earth, the never-ceasing conflict between the beneficent forces of sun and summer and the evil powers of the long, dark northern winters. Closely intertwined with Nature worship we find the later Christian rites and ceremonies. For the new teaching did not oust the old, and for many centuries the mind of the average man halted half-way between the two faiths. If he accepted Christ he did not cease to fear the great hierarchy of unseen powers of Nature, the worship of which was bred in his very bone. The ancient festivals of Yule and Eostra continued under another guise and polytheism still held its sway. The devil became one with the gloomy and terrible in Nature, with the malignant elves and dwarfs. Even with the warfare between the beneficent powers of sun and the fertility of Nature and the malignant powers of winter, the devil became associated. Nor did men cease to believe in the Wyrd, that dark, ultimate fate goddess who, though obscure, lies at the back of all Saxon belief. It was in vain that the Church preached against superstitions. Egbert, Archbishop of York, in his Penitential, strictly forbade the gathering of herbs with incantations and enjoined the use of Christian rites, but it is probable that even when these manuscripts were written, the majority at least of the common folk in these islands, though nominally Christian, had not deserted their ancient ways of thought. [35] When the Saxon peasant went to gather his healing herbs he may have used Christian prayers[36] and ceremonies, but he did not forget the goddess of the dawn. It is noteworthy how frequently we find the injunction that the herbs must be picked at sunrise or when day and night divide, how often stress is laid upon looking towards the east, and turning “as the sun goeth from east to south and west.” In many there is the instruction that the herb is to be gathered “without use of iron” or “with gold and with hart’s horn” (emblems of the sun’s rays). It is curious how little there is of moon lore. In some cases the herbs are to be gathered in silence, in others the man who gathers them is not to look behind him—a prohibition which occurs frequently in ancient superstitions. The ceremonies are all mysterious and suggestive, but behind them always lies the ancient ineradicable worship of Nature. To what dim past does that cry, “Erce, Erce, Erce, Mother of Earth” carry us?

And that other ancient verse:—

It is of these two invocations that Stopford Brooke (whose translations I have used) writes: “These are very old heathen invocations used, I daresay, from century to century and from far prehistoric times by all the Teutonic farmers. Who ‘Erce’ is remains obscure. But the Mother of Earth seems to be here meant, and she is a person who greatly kindles our curiosity. To touch her is like touching empty space, so far away is she. At any rate some Godhead or other seems here set forth under her proper name. In the Northern Cosmogony, Night is the Mother of Earth. But Erce cannot be Night. She is (if Erce be a proper name) bound up with agriculture. Grimm suggests Eorce, connected with the Old High German ‘erchan’ = simplex. He also makes a bold guess that she may be the same as a divine dame in Low Saxon districts called Herke or Harke, who dispenses earthly goods in abundance, and acts in the same way as Berhta and Holda—an earth-goddess, the lady of the plougher and sower and reaper. In the Mark she is called Frau Harke. Montanus draws attention to the appearance of this charm in a convent at Corvei, in which this line begins—‘Eostar, Eostar, eordhan modor.’ ... The name remains mysterious. The song breathes the pleasure and worship of ancient tillers of the soil in the labours of the earth and in the goods the mother gave. It has grown, it seems, out of the breast of earth herself; earth is here the Mother of Men. The surface of earth is the lap of the Goddess; in her womb let all growth be plentiful. Food is in her for the needs of men. ‘Hail be thou, Earth!’ I daresay this hymn was sung ten thousand years ago by the early Aryans on the Baltic coast.”

Even in a twelfth-century herbal we find a prayer to Earth, and it is so beautiful that I close this chapter with it:—

FROM A SAXON HERBAL

(Harl. 1585, folio 19a)

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